Vegetable Gardening Tips Flower Gardening Tips Great Garden Recipes Gardening Tips Moncton
Road to Cape Royal, North Rim, Grand Canyon Na...
Image by Ken Lund via Flickr

I remember back when my mom told me about the birds and the bees, now it’s 50 years later and I’m looking at learning about the birds and bees again, just not in the same way.

Organic gardens involve the use of all-natural compost, garden tools and pest deterrents. When you’re flower gardening, you may want to consider creating an ecosystem where wildlife and other animals can thrive. Perhaps you enjoy the wonderment of walking through the garden and seeing ladybugs, praying mantises, dragonflies, hummingbirds and butterflies enjoying your natural creation as much as you do. Here are some gardening tips to create an enduring, wildlife-friendly garden.

If you are considering creating a garden that will catch the attention of song birds, then you can include a few special shrubs, annuals, perennials, cultivated and native vegetation to lure them to your backyard. By cultivating plants from each classification, you can supply fruits and seeds for every season to keep your feathered friends singing all year long. Make sure to provide a bird bath and throw seeds around in the winter to keep your bird clan happy.

Also, think about the fact that, in addition to your blooms, birds like trees for nesting, protection and shelter from the weather. Often the trees even supply food like berries, sap and seeds. You can choose leaf bearing trees such as black walnut, red mulberry, dogwood, sassafras, American mountain ash, chestnut, and hazelnut, as well as evergreen trees such as blue spruce, American holly, red cedar Douglas fir, white cedar, ponderosa pine and California juniper.

You may want to also consider flower gardening to attract red ladybugs and dragonflies too. These carnivores will eat the unsightly aphids, beetles, flies, mosquitoes and other pesky creatures that are doing damage to your garden. Favorite ladybug dinners include cilantro, dill, fennel, chamomile, cosmos, geraniums, penstemon, yarrow and coreopsis. Water gardens that are generally shallow but two feet deep in the center are the best way to lure dragonflies, who enjoy a cool swim and places to hide beneath garden plants. They also like pond lilies, buttonbush, seedbox and horsetail rush, as these provide the sort of cover dragonflies like.

Naturally, flower gardening to attract both hummingbirds and butterflies is ideal. Gardening tips suggest incorporating bee balm, California fuschia, salvia, columbines, daisies, sunflowers, marigolds, zinnias, peas, clover, mint, milkweed, parsley, violets and pansiesthe to increase your odds of keeping these creatures nearby. Nature stores also sell very effective red and yellow hummingbird feeders that these little winged beauties just love. Since hummingbirds can be pretty territorial, you might want to set up more than one in different locations around the yard if you notice the birds are coming to your home.

Everyone wants their property to look its best and one of the ways to do that is to enhance your landscaping. For some great suggestions on garden plants and how to get the backyard of your dreams, check out more landscaping gardening ideas here.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
my own stock
Image via Wikipedia

Flower gardening can be simple but it can also be quite an art. I’m no artist but I do enjoy a great looking garden layout.

With each seasonal garden, you will come up with more ideas on how to enhance your backyard ecosystem. Many people enjoy reading about gardening tips on how to attract wildlife to their gardens. As a child, you may recall chasing yellow, orange and white butterflies, but perhaps you seldom see them anymore. Most of us remember our first glimpse of a tiny, delicate hummingbird or the first time a dragonfly touched our skin while we were floating on a raft at the lake. Certain plants are dynamos for luring these wonderful creatures to our back doorsteps. While you are free to incorporate whatever flowers you’d like into your garden, adding a few carefully chosen wildlife favorites will give you much more to gaze upon.

If you’re interested in creating a garden that will appeal to song birds, then you can incorporate a few special shrubs, perennials, annuals, cultivated and native foliage to draw them to your yard. By growing plants from each group, you can offer fruits and seeds for every time of the year to keep your feathered friends singing year round. Make sure to include a bird bath and toss seeds around in the wintertime to keep your bird family satisfied.

Furthermore, think about the fact that, in addition to your blooms, birds like trees for safety, nesting and refuge from the elements. Frequently the trees even supply food such as sap, seeds and berries. You can consider deciduous trees such as black walnut, red mulberry, dogwood, sassafras, American mountain ash, chestnut, and hazelnut, as well as coniferous trees including blue spruce, American holly, red cedar California juniper, ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, and white cedar.

Flower gardening is an important source of food for sparrows, finches and other songbirds. You can try perennials like penstemon, tickseed, bee balm, goldenrod, cosmos, purple coneflower and four o’ clocks, or you may try annuals like sunflowers, asters, bachelor’s button, spider flower, snapdragons and cockscomb. Garden guides also recommend planting shrubs and vines where birds can hide from predators and seek out food. Some tasty plants (like cherries and raspberries) are preferable to our flying friends, but they’re picked clean in a hurry. On the other hand, birds can be seen feasting all year long on elderberries, blackberries, huckleberries, chokecherries, bayberries, Oregon grapes, beauty-berries, silver-berries, blueberries, crab apples, cranberries and currants all year long.

Naturally, flower gardening to attract both hummingbirds and butterflies is ideal. Gardening tips suggest incorporating bee balm, California fuschia, salvia, columbines, daisies, sunflowers, marigolds, zinnias, peas, clover, mint, milkweed, parsley, violets and pansiesthe to increase your odds of keeping these creatures nearby. Nature stores also sell very effective red and yellow hummingbird feeders that these little winged beauties just love. Since hummingbirds can be pretty territorial, you might want to set up more than one in different locations around the yard if you notice the birds are coming to your home.

Your house may be beautiful, but if the surrounding area isn’t well maintained, it ruins the whole effect. Home gardening can make a tremendous difference in the appearance of your property. Visit the Landscaping Ideas site for some fabulous ideas to add class and style to your property.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

A Hedge Will Add Privacy to Your Yard

hedges
Image by curlsdiva via Flickr

When landscaping your yard you want to find things that will complement each other. Hedges along with flowers and trees can make for a dramatic enterance to your home. Planting hedges to ensure some privacy is an ideal way to incorporate them into your overall design.

Hedges are plants that are placed in the form of a wall and are available either in deciduous or evergreen varieties. Evergreen include both broad leaf and standard needle types and deciduous shrubs include lilac, rose of Sharon, azaleas and forsythias, just to name a few. Your choices when it comes to such shrubs will be strongly affected by your choice to have flowers in the warm months, or continued privacy in the cold months. Evergreen is a stand out choice for year round privacy.

Think about using evergreen broadleaf for privacy, holly is a good example. Their prickly leaves discourage both people and animals from entering your yard, potentially protecting your vegetation. In cold, windy climates where you are required to put up a snow fence each winter, many municipalities will accept a proper hedge in lieu of fencing. When it comes to beauty, a hedge is by far the winner over a fence. Your local landscaping expert will have many ideas to help you decide.

Many hedges will add flowering beauty to your yard along with privacy. Forsythia is often the first of the spring bloomers. As soon as the winter snows start to melt, forsythia shrubs send out busts of yellow, cheerful flowers that will make you smile in anticipation of the returning warmth of spring. Azaleas, a much shorter shrub, can be used to make moderate hedges, and produces beautiful blooms in dozens of colors. While flowering shrubs can make beautiful hedges and give you some privacy during the warm months, come winter they lose their leaves and they spent the cold weather bare and see through.

For taller hedges you might want to consider adding some arborvitae trees to your landscaping. These Cyprus relations grow more like shrubs and don’t tend to reach the heights of traditional Cyprus trees. If your yard is large, the hedge may be just what you are looking for to add a border or privacy. Growing well in climate zones two through seven make them ideal for most of the USA.

If you grow a hedge, especially if you want a formal look, you are going to have to do some trimming. A hedge is, after all, composed of various plants placed closely together, and each will grow in its own way and at its own pace. The result is disharmonious. Properly pruned hedges will be wider on the bottom than on top. This allows adequate light to reach the bottom of the plant. Invest in a light but effective hedge trimmer and use stakes, string and guides, placed before you start, to create an even line and appropriate look for your landscaping. If you try to shape a hedge by eye, you will end up with an uneven mess.

A hedge can become a wonderful maze with a little work. The hedge can add more then beauty to your landscaped yard, it can add elegance as well. Well worth the effort of planting and maintaining, hedges have been with us for centuries, and will be here for a long time to come.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

How To Plan Landscaping Your Yard

Idyllic Seattle Landscaped Front Yard
Image by Wonderlane via Flickr

Rain and snow are going to play a huge part in your home Landscape plan. For instance you will have to plan for your yard landscape with care. You should go to the library and take out some books on home Landscape plans. These garden landscape books will help you to learn all of the most crucial points of landscape gardening so that you do not ruin your yard for good.

Your  home Landscape plan needs to be done with close attention being paid to rain and snow as well as proper drainage. If you find that your yard gets too muddy in the winter or you have large puddles all over then you most likely do not have the right sort of drainage going on. This is something that you may want to consider getting a professional in to take care of. If you still want to do the rest of your home Landscape plan yourself then this is fine but some things are better left to the professionals.

You need to have your yard landscape done in such a way that the rain when it falls, will actually water your plants. You will be able to use all of the water that falls into your yard to feed the plants and the trees if you set up your home Landscape plan the right way. Knowing the general rainfall levels and times of the year you will then be able to make up the water levels when they drop with other watering. This is important during times like summer when it gets hot and there is not much rain.

Snow is another thing that is very important to your yard. Snow is even as vital to your entire  landscape gardening project as rain is. Snow not only waters your yard as it melts but the snow, although cold, can actually help to keep your soil warmer. This will allow any plants that are sleeping under the snow to stay healthy and alive. Your bulbs will pop up in the spring in perfect form and color making your home Landscape plan all the more beautiful

When it rains you need to see just how the rain is transferred all over your yard. This is very important to the entire yard landscape gardening that you are planning to do. This is simple to do, all you need to do is take a walk around your yard the next time it starts to rain. Watch for where the rain puddles and where it drains to and you are well on your way to the perfect home Landscape plan This kind of work is the easy part of the job and is the best way to start. Then you will know what needs to be done to get the right kind of drainage going with you yard landscape.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Our Little Tulip Garden

Cultivated tulip - Floriade 2005, Canberra
Image via Wikipedia

We have tulips all through our yard but we don’t want them where they are so we need to dig them up and move them to a location where they will look better.

Tulips have become so common that we don’t think twice about them, but there was a time when these beautiful bulbs were worth their weight in gold. As long as squirrels don’t ruin your blubs they will bloom perennially. Originally found free growing in the mountains of Persia, Tulips traveled into Europe with the Turks. The can propagate through off-springs, seeds or micro-propagation and come in a variety of types, each with its own characteristics.

Tulips should be planted in the fall. Tulps need a time of rest or dormancy to ensure a beautiful flowering. If you reside in a cold climate you can plant your bulbs in the early autumn. If you live in a warmer or more tmperate part of the country you will want to plant at the end of the fall season. If you live in a region that doesn’t have cold winters, set your bulbs in the refrigerator for eight weeks before planting them in early spring; this allows them to achieve a sufficiently long dormant period. Give your local landscaping business a call for more tips

Tulips are available in early, mid and late blooming varieties and in dozens of beautiful colors. Singles generally have smooth, simple petal structures and are used in formal plantings. Tulips called doubles look very much like peonies. Fringed tulips are almost lace-like and parrot tulips have streaks of various colors along their petals. The enormous selection is likely to keep you happily engaged in picking your spring show for a while. One thing you should keep in mind though is that tulips look best when planted in clusters or 10-20 of the same flower.

Blubs have a wide range of prices, you want to buy the best quality that fits your budget. A good landscape business will be able to point you in a good direction for a nice selection of bulbs. Better quality bulbs will bloom more regularly, withstand disease better and produce healthier and often larger blossoms. Once the buying of the blubs is done the next step in getting your garden ready to accept them for growing.

Hard packed soil is not a friend to tulip blubs, make your soil loose. The can be planted in either a natural or formal pattern. Multiply the width of the bulb, multiply by 3 and you have an appropriate planting depth. This allows you to plants different bulbs together by layering them. Layering bulbs or planting species that flower at different parts of the summer ensures colorful views for larger periods of time.

Natural planting of bulbs involves either scattering them on the area you intend to plant and place them where they fall, or clustering them together in bunches, rather than rows. A formal setting will likely have many of the same flowers placed together in carefully spaced rows and columns. Add compost with the soil where you plan to plant. Dig down to the appropriate depth, scatter some rock phosphorus in the bottom of the hole and place the tulip bulbs into the hole; point upwards. One way to not attract pests is to use rock phosphorus instead of bone meal. Cover the bulbs carefully so as not to tip them over and gently pat the soil into place. That’s it.

If you have a serious problem with squirrels digging up your bulbs you may want to protect them by cutting a piece of chicken wire to match the size of your hole. Curl over the edges of the wire and place it on top of the bulbs before you backfill the hole. While this won’t eliminate all squirrel activity it will significantly reduce their depredations. All the supplies needed for planting and protection should be available at a landscape supply store.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]