Showing posts with label your. Show all posts
Showing posts with label your. Show all posts
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Enhance Your Home Garden By Landscaping Design Ideas

Enhance Your Home Garden By Landscaping Design Ideas
A home garden is a place, which can give identity to your home building in a neighborhood. You can use very little creativity to enhance to look and feel of your garden so that it stands out from the rest of the gardens in the neighborhood.
Here is a list of probable elements you can add to your landscaping garden so that everybody loves it and you get the credit.
1) The compound wall of the home plot defines the boundary of the garden as well. Use paintings on the wall surface (inside), that will add excitement to your garden . You can go for a theme based paintings such as nature, waterfalls, sunsets etc..
2) Use stone sculptures of actual human size. These statues greatly add a uman touch to the garden and also defines a scale to the space.
Everything we use in our daily lives such as clothes, kitchen utensils, office equipment, computer parts, are all always related to human measurements. If this is the case with all other objects, why exclude a garden from it.
3) Use a fountain with artificial mood creating lighting. This adds a great amount of curiosity during night.
4) Use Japanese stone lanterns instead of the normal ones. This is because stone has its own rough texture as against the smooth and fresh look and feel of the plants in a garden.
This creates "hot-spots" in the garden if you plan to use light bulbs inside the stone lanterns. These stone lanterns can also be used along a pathway to define the direction of movement.
5) Design a pond that flows partially into the home building. This is a great way to seamlessly connect the interior and exterior of a home landscape.
6) If your garden has a swimming pool, then instead of having normal diving boards, be little creative and make it into the shape of a house or the person coming out of the mouth of an animal etc...Your kids will love this and will be remembered whoever visits your garden.
7) Create private semi-open patios in your garden. This is a great place to sit around and chat with your loved ones and also can be used as a small deck during a small party.
8) If you love pets, then try rabbits, ducks along with a small pond, in the backyard. These pets have very fresh colors and add great amount of liveliness in the garden.
9) If possible plants flowerings trees with fragrance. This is a free and absolutely amazing way to keep your garden fresh.
10) Create levels in your garden to distinguish various areas as per the function of the garden. A leveled garden always creates interest and curiosity.
If you have read this article completely you can see I have hardly talked about plats and their species in landscaping.
So landscaping design is also about using creativity with materials and their finishes. I hope this article helps you to start thinking creatively about your home garden and generate more unique ideas.
Enhance Your Home Garden By Landscaping Design Ideas
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Killing Your Dinner Guests and Other Pest Control Solutions
Getting rid of pests in gardens is a tough subject. Its never easy watching bugs or other pests eat their way through your beautiful garden. Especially when youve put in all that hard work, or spent all that money.
But as with so many of the problems that we face in life, we resort to a knee-jerk reaction, or we respond emotionally. We dont stop to think things through properly. Sometimes it requires an unemotional look at, and a better understanding of the problem to decide what to do.
To put things in perspective, I look at pesticides (maybe we should more honestly call them naturecides because of the damage they do) in as serious a way as chemotherapy drugs. They should only be used in very serious situations, and when all other options have been examined and weighed.
Heres some questions to ask yourself before resorting to poisoning your garden with pesticides:
1. How serious is the problem?
Will the pest kill the plant that it is eating, or will it just perform a natural function of cutting back, which gives space for new growth? Get some advice if youre not sure.
In most cases, its just a natural cycle, and the garden/plant will recover on its own without needing our intervention.
2. Is there a bigger problem behind this infestation?
Sometimes there are other reasons for a sudden increase in insect activity, but we end up treating the symptoms and not the cause. These reasons can be anything from a change in the plants ideal environment (too much sun, or shade), or even the over-use of chemicals in the past which has removed the pests natural predators or weakened the plant. Usually pests increase when plants are weak and cant defend themselves.
3. Have I planted the right plant?
If we choose the right plant for the right place, it usually needs less attention. The right plant is usually less prone to attack from insects. Choose indigenous plants over exotics. Indigenous plants are normally more resistant to attacks.
4. Have I planted too much of the same plant?
Mono-cultures (a single type of plant spread over a wide area) are like an eat-all-you-want buffet. Theyre basically an invitation for insects and animals to come in take a load off, and eat to their hearts content. Most lawns are mono-cultures, and are usually the source of most problems.
5. Is this normal?
There is often a natural and harmonious balance between plant and insect that shouldnt be interfered with. Some plants actually need insects to eat them, to stay healthy. By spraying pesticides and herbicides, were getting in the way, and could end up killing a lot more plants and animals than we intended.
6. Are you killing your dinner-guests?
This is really a follow up to the previous question. Most plants put "Open For Business" signs up in the way of fruit and flowers and juicy leaves. These attract insects for a reason, but these insects may sample other plants on their way in and out. If you plant a Butterfly Bush, it follows that youre going to see more caterpillars coming into the garden. Either get used to your visitors, or take the plant out.
7. Can I deal with them in other ways?
If at all possible, rather kill them by hand (or foot). If youre squeamish, there are plenty natural solutions out there; from beer, and grapefruit to chilli and flour. A little research usually yields a better solution (literally).
If none of these questions give you reason to resist the chemical route, then ask yourself one final question:
8. Is a little bit of chaos and mess not a good thing to have?
The need to have everything perfectly neat and tidy is sometimes a reflection of other issues that we are not dealing with, or other areas in our lives that are not under control. I believe that sometimes the challenges we face are there for us to confront the things we would rather not face.
If you still decide to go down the naturecide route, do it carefully and in a restrained way. But come back to these questions every now and then, and re-evaluate your garden as things change.
Read More..
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I left this little guy to eat what he wanted from my plants |
To put things in perspective, I look at pesticides (maybe we should more honestly call them naturecides because of the damage they do) in as serious a way as chemotherapy drugs. They should only be used in very serious situations, and when all other options have been examined and weighed.
Heres some questions to ask yourself before resorting to poisoning your garden with pesticides:
1. How serious is the problem?
Will the pest kill the plant that it is eating, or will it just perform a natural function of cutting back, which gives space for new growth? Get some advice if youre not sure.
In most cases, its just a natural cycle, and the garden/plant will recover on its own without needing our intervention.
2. Is there a bigger problem behind this infestation?
Sometimes there are other reasons for a sudden increase in insect activity, but we end up treating the symptoms and not the cause. These reasons can be anything from a change in the plants ideal environment (too much sun, or shade), or even the over-use of chemicals in the past which has removed the pests natural predators or weakened the plant. Usually pests increase when plants are weak and cant defend themselves.
3. Have I planted the right plant?
If we choose the right plant for the right place, it usually needs less attention. The right plant is usually less prone to attack from insects. Choose indigenous plants over exotics. Indigenous plants are normally more resistant to attacks.
4. Have I planted too much of the same plant?
Mono-cultures (a single type of plant spread over a wide area) are like an eat-all-you-want buffet. Theyre basically an invitation for insects and animals to come in take a load off, and eat to their hearts content. Most lawns are mono-cultures, and are usually the source of most problems.
5. Is this normal?
There is often a natural and harmonious balance between plant and insect that shouldnt be interfered with. Some plants actually need insects to eat them, to stay healthy. By spraying pesticides and herbicides, were getting in the way, and could end up killing a lot more plants and animals than we intended.
6. Are you killing your dinner-guests?
This is really a follow up to the previous question. Most plants put "Open For Business" signs up in the way of fruit and flowers and juicy leaves. These attract insects for a reason, but these insects may sample other plants on their way in and out. If you plant a Butterfly Bush, it follows that youre going to see more caterpillars coming into the garden. Either get used to your visitors, or take the plant out.
7. Can I deal with them in other ways?
If at all possible, rather kill them by hand (or foot). If youre squeamish, there are plenty natural solutions out there; from beer, and grapefruit to chilli and flour. A little research usually yields a better solution (literally).
If none of these questions give you reason to resist the chemical route, then ask yourself one final question:
8. Is a little bit of chaos and mess not a good thing to have?
The need to have everything perfectly neat and tidy is sometimes a reflection of other issues that we are not dealing with, or other areas in our lives that are not under control. I believe that sometimes the challenges we face are there for us to confront the things we would rather not face.
If you still decide to go down the naturecide route, do it carefully and in a restrained way. But come back to these questions every now and then, and re-evaluate your garden as things change.
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