Garden Tips & Resources

Archive for the ‘Landscape’ Category

Whether you’re selling your home or not, one way to make it more valuable in both monetary and emotional ways is to improve the curb appeal. And improving the curb appeal can easily be done in a variety of ways.

One way of course is to have a beautiful lawn, colorful flower garden beds, and meticulously manicured bushes. No yard starts out this way though, so let’s look at some of the basic first steps, and small things that can make a big difference.

1. Clean up the outside of your home. This may seem obvious, but not everyone immediately realizes when they have too much clutter or debris around their yard. So get rid of junk, put away the tools out of site, clean the gutters, and sweep off your walkways.

2. Repair problem areas. If your home has a broken window or loose window screens, fix these as soon as possible. If the outside light is just a bare bulb then put a nice new cover or light fixture over it. This doesn’t have to be anything expensive or fancy, it just needs to have a well kept appearance. Look closely at any porch railings, rain gutters, or shutters if you have them too. If anything is loose or broken, fix it.

3. Tidy up the yard. Take a good look all around your yard. Are there any weeds growing? If so, trim them down or pull them out. If you have unruly bushes, trim them neatly. Use a weedeater and trim the edge of your grass along any walkways or roads so that all looks neat and tidy. If you have dead or dying plants, remove those too.

4. Take a good look at the house itself. A quick touch up of paint on the trim can make a world of difference and it doesn’t take too long. Alternatively you may find that you can simply wash or rinse down the outside of your home and it will look as good as new.

5. Take stock of your outdoor accessories. If you have lawn furniture, is it in good shape? Maybe it needs a fresh coat of paint or maybe you can simply put new cushions on instead. How about the mailbox? Is it a bit old and worn? Can you revitalize it with some decorating flair or should you replace it instead?

If you have a bird bath, garden gnomes, or little yard statues sitting around, look closely at those too. Chances are they could use a good scrubbing to look brand new again. While you’re at it, wash or replace your front doormat and hang some fresh flowers or a new wreath on the front door too.

6. If you have the budget, add something new. You can put some outdoor pathway lights along the walkway to your front door for instance, or sit some new flower pots on the front steps. You might also want to add new flowers to your flowerbeds, create a brand new flower bed, or simply plant some colorful annuals along the edge of your lawn.

Planting and growing ornamental grass in your yard and garden is a wonderful low maintenance way to add beauty with color, texture, and interesting focal points. Ornamental grass tends to grow quite high in many cases, so this adds an extra dimension of vertical interest in your yard and garden. And while some ornamental grasses can grow as tall as 20 feet, they don’t usually need to be trimmed or cut in the same way regular yard grass or bushes do.

Planting ornamental grass in bare spots of your yard can create a brand new look in the area. The grass can be used for naturalizing multiple areas of your yard, or it can be added to flower beds and gardens too. Some types of ornamental grass can be invasive though, and some might grow tall enough to block your flowers from receiving enough sunlight. So choose the ornamental grasses you plant in flower beds wisely.

Unlike regular grass, ornamental grass has little disease or pest concerns to worry about. And again, it doesn’t need to be trimmed. In fact, trimming ornamental grass too often will actually weaken it, and you can kill it by mowing or clipping too often.

Like other types of plants and flowers, there are a wide variety of ornamental grasses which can be planted and grown too. Some will create just small clumps of color similar to the way a groundcover does, while others will create large focal points in your yard similar to the way trees and bushes do.

Some ornamental grasses produce wonderful colors to accent your yard with too. The ornamental grass commonly known as Rubra usually displays a deep, dark red color mixed with a very deep green color that can be quite striking. Red switch grass is another favorite for the fall colors it produces.

Aside from producing wonderful colors and textures in your yard, many ornamental grasses also produce unusual and beautiful seed pods too. These can be left on the plants to further enhance their beauty if you’d like, plus they’ll draw more birds to your yard too. Some can even be picked and dried for use in decorating the inside of your home too.

Also like most flowers and decorative plants, some ornamental grasses will produce flowers too. And some will grow best in shade, while others prefer sun.

Choosing which ornamental grasses to plant in your yard and gardens might be the most difficult part of the process, but you’ll find that some grow as annuals so it’s easy to experiment with those first if you’re not familiar with growing them.

For most of us, maintaining a garden of any size fills an inherant need of some kind. Whether it’s to bring additional beauty to our homes, add some appealing fragrances, or simply fill an ongoing desire to grow and nuture something… we just can’t seem to resist this most basic urge. And once we’ve started of course, we often just keep right on going. In fact, most gardeners tend to start with a small bare patch of ground somewhere around their yard, but eventually they’ve expanded their efforts into almost every nook and cranny.

Now, even if you don’t expect to be landscaping your entire yard anytime soon, it’s actually an excellent idea to plan as if you were right from the start. This way even if it takes you ten or twenty years to accomplish everything you’d like, the end result will look like it was professionally designed instead of haphazardly put together on a whim.

Just like the inside of your home has designated areas for specific activities, the outside areas of your home can too. So this is an important thing to consider when you start your garden and landscape planning. If for instance, at some point you’d love to have a covered porch on the front of your home, you might not want to plant a large tree or bush right next to the door. Why? Because if it takes you ten years to actually add the porch, you’ll find that removing that tree or bush is needed because it’s in the way. And since it has had ten years to really become large and established, moving it might be a major job which requires a contractor.

There are other practical reasons for planning your landscape design too. Some areas of your yard should be designed specificly for kids, playtime, and heavier foot traffic for instance, and you wouldn’t want to plant your prize rose bushes right in the area where your kids and pets play the most, right? Try to keep your busiest traffic and play areas planted with everyday grass or hardy ground covers, so it can stay looking nice no matter how much time it is used for play.

Shade trees are usually a great idea to have around or nearby entertainment and barbecue areas, however you also need to consider any utility lines that may be suspended above the property too. If you plant a tree while it’s young, you may not realize that there will be problems once it is partially or fully grown. If it becomes large enough, it may intersect with an electric or telephone cable, and this can be quite dangerous.

So before planting trees anywhere in your yard, be sure you know what is above them, plus how large they’re supposed to grow once fully matured.

You might want to consider designating some areas of your yard for rainwater runoff too. If you have an area of your yard which seems to naturally collect and pool rain water for example, you might want to consider putting a pretty flower or tropical garden in that area. This way you’ll be making use of natural rainfall, saving on your public water bill, and preventing a mudhole mess all at the same time.

There are of course many other things you can do while planning your landscape and garden designs, and one of the most important of course, is to consider how much time you’ll have to take care of what you put into place. So stop and think a bit about what you currently have, how you can take advantage of your natural resources, and how much energy you have available – or want to devote. Then start planning your own special landscape and garden areas!