Garden arbors and arches
One of the most elegant additions you can make to your garden is a decorative accent, and a garden arbor or garden arch not only makes a beautiful accent piece, but it’s also quite useful for functionality too.
Garden arbors and arches are often used in several different ways. Most people buy an arch or arbor for decorative purposes. They may want to create a graceful entryway to their yard or garden for instance, or they might like to enhance a specific area of their garden instead. Garden arbors and arches are wonderful for functionality too though, because many different types of flowers and vines can be planted near them, and trained to climb up the arch or arbor to create an elegant, finished look.
There are a wide variety of arbors and arches to choose from for your garden too, and which one you decide to buy will depend somewhat on the functions you want it to perform, as well as the decorative style you’re looking for.
A garden arbor or arch is often the same thing with a different style, design, or size. Large arbors and arches are useful to create shaded and covered walkways in your garden for instance, and they’re excellent for growing plants and vines which grow quite large. Grape vines for instance, as well as Bougainvillea, Clematis, and many others, are prolific vine growing plants which can reach twenty feet or more in length at their full growth size.
Most people don’t have enough space in their yards and gardens which will allow them to build an arbor which is six to ten feet long, and ten or more feet tall though, so they go for the more simple, smaller versions instead. These come in a variety of shapes, sizes and materials too though, so you’re almost sure to find just what you’re looking for at your local or online garden center.
Some garden arbors and arches come with a garden bench attached for instance, so you have a built in sitting area with plants and vines draping overhead, or climbing up the back of your bench.
There are small garden arbors and arches which also have a window box attached to them, and they’re on wheels so they can easily be moved too. These are useful arbors for smaller vines and tall plants which may need shelter from direct sunlight at different times of the day. They’re also an excellent choice for anyone who may want to move their garden out of the way so they’re able to reach other supplies on their small porch or patio. And if you live in a city of course, or a location which has no yard, these small and portable garden arches are wonderful to use for patio container gardening too.
Filed by Your Gardening Guide on June 21st, 2007 under Garden Beds, Garden Planning, Rock Garden, Garden Shed, Watering Plants, Landscape, Water Garden | Comment now »
Tree planting tips
Planting trees is not something that everyone thinks of as being part of a garden design, but it should be. Not only do trees provide you with even more beauty, color and texture for your yard and garden, but they also provide your home with shade from the sun during the summer, they provide a wonderful gathering place for backyard barbecues, and they help keep the air around your home cleaner too.
Like bushes and shrubs, trees can be purchased when they’re still quite small. Because of this, it’s very important to know what kind of tree you’ll be buying, how tall it will be once it’s fully matured, and how far it will spread at maturity too.
A tree’s spread is how far in either direction the branches extend at full growth. If a tree has a spread of fifteen feet for instance, this means it will be about fifteen feet at it’s widest point once it is fully mature. This is an important thing to note about trees before planting them, particularly if you live in a city or urban area.
When trees grow up, if they’ve been placed in the wrong areas they can cause dangers and problems you may not have considered when they were still young and small. The primary problem people run into with planting trees is overhead power lines. If you plant a tree directly beneath a powerline, you will find yourself or the power company constantly trimming it to keep it from touching those power lines.
Knowing how large your tree will grow before you plant it though, will allow you to select the best location for it. You don’t want to put a tree near a powerline if it will eventually be twenty-five feet tall with a spread of fifteen feet for instance. You may however, like to put that one on the west side of your home - at least twenty feet or more away from any utility lines - because it will be an excellent source of shade and energy savings for your home during the hottest months of summer.
There are plenty of smaller, and dwarf trees which can be planted under or near utility lines of course, so knowing the full grown size is important when making your tree selections.
You’ll also want to find out what the tree looks like at different times of the year. Some trees produce beautiful flowers in some seasons for instance, but if your gardens are designed to be red and white, you might not want to have a tree which produces yellow flower blooms.
Trees also come with a wide variety of leaves and barks. Some trees look extremely interesting in the winter time even though they don’t have leaves on the branches, simply because they have an unusual type of bark. Some tree barks will actually change color during the seasons like leaves do too.
So carefully select the types of trees you will plant and the locations they will live in, and you will be pleasantly surprised at how finished they make your lawn and garden look in the end.
Filed by Your Gardening Guide on June 21st, 2007 under Perennials, Vegetable Garden, Garden Beds, Rock Garden, Landscape | 1 Comment »
Bulb Gardens
Bulb gardens tend to be a favorite of many, particularly when you want a formal looking garden which has lots of vibrant, cheery color in it. When you mention bulb gardens to most people though, they automatically think you’re talking about tulips or daffodils. There are in fact though, many variations of plants that grow from bulbs.
Tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths are some of the most popular types of flowers to grow in a bulb garden, but others you may like include many different kinds of Lily flowers, snowdrops, crocus, dahlias, canna lilies, irises, begonias, amaryllis, and many others. All of these bulb flowers are gorgeous in almost any type of garden you can imagine. They come in a large variety of sizes, colors, textures and shapes, plus they blossom wonderfully throughout a variety of months each year.
A bulb garden starts with flower bulbs. Bulbs are the “root” of the plant essentially, and this is where the food is stored during winter months while the plants themselves are dormant. Once springtime comes though, or the particular part of the year which is best for your chosen bulb garden flowers, new shoots and leaves will sprout from the buried bulb, and grow into a gorgeous full grown blooming plant.
Bulbs are usually classified as spring bulbs or fall bulbs. Spring bulbs are those which sprout and flower in the springtime, while fall bulbs will flower in the fall. Spring bulbs are actually planted in the fall though, generally from September through October in most parts of the United States, because they need the initial wintering period to prepare for flower production in the springtime.
Fall bulbs are planted from February through April or May in most areas, and these will stay dormant until the leaves begin to turn. Planting a mixture of both fall and spring bulbs in your bulb garden will give you the longest blooming time though, so most bulb gardeners prefer to include both in their gardens.
Bulbs usually need moist rich soil which drains well. They like sunlight too, but they’ll tolerate filtered sunlight usually as well. Bulbs can often be grown in pots or containers instead of the ground too, and sometimes they’ll even grow nicely as an indoor houseplant too.
When planning your bulb garden, try to learn more about the natural habitat of each bulb flower you’ll be planting. Tulips for instance, like warm and dry soil conditions. Daffodils are natural meadow growing flowers, so they love lots of sunlight. Bluebells and snowdrops grow naturally in wooded areas though, so they tend to do best in shadier spots of your garden.
Filed by Your Gardening Guide on June 21st, 2007 under Vegetable Garden, Flower Gardening, Homeplants | Comment now »
Garden accents and decor
Decorating your lawn and garden area can be just as fun and fulfilling as decorating the inside of your house is. Like a house though, decorating outside works best with a little bit of forethought and planning. Because if you clutter up your yard and garden areas with too much decor, it can look at bit cluttered, unkempt, and unattractive in the end.
There are many different ways to use garden accents and decor, but like interior decorating, it’s best to choose your accents and accessories based on the particular garden area you’re decorating.
Arbors and arches for instance, usually give people the feeling they’re entering a special area of your yard or garden. So these work quite well as garden decor and accents for special areas such as a private garden space, or the entrance to your prized rose garden.
Statues and figurines can also create a welcoming feel, and these often work quite well as decorations at the end of the driveway or flanking the front porch steps. Alternatively you could place statues in locations that indicate you’re moving from one type of garden to another.
You can also use other types of garden decor for separating certain types of gardening spaces too. If you have a wildflower garden or butterfly garden for instance, you may want to put a pretty bird or butterfly house near the area where that garden starts. You could also use a bird house or bird bath if you’d prefer.
Outdoor lamps and lighting are excellent accents to use for garden decor, because they’re both functional and beautiful at the same time. You can put small solar yard lights along either side of your driveway or walkway for instance, and tall lamp posts look beautiful either at the front steps, flanking the walkway at the entrance, or flanking the entrance of the driveway.
Another way to decorate the driveway entrance a little more whimsically is to put gnome statues which has solar powered lights in them. If you don’t like garden gnomes though, there are plenty of other decorative statue style accents which use solar powered lights and work well for lighting up the entrance of your driveway. These can include birds and birdhouses, squirrels, frogs, different types of dogs, and cats too.
When choosing decorative lights for your garden, don’t forget the accent lights for your most beautiful trees and bushes. These lights are often buried into the ground slightly under trees and bushes, and they spotlight the tree or bush at night time when they’re turned on. This allows your yard to look just as beautiful at night as it does during the day.
Filed by Your Gardening Guide on June 21st, 2007 under Perennials, Garden Beds, Garden Planning, Rock Garden, Garden Shed, Landscape | Comment now »
Bushes and Shrubs
Many new gardeners automatically think about flowers and plants when they first start creating their gardens. They dream of blooming tulips, climbing flower vines on a trellis, or sprouting kitchen herb gardens. What they don’t often realize though, is that no garden is fully complete without some select choices of bushes and shrubs.
Now the unfortunate flip side to the above scenario is the inexperienced gardener who decides to plant bushes and shrubs everywhere - particularly right next to the house. There’s nothing specifically wrong with planting bushes in front of your home, but most new gardeners make one classic mistake time and again… they plant things too close together when the plants are small.
When you first buy a new bush or shrub, it might only be about eighteen inches to two feet tall. So when you plant it, the area it’s planted in can look quite bare. So new gardeners will often plant another bush or shrub very close to that one, to try and make the area look prettier. They don’t always realize that the small bush they’re planting now, will end up three to five times larger over time. So putting two bushes just six or twelve inches apart when they’re small might look quite nice, but as those bushes become six, ten, or even fifteen feet tall and spread out too, you find yourself with a thick tangle of bushes that are much too close together.
Now this isn’t always a problem, but it is a lot of work to try and fix once the bushes have gotten much larger. The problem though, is when you make these same mistakes when planting bushes next to your home. Many people will put a new bush in front of the living room window for instance. But since that bush is quite small when they plant it, they put it too close to the wall of the house. When the bush gets to full size in this case, it can become a much bigger problem. The branches can be trimmed if they’re scraping the window or wall too much, and that’s a lot of extra work by itself. The real problems though, happen underground.
Most bushes and shrubs have root systems which spread out as well as going down into the ground. If a bush says it should be planted five feet away from another, there’s a very good chance that the roots for that bush will extend several feet outwards from the base. In some cases the roots will spread much farther than the actual branches above ground do too. And when the roots spread that far, they can dig into the house foundation and cause a lot of major structural damage.
So the first thing you need to do when planting bushes and shrubs is to pay close attention to the planting instructions. If it says the bushes should be planted at least ten feet away from each other, then be sure you have them spaced that far. And if you put it next to a house, be sure to give it plenty of space there too. If you don’t like the bare look when your shrubs are still young and small, simply fill in the extra space with some colorful annuals until the bushes start getting much larger.
Filed by Your Gardening Guide on June 20th, 2007 under Herb Gardening, Garden Beds, Garden Planning, Flower Gardening | Comment now »
Garden Potting Shed
A garden potting shed is a must have accessory for any avid gardener. By putting a nice garden potting shed out in the back yard, gardeners in all areas of the country can enjoy gardening activities almost year round. A garden potting shed can be used for simple garden tool and supply storage, but it’s ideal for starting plants from seed, overwintering your flower bulbs, and sometimes even using as a small greenhouse to get a head start on springtime.
Potting sheds don’t have to be elaborate to be useful of course. Some gardeners have simple, small little tool type sheds or boxes in the backyard which they use for their gardening supplies. These smaller utility sheds are wonderful for keeping all of your garden tools together, and it also gives you a place to store extra gardening supplies such as empty garden pots, mulch, fertilizer, and potting soil.
If you have the opportunity and the space though, you really should buy or build a full fledged potting shed for exclusive gardening use. Once you’ve had a potting shed, you’ll really wonder how you were able to do without one for so long.
Potting sheds provide you with a variety of uses all rolled into one. Most potting sheds have the ability to store all of your large and small gardening tools, plus they have a work bench area which is excellent for repotting plants, updating your garden journal, or organizing your seeds. A potting shed often has shelves and storage bins scattered around it too, so you’re easily able to keep track of where everything is and reach it when it’s needed.
If you have a potting shed large enough for a potting bench, then try installing some storage bins below the bench area. This will allow you to put mulch, extra potting soil, or even flower bulbs into the various bins and have them within easy reach of your work bench.
Your larger garden tools should hang on the wall, or hang from hooks in the ceiling so they’re easy to reach yet still out of the way when they’re not needed. Smaller tools can be placed into empty flower pots, or placed on shelves along side your work bench. Some smaller hand tools such as a trowel can also be hung from hooks on the wall too.
When planning the building of your garden potting shed though, if you’re able to you should plan for one side to have a lot of glass windows so you can use it as a greenhouse during the colder months of the year. Having a small area of your potting shed as a greenhouse can be particularly pleasant because it allows you to start your gardening activities long before spring actually arrives. These types of potting sheds often have at least one large shelf near the windows too, so you’re able to sit your newly planted seeds there in the sunlight for sprouting.
Filed by Your Gardening Guide on June 20th, 2007 under Garden Beds, Garden Planning, Garden Shed | Comment now »
Water features in the garden
One of the easiest ways to improve the look and feel of almost any type of garden, is to simply add a water feature to it. Water features come in a variety of different forms and sizes, and since they add a sense of serenity to a garden too, they’re wonderful to put close to sitting areas, or within private garden spaces.
Water features also draw birds, bees, frogs and other critters to the garden, and these can help you control pests on your plants and flowers naturally. Which type of water feature you put into your own gardens is a personal choice, so here we’ll look at the most popular options.
1. Simple Bird Baths - A bird bath can be a simple shallow bowl filled with water, and set out into your garden area. Bird baths do a wonderful job of attracting birds, and you’ll have fun watching them play and bathe. Bird baths can be sat onto the ground itself, but this makes it dangerous for the birds because cats can reach them easier. The best way to have a bird bath in your garden is to put it on a matching pedestal, and make sure it’s several feet away from any tall bushes or shrubbery that cats may easily hide in.
2. Water Fountains - Water fountains are one of the most enjoyable water elements to place in a garden, because the sound of moving water has a calmin and soothing effect on most people. That sound also has a white noise effect, which serves to help block out everyday noise from neighbors or street traffic. Water fountains can be stand alone elements you place in the center of your yard or nestle into a pretty perennial border garden. Water fountains also come as wall fountains, so they can be mounted near a garden bed or patio area instead.
3. Garden Ponds - Garden ponds are another popular water element for your garden, and these too can be designed in a wide variety of ways. You may choose to create a tropical oasis pond which is surrounded by lush tropical plants and greenery, or create a fish pond which has plenty of activity to keep you entertained for hours on end.
4. Water falls - Water falls are another way to add water movement and sound to your garden, and they tend to work particularly well with garden ponds too. By keeping the water moving, you have all the benefits and pleasure of a water fountain, and they help keep your pond water clean and clear too. Wildlife usually prefers moving water as well, so a waterfall tends to attract many more birds and beneficial animals to your garden area.
5. Brooks and Streams - These work wonderfully in certain types of yards, but they can be difficult to create in others. If you have an existing area in your yard where water tends to run off naturally from the roof and rain gutters, then that may be the ideal place to put a small rock river bed. Then each time it rains, you’ll have a little bubbling brook running through your garden.
Filed by Your Gardening Guide on June 20th, 2007 under Vegetable Garden, Rock Garden, Watering Plants, Water Garden | Comment now »
Climbing Vines
Climbing flower vines are an excellent addition to any garden, but they’re particularly useful for areas of the garden which need a bit more privacy. If your neighbors live a bit too close for comfort for instance, you can plant fast growing flower vines along a fence to block the view between your yards. If you live close to the street, planting flower vines can help block some of the noise created by that street traffic, and it can also provide your home with a bit more privacy too.
Flowering vines are also wonderful to use as general, inexpensive garden decorations too. They can be trained to grow up a trellis or arbor if you’d like, or you can have some growing up the rain gutters of your home. You can also have them grow up porch support posts, carport posts, a mailbox post, and more. Trailing vines look particularly beautiful climbing up around your doorway too.
There are many types of climbing vines, each creating their own gorgeous display of flower blooms and colors. Some flowering vines will grow thirty to forty feet or more, while others may only climb to a full height of five or six feet instead. Flowering vines come in both annual or perennial types, but even the annual vines usually drop seeds each fall, and resprout on their own each spring too, so they seem like perennials instead of annuals.
When choosing climbing flower vines for your garden, it’s best to know where you’ll plan to place it and how large it will actually get too. Some flowering vines are very aggressive growers, and they can become problem spots later if they’re trying to climb flimsy and inadequate support materials.
Most flowering vines don’t require much maintenance or care at all once they’ve been planted. They may suffer from transplant shock the first week or two after you put them into the ground, but they’ll recover quite nicely and start climbing away. You will of course need to water them regularly if you don’t live in an area that gets enough natural rainfall, and you may need to ocassional dead head old flower blooms or prune the vines to a shape you’d like. Some vines also need a bit of training when they’re still young too though, so you may have to help them figure out where to start climbing. Once they’ve taken hold though, there’s usually not much at all you have to do to take care of them.
Some of the most popular flowering vines you might like to try include: Morning Glories, Jasmine, Clematis, Hydrangea, and Bougainvillea.
Filed by Your Gardening Guide on June 20th, 2007 under Perennials, Vegetable Garden, Garden Beds, Garden Planning | Comment now »
Indoor Houseplants
One of the easiest, most enjoyable ways to add a spark of life to the inside of your home is to put in a few houseplants. If you love plants and gardening though, try putting several in each room of your home. You may be amazed at the wonderful feeling of comfort, serenity, and pleasure you feel from surrounding yourself with lush vegetation inside your home.
Most houseplants are quite easy to grow and care for, and if you take care of them well, they’ll not only provide you with a source of natural beauty in your home, but they’ll help keep the air cleaner in your house too!
Some people are a bit discouraged with houseplants though, because they seem to never be able to get them to grow or thrive very well in their homes. After struggling with several indoor plants, some people simply decide maybe their house isn’t designed with the right elements needed for growing plants inside or maybe they personally don’t have a green thumb, so they just give up on the idea.
Usually though, the problems with your indoor houseplants is caused by poor potting practices, poor watering practices, or poor feeding and other care. With a little bit of knowledge though, almost anyone can successfully grow beautiful plants indoors.
First though, you need to realize that indoor houseplants don’t have the same natural advantage with soil drainage as outside plants do. When a plant sits in a pot which contains all extra water, the roots can rot and the plant can become sick from sitting in too much water. So one of the most important steps to taking care of indoor houseplants successfully, is to make sure the plants have a way to drain excess water.
Creating drainage for your plants is easy though. The best way is to be sure your plants are in a container which has holes in the bottom. These holes allow extra water to seep out onto a drainage plate. If you don’t have holes in the bottom of your planters though, then you’ll need to put several inches of rocks into the bottom of the pot instead. These rocks will act as a drainage area for the excess water, so the plants roots are not becoming soggy each time you water it.
The next thing you need to know is that houseplants require a different type of soil than outdoor plants do. You can usually buy indoor plant soil at your local garden center, though, and you should use this for your houseplants instead of dirt taken from outside.
And last but not least: Make sure the pot you’re trying to grow your plant in is not too small for it. Many indoor plants which you buy at the store are too crowded, so they must be transplanted to a larger container once you’ve brought them home. There are some types of plants such as ferns, which prefer to be crowded, but generally the more room your plants have to grow, the healthier and prettier they’ll be.
Filed by Your Gardening Guide on June 19th, 2007 under Herb Gardening, Rock Garden, Homeplants, Watering Plants | Comment now »
Seed sowing tips
One of the best ways to start a large garden of almost any kind, for very little or sometimes no cost at all, is to start your plants and flowers from seeds. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of plants which can be started from seeds. Technically all plants start from seeds, but not all plants are easy to start from a seed, so those are started from cuttings and other forms of propogation instead.
For the purposes of this article though, we’ll focus on starting plants and flowers from seeds instead of other forms of propogation.
Growing plants and flowers from a seed is not just fun and inexpensive, it’s a learning process too. In fact, if you have children this is a great project for the two of you to do together. It’s exciting for plant and garden lovers too though, particularly when you see the first tiny little sprouts popping up out of the dirt.
Now, different types of seeds require different preparation methods to make them sprout properly. Some seeds can just be placed into the ground anywhere, and they’ll automatically start sprouting up within just a week or two. Other seeds however, must be soaked for several hours in water before they’ll start sprouting. Still others will need to be scratched or scraped first, and others will need to be scratched plus soaked in water. Then there are some seeds which need to be placed in a cool location for several months, and the refridgerator often works well for this.
Doing these various things to plant seeds before they’ll sprout is just humans trying to emulate nature. In the wild, seeds will drop to the ground at the end of a plant’s growing season. In most cases this is during the fall months. Those seeds end up being covered by soil naturally from the wind and other weather elements, plus the ground tends to be moist during these months too. So the seed is kept cold and moist for several months. And this process is softening the outer shell of the seed, so that the sprout can actually break through next spring.
This natural process takes several months to complete of course, so when we soak our seeds in water or scratch them up a bit before planting, we’re simply trying to speed up what Mother Nature does by default.
Seeds which have shells that aren’t too thick and tough can usually be soaked in water for about 5 hours before planting them outside or in a container. Sometimes these seeds will start showing a sprout uncurling from the shell before you even get them planted, but usually they’ll just swell up to about twice their previous size.
Other plant seeds however, have very hard, thick shells which can be difficult to get started. It’s this type of seed that needs to be scratched up or nicked with a knife, and this process is called scarifying the seed. It often helps to soak the seed in water after having scratched it too, because the scratches or nicks will allow the water to soak in, which makes it even easier for the seed to sprout.
Once you’ve prepared your seeds for sprouting, you can them put them directly into the ground, or put them into small starter seedling pots instead so that you can keep a close eye on them during their first few weeks of growth.
