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Here’s a brief primer on creating a flower garden design that’s absolutely fabulous!

Whether you’ve just moved into a house with no landscaping whatsoever, or if you just want to do a remake on your existing garden, the secret to success in a good flower garden design is in careful planning. Depending on the amount of space you have to work with, it may take a few seasons to get the garden filled out, but it’s certainly doable.

It’s well worth your time to think long and hard before you forge ahead and start breaking ground. Here’s how to make the most of your flower garden design, a design you’ll be happy with for many years to come.

First you must decide what style of flower garden pleases you most. For example, you might like a neat and orderly garden, with what real estate agents refer to as ‘curb appeal’.

Maybe what suits your personality best is the cottage style flower garden, with blooms in a variety of heights dotting your landscape. If your passion is cut flower arrangements, a cutting garden may be the answer.

If you have a large garden area, your dream flower garden design may consist of large drifts of flowers, with winding pathways and secret gardens to be discovered along the way.

Once you’ve settled on the style you find most pleasing, you’re ready to begin the flower garden design process.

Online, at your favorite bookstore or even your local library, you will find books which offer comprehensive pictorial depictions of various flower garden styles.

You’ll learn how and why particular placement of plants and various elements of garden design make that style work. You’ll also get plenty of ideas on which plants lend drama, seasonal color, as well as factors such as drought tolerance that might influence your choices.

It’s been said that variety is the spice of life and this is also true in a good flower garden design. You want to integrate an assortment of garden features to lend variety to the landscape.

For example, flowering trees, such as the flowering cherry and magnolia can add grandeur and elegance as a backdrop to your flower garden. Placement of shrubs along garden pathways can serve as a privacy screen in certain sections of the garden. If your land is basically flat, you can add interest by making a berm, a raised and rounded area which tapers off at each end. Planted with a few perennials, you can have a really eye-catching display.

Pathways, with stepping stones planted with a small ground cover, might wind through even a small stretch of garden, ending at a garden bench surrounded with fragrant flowers for a quiet, relaxing reprieve from the world.

Ornamental grasses are other elements of a flower garden design, which evoke a serene feeling when planted alongside a drift of Russian sage, with its beautiful, graceful purple flowers.

Daylilies, Alstromeria and Agapanthus are longtime favorites in the summer flower garden, with good reason. The displays are bountiful and little maintenance is required. If you live in an area with acid soil, consider integrating azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons into your flower garden design for a spectacular showing in spring. Daffodils which naturalize, multiply on their own, dividing and spreading over the landscape. If you can, shoot for four season color. It all depends on how cold your winters are.

Today’s garden software makes creating a flower garden design a snap. You can also preview how your garden will look over time, as it fills out and matures.

We are in the process of evaluating some very interesting garden design software products. We plan to make a decision and recommend our favorite one soon so be on the look out for the live link soon!

Remember, a great garden is all about careful thought and planning. That’s the secrets to having and enjoying the ultimate flower garden at home.

Related and highly recommended:

The Complete Gardening System.
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A Massive Gardening Course That Will Transform Your Garden And Home And Help To Increase The Value Of Your Home. Downloadable Course Materials Including Audio.

Top Rose Gardening EBook.
Very Good Rose Gardening EBook, Lots Of Excellent Tips, Secrets And Competetively Priced
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Landscaping front yards have special planning considerations.

No matter the size of your front yard or the reasons behind wanting or in some cases NEEDING to landscape, front yards usually have different planning requirements than other, more private areas of your garden.

First, the front yard is typically more open, making it easier for visitors to find their way to your front door. You must also consider that landscaping front yard designs should incorporate certain safety factors, guarding against intruders.

The style you choose may be a factor as well. For example, if you have a large front yard in the cottage garden style, this may affect access adversely, both for guests and intruders. A more open plan may be a better choice, but this doesn’t preclude using privacy screens or shrubbery to achieve both objectives of privacy, safety and good looks.

Let’s take a look at some design techniques you can use to create your ideal front yard landscaping.

If you might be selling your home in just a few years, you’re wise to heed that old real estate adage on ‘curb appeal’. When selling a home, the front yard landscaping is what prospective buyers see first.

This truly can make or break the sale. A well manicured front yard makes that buyer more enthusiastic about your home before they ever enter. In this case, you might want to give this factor some weight.

When you’re landscaping front yards, you want to scale your garden design to the size of the front yard. For example, a small front yard is overwhelmed with a single large tree as the main focus, causing the front yard to appear smaller, as well as awkward. Consult plant catalogs and gardening encyclopedias to find plants which are suited to the size of your front yard.

Before you settle on a specific style, browse the home and garden magazines to pick out plants and design features which you find appealing. Compile a portfolio of these various features, including lighting, trellises, pathway materials, edgings and statuary – whatever catches your eye.

Ultimately, you probably won’t use all of these, but this technique helps you focus and directs you to a style that suits all of your objectives.

A large front lawn, with green stretching from the street to your front door, edged with a curving flower bed next to a brick pathway, is perhaps the most open of landscaping front yard designs, but not the most interesting.

Consider breaking up the space with some well placed patio trees, which still allow easy access, but don’t give a direct line of sight to your front door. Back lighting and down lighting around these trees serves two purposes: safety against intruders and an element of drama.

A good compromise on landscaping front yard designs is to begin with an open look – on paper or with software – and address privacy and interest concerns as your design develops. Let’s say you love that big expanse of green lawn. Why not divide it in two, with flower beds at the perimeters which are broken up with a grouping of ornamental grasses close to the entryway?

When choosing candidates for the flower beds, think about seasonal color. Interplanting spring bulbs with later blooming annuals and perennials can provide three seasons of color. Look for winter color in ornamental grasses and plants like Cottoneaster, with bright red berries in the dead of winter.

Lighting is an essential consideration when landscaping front yards, particularly along pathways, steps, porches and decks. You want these areas to be well lighted. Solar lighting is an inexpensive and attractive way to accomplish this.

Landscaping front yards requires careful planning. Follow these guidelines, and settle on all of your design components before you start digging. You’ll have a lovely front yard!

For more information on landscaping, check out these great links from our friends over at Our Backyard Oasis!

How To Redo A Front Yard After A Severe Water Disaster

How To Create A Moveable Garden

In a couple of previous post we talked about:

Amazing Mosquito Repellent

How To Get Rid Of Slugs And Snails…

…Well we couldn’t think of a better way to follow up on those two posts than to bring to you a great idea on how to make a “natural” repellent to rid your home and garden from those pesky little flies!

How to Make Natural Outdoor Fly Repellent with Essential Oils

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Tired of fly sprays and the unwanted chemicals they contain? There is a very easy solution to keeping flies away from the outdoor dining area and you can do it yourself.

Steps

1. Clean out a small tin with a lid.
2. Take a clean piece of cloth or a small piece of dish sponge able to fit into the container. Saturate it with one of the following oils (after it has been diluted appropriately, see Tips):
   • Lavender oil - lavender is considered to be particularly effective against flies
   • Citronella oil (dilute with water first)
   • Eucalyptus oil (dilute with water first)
   • Pennyroyal oil (dilute with water first)
   • Peppermint oil (dilute with water first; likely more effective against mosquitoes but also considered to work against horse-flies
   • Lemongrass oil (dilute with water first)
3. Place the cloth in the tin and shut the lid. Allow to sit for 24 hours.
4. Use. Whenever you need to use the tin, remove the lid and place on the entertaining table. Make as many as you wish to put around the entertaining area to deter flies.
5. Replenish the oil after each use; once open to the air, the strength weakens and needs to be topped up.

Tips

• Wear gloves when handling the saturated cloth, especially if you are handling food and/or have skin sensitivities.
• You can amplify the effect of the essential oils by using candles. Simply add a few drops of the chosen essential oil (or use different ones at different ends of the table) into the melted wax area of a burning candle. The odour will waft out as the candle burns.
• If you are familiar with combining essential oils to produce scents, try a combination of the above suggested essential oils for a pleasant odour and possibly a more powerful fly dissuader.
• Note that lavender oil can be used freely without needing to dilute with water. Water dilution should follow the instructions accompanying the essential oil. Providing you do not wear the oil, dilution at a ratio of 1 part oil to 3 parts water will likely prove sufficient for most oils but know the properties of your oils before making assumptions. If you intend to wear any of these oils as a repellent, the advice here does not apply and you should seek information from the appropriate source.

Warnings

• Always read the warnings accompanying essential oil products and do not use if you are pregnant, have a poor immune system or allergies unless you know the oil to be safe.
• Always keep essential oils out of the reach of children. Many are toxic if ingested, especially pennyroyal. Containers should be kept out of reach.
• As with any herbal remedy, you are the best judge of whether or not the herbal solutions are doing what you seek from them. If not, experiment with different types until something meets your needs. Sometimes the effectiveness of oils is dependent on local conditions.

Things You'll Need

• Small tin with lid; ideal tins include confectionery tins, cough drop tins, candle tins etc.
• Small piece of cloth, for example, calico, cotton, handkerchief etc.; or cut a piece of dish sponge down to size

Related wikiHows

• How to Get Rid of Flies Around Your Dog's Water and Food Bowls
• How to Get Rid of House Flies with Cloves
• How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies
• How to Get Rid of Flesh Flies
• How to Get Rid of Horse Flies
• How to Keep Flies Out of Your House

Sources and Citations

1. ↑ Annie's Remedy, Natural herbal homemade insect repellent, mosquitoes, flies and The Frugal Life, Getting Rid of House Flies
2. ↑ Gerald F McCarthy, Better Living with Essential Oils
3. ↑ Care2 Green Living, Easily Custom Make Your Own Insect Repellent - How-to
4. ↑ Care2 Green Living, Easily Custom Make Your Own Insect Repellent - How-to
5. ↑ Maria Schasteen, 10 Steps to Health - The Ultimate Peppermint Guide
6. ↑ Natural Health Crafters, Lemongrass Essential Oil

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Make Natural Outdoor Fly Repellent with Essential Oils. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

I had just cleaned the deck, the BBQ and the hot tub cover the day before when my daughter came running in the house to tell me…

…”SLUGS are attacking EVERYTHING! I noticed that she was also rubbing her little fingers together and then I knew she had made the mistake of touching them. If you are familiar with the little slimy critters, once you get there slim on your hands or fingers, it’s nearly impossible to get off!

If that’s not bad enough, they leave a slimy trail everywhere they’ve been.

So I told her it’s time for us to go on the slug and snail patrol but first we sat down and did some research. We wanted to find some helpful information that we could use and share with our readers for ways to “Get Rid Of Slugs And Snails – without the use of chemicals.

Here’s what we found and we hope it is useful information for you as it was for us!

How to Get Rid of Slugs and Snails With Yeast

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Most of the commercially available, poisonous pellets, liquid or granules aimed at pesky snails and slugs may also prove toxic to pets, children and wildlife. Since slugs and snails love yeast, this article will show you a great, child and pet friendly means for dealing with them in your garden.

Steps

1. Put a lump of brewer's yeast or sprinkle powdered yeast into a jar of warm water and sugar. The jar must be deep enough to keep the slugs and snails from crawling out. You can also buy containers (traps) designed specifically for this purpose at garden supply stores. A suggested mixture is two cups of warm water, a packet of dry yeast, and one teaspoonful each of salt and sugar--the salt will help ensure that the slugs and snails die before they have a chance to escape. If you're going to dump the slugs and/or mixture in your garden or compost pile, skip the salt; it'll make your soil too salty.
2. Dig a hole large enough for the jar to sit in up to its mouth. This is best done in the vegetable patch or other garden space where the slugs and snails are patrolling.
3. Repeat every few feet. Put these traps throughout your garden at intervals of six to eight feet, since the yeast won't draw them in from any further than that.
4. Check daily and remove slugs and snails that have been attracted to the jar and dispose of them. They will have crawled into the jar and drowned. You can leave them in the garden to decompose and contribute to the organic matter of the soil, or put them in a compost pile (either way, crushing them will hasten the process, if you are not squeamish about doing so).
5. Renew the mixture regularly. It will be impacted by rain and evaporation, so top it up as needed.

Video

You can watch the original video at WikiHows or watch the one below that we located for you.

Tips

• This can also be done with beer instead of a yeast mixture.

Things You'll Need

• Brewer's yeast or powdered yeast
• Sugar
• Warm water
• Jar
• Digging implement

Related wikiHows

• How to Get Rid of Garden Slugs
• How to Care for Slugs
• How to Care for Giant African Land Snails
• How to Find a Snail

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Get Rid of Slugs and Snails With Yeast. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Here's a video:

How-to-get-rid-of-slugs-and-snails