Plant Gardens 101

Others find rose gardening, or just plain gardening a delight within itself. At its simplest, rose gardening consists of five parts, or five “Ps”: Plan, Prepare, Plant, Prune, and Protect. Whatever it is your purpose for doing rose gardening, if you’re still a beginner, you have to know a few things first. Rose gardening is not a simple task, you don’t happen to notice roses grow just about anywhere, don’t you?

Roses like six hours of sunshine where possible and shelter from cold winds. Roses are thirsty When healthy, roses in your garden will exude byproducts that attract organisms in the soil that allow the garden to maintain a balance.

Roses need good nutrition. But before a rose becomes a bloom that has the power over many, it has to begin somewhere as a plain and innocent bud, unnoticed and enjoying its life along with the other buds. With careful planning and good maintenance, you can enjoy a beautiful blooming garden that your friends and neighbors will admire. (more…)

A man-made imitation of lightweight tufa rock, which can be used in rock gardens or molded into planters. It is made by mixing dry cement, sand or perlite, peat moss, and water.

No matter if they are urban or rural, all gardens benefit from preplanning and design. This doesn’t mean just knowing where you want your garden, but the overall design of the garden. Today, gardening can include everything from vegetables to flowers to lawn care. Carefully planning what you want, and where you want it, beforehand will help you get the most from your garden.

Planning Your Garden

To begin, measure and draw a plan of your yard and/or garden as it is now. Your plan should include the placement of your house, driveways and walkways, property boundaries, trees and shrubs, and utility services. Using graph paper, draw everything as close to scale as possible. (more…)

As a species name, means “smooth or hairless.” For example, turtlehead, Chelone glabra, has smooth leaves.

The tough covering on the outside of woody trunks, stems, and roots, consisting of two layers: the outer bark, which is dead, and the inner bark, which contains living tissues (the cambium and phloem). Successive layers of bark are formed inside one another as the plant grows. The outer, older layers often crack apart or peel off when they cannot stretch any farther.

Gardening is an art that helps you to spend your leisure time usefully. It doesn’t need huge investment and consume less time when compared with other hobbies. Gardens can be maintained at your home with the seasonal flowering plants and fruit yielding trees. Maintaining a garden helps you to relieve the stress accumulated in your mind; gardening gets you close with nature and helps to understand nature better. The degradable wastes from your home can be used to manure the plants, which in turn yield colorful flowers making your home more beautiful. Information on landscaping can be gathered from various sources to guide you in this art.

Backyard gardening

Backyard garden does not require much place, and the available place can be converted into a beautiful garden with plenty of plants and other accessories. There are many types of gardens to choose from; first prepare a lay out of the area for gardening, and decide on the flora and accessories you wish to have in your backyard. Prepare a plan to get the best with the available space, gardening is an art and design skills helps to create a perfect combination of various elements in your backyard. Flowering plants, creepers, fences, wooden porch swing, arbors, cedar rocking seat, birdhouses, porch swing, land form such as terrain, water body, fountains, pools, log bridge, and lot more can be incorporated within the landscape to add to its beauty. (more…)

As a species name, means “bad-smelling.” For example, stinking hellebore, Helleborus foetidus, has flowers that smell mildly unpleasant if you get close to them.

This book includes 82 of the most ornamental herbs for the avid herbal gardener. The author, Jo Ann Gardner, is an avid gardener and lover of flowers and herbs and this comes through very clearly in her writing of her experiences in her own gardening. The book is well laid-out and easy to read full of illustrations, photographs and crammed full of information geared toward starting a functional and beautiful herbal garden.

The introductory chapters give great information on how to grow, sow, propagate and maintain either seeds or seedlings. Included is another chapter on landscaping ideas to help the reader to layout and design the herbal garden before even getting started.

Each section includes a nice overview and history of the plant, the plant family and specifics needed for propagation including: soil, sun, zones, size, and seasons. The photographs and illustrations included help not only get a visual of the eventual garden design, but are also useful for the identification of already existing herbs in the back yard. (more…)

Growing vegetables, fruits, and herbs, often in combination with annual flowers, in beautiful, untraditional ways as part of the home landscape.

The design and implementation of a plan for a beautiful yard and garden can set your home apart. It can also have other important advantages, including increasing the value of your home, reducing the cost of creating and increasing satisfaction while reducing the time required to keep it beautiful and personal.

There are many ways to create a design plan for a yard and garden including hiring a custom designer, purchasing and using design software, or by doing your own research through the many magazines and do-it-yourself books. The goal is to upgrade a yard or garden from poor or average to good or excellent. It has been researched and proven that the monetary return can be anywhere from 7 to 14% when a home is sold. It may be the attraction that sets your home above the competition when you decide to sell your home. (more…)

A chemical that causes leaves to be shed. One use for defoliants is in the cotton fields, where fewer leaves make it easier to harvest the cotton bolls.

Any gardener worth her salt knows that the best way to grow healthy plants is to provide them with healthy, nutrient-rich soil. Being proactive about the quality of the soil that you use for your crops or garden is the only way to ensure that it meets your standards. One way to standardize your substrate quality is by getting samples analyzed regularly in a soil testing lab.

With soil testing, you will get an estimate of the vital nutrients the substrate contains. This is essential to help you calculate which fertilizers and chemicals you need to add to it and how much, to get a healthy yield. When it comes to fertilizers, more is not necessarily better. (more…)

A Seattle institution noted for its extraordinary collection of more than 5,000 woody plants that grow in the Puget Sound area. It also contains an authentic Japanese garden, whose crowning feature is a 200-year-old Kobe lantern.

Garden sheds are perhaps the cheapest way to give your property a little more indoor storage or work space. If you are interested in purchasing a garden shed you should read this article. Garden Sheds can be purchased relatively inexpensively. However, you do want to keep your eye out for a few quality signs.

Garden sheds can greatly enhance the look of your property. Many are constructed to look quite nice. They also clean all the junk out of your yard. Since you now have a shed to store it in it doesn’t need to lie all over the place. All you need in order to get a garden shed is a clear spot of land the size of the shed. You can take some time to clear the land off and level it out. Then all the builder needs to do is set the pre-constructed garden shed into position. Your yard will be free of junk and you may even have a little extra indoor workspace. (more…)

The exuberantly rococo rose garden on the outskirts of Paris, formally known as La Roseraie de Bagatelle. Since 1907, the garden has been the setting for the Concours International de Roses Nouvelle, popularly known as the Paris Rose Trials.

I often notice when visiting gardens the great quantities of Daffodils and other early bulbs that we plant to herald in the spring. But how do we ensure we have a great display each year?

The early flowering bulbs

Quite a few seasoned gardeners have had their first horticultural “experience” by the planting of a few Daffodil or Tulip bulbs, thus spurring them onto more adventurous plantings. At the end of April the very early flowering bulbs will come to the end of their blooming season. This group of early bloomers includes Daffodils, Hyacinths, Bluebells, Crocus, Snowdrops and early Tulips. All these bulbs will flower well for any gardener the first growing season but for them to bloom well the following seasons we must give them some care. (more…)

A leaf that grows at the base of an herbaceous plant, often different in size and shape from leaves that grow on the upright flowering stems.

The other day I was in a client’s garden and was struck by an outdoor fixture I had never seen before, it was a solar spot light. The spot light was positioned within a beautiful round planter containing an architectural looking succulent. The fixture stays-put because it is designed with a stake at its’ base but the lamp itself can be swiveled to adjust to the desired position for washing light up upon the succulent. The solar panel is attached to the head of the fixture.

This fixture, I noticed was positioned in a sunny spot; essential for powering a solar light fixture. At dusk, the spot light should go-on because a sensor within tells it to do so. Darkness will spark the sensor to switch the spot light on, dawn will turn it off. Each day the process continues provided that there is enough sunlight to power and charge. It is best to have direct sunlight for stronger light. To achieve a bright floodlight effect, this solar powered spot light contains several LED bulbs (light emitting diode), about 7 or 8 LED’s within the lamp. For power there is a solar panel along with several replaceable and rechargeable batteries. (more…)

A bacterial substance added to a compost pile to speed the decomposition of organic materials. Also called activator; compost activator.

Additional Info: accelerator
n.

1. A device, especially the gas pedal of a motor vehicle, for increasing speed.
2. Chemistry. A substance that increases the speed of a reaction.
3. Physics. A particle accelerator.