Backyard Landscaping Idea
Landscaping is a place for all the garden lovers where a lot of plantations are done with a touch of designing work. It does not matter where you live, there is nothing like relaxing in the back yard landscaping during the summer nights.
Backyard landscaping idea requires a lot of planning and is expensive, as it has to be changed according to the season. The simple solution is to go on step by step by breaking up the back yard into rooms and remodel each room every year. Even though landscaping is done section wise it needs a proper planning for it.
With the help of the graph paper, draw the structure of the house and outline of the building including the floor and trees of your property. Before the backyard landscaping idea, it is a better time to consider new plants and shrubs in order to give a new look. After the sketch make some copies and try to experiment with various designs by taking an idea of famous magazines or the gardens you visited.
In order to keep the back yard open you may go for some plantations only in the border and if space is not required then you may plan for the designs like arranging stones and other plants and few shrubs and make a comfortable table with the cut outs to relax in summer evenings. Backyard landscaping ideas like solar lighting and waterfall flooring or a fountain gives a marvelous look.
Some ideas of Backyard landscaping
Selections of plants: If you want to have fences then consider the plantation in the row with the plants like juniper, hawthorn, and arborvitae are the best. Combination of bushes creates a privacy and back ground for the future flower beds. Strategically an evergreen screen gives a protection from the migrant snow and the winter wind.
Flower bearing plants: Choosing the flowers in the border is one of the difficult aspects of the design. As flowers play vital role with their color and height and gives a pleasant look. Select 3 or 4 plants bearing same color and maintain a distance of 16’’ to 18’’ between them. Maintain a space of 20’’to 22’’ between plants of different groups. Odd plantations gives more appealing look compared to the even number of plantations.
Perennial border: Always select the plants related to the border in such a way that they remain evergreen. The best suggestion for perennial border is to choose the plants that bear the flowers in April and last in October.
Back row plantations: Select the tall plants like SEDUM ‘Autumn Joy’; RUDBECKIA Goldsturm; PHLOX White; IRIS light blue or yellow; VERONICA Blue; SOLIDAGO ‘Golden Shower’; and HOSTA fortunei ‘Picta’in back row.
Front row plantations: You may select plants like GERANIUM grandiflorum; POTENTILLA ‘Firedance’; HUECHERA Pink; ASTER Dwarf Blue; SEDUM Dragons Blood; ACHILLEA ‘Moonshine’; and ERIGERON ‘Prosperity’ for the front row.
Of course these plants may not be suitable for every climate. For the garden beginners the excellent reference book The Comfortable Lazy Garden is worth as it gives the information of how to choose the plants according to the nature of the climate zone you live in.
Island Bed plantations: As the name implies, the yard is planted in the middle and surround by a sea of grass. According to the space and imagination island bed has different shape a size. Set the edges scale with the plants from tall to short in the center.
Favorable advice is to visit any landscape garden before buying any vegetation and collect information regarding drainage and soil preparation. On e should carry a copy of the soil sample and a credit card as you can’t wait for years to erect a landscape garden.
Free Backyard Landscaping Idea, Container Gardening can add a whole new life to an existing garden or patio. Place containers with your favorite plants or vegetables in various locations and groupings around your garden, balcony or patio.
For thousands of years urns and vases have been used as sculptural elements. Overly ornate containers are probably most ornamental without adding another element such as plants. But most containers manufactured today were made to be planted, and many containers not intended for use as planters are also being planted.
There are unlimited possibilities for container gardening. You have choices of color, shape, size and material of which they are made. Planters are available in wood, stone, ceramic, fiberglass, plastic, fiber, brass, iron, built-in, free-standing, sculpted, inset, painted, new, and used. Innovative containers are buckets, shoes, tires, wheelbarrows, wood stoves, trailers, etc.
It is an excellent way to put plants into areas where you wouldn't ordinarily have them, such as in the shade, over tree roots, on patios and decks, in vestibules and atria.
To get good results from the plantings, containers must have drainage. As with the rest of the garden, this is the number one consideration to make for the health of your plants. Outdoors, a drainage hole in the bottom of the container is a must. Additional holes should be drilled or punched in containers that do not drain quickly after each watering.
Drainage is reduced when the container is set on a solid surface such as a cement or patio floor. Raising the container one or two inches off the floor by setting it on blocks of wood will solve this drainage problem.
Indoors, you can do without drainage. It is not recommended, but if you closely monitor the moisture level and use a generous layer of stone in the bottom of the container, you should be able to ensure that your plants don't get wet feet. A good soil mix, preferably potting soil, and regular fertilizing will help your plants do their best. If you are growing plants in heavy shade, you might try a container on wheels, and rotate it periodically to more sunny locations.
Container gardening is so easy to get into and so easy to manage. And, it’s likely to be one of the most enjoyable gardening experiences you’ll have.
Get as creative with your container gardening or stay as simple as you’d like. Choose fancy containers or plain containers, try mixing different plants together, and rearrange your containers for a different look now and again.
Landscaping with roses
A hedge of white shrub roses along a white picket fence, a climbing rose cloaked in red blooms at the back of a hot-colored flower border, coral ground cover roses spilling over a stone retaining wall: these are ways gardeners incorporate roses into the landscape today--boldly, and with savvy attention to bloom color and growth habit.
Among the many long-blooming, easy-care roses now available are types that are superbly suited to landscape use. Small, compact types are excellent edgings along walkways or in narrow beds; they also look good in containers. Low spreaders are ideal as ground covers. More upright varieties are handsome in shrub borders or, planted 3 or 4 feet apart, as an informal hedge. Climbers dress up arching trellises, obelisks, or fences. On page 50, we recommend landscape roses to get you started.
There's always room for roses--no matter what their habits--in any landscape. 'Roses fit any style of garden, from casual English cottage to Mediterranean to formal,' says Tom Carruth of Weeks Roses in Upland, California.
All you have to do is make sure their flower or foliage colors work together, as rose fancier Heidi Tanner does in her garden in Pleasanton, California, pictured on page 48. Tanner fills her garden with roses for nearly nonstop color. She arranges them in color themes, using red and orange roses to spice up hot-color borders, and apricots, blushes, and whites in her 'quiet garden.'
Position the roses where they'll deliver maximum effect, as another rose fancier, Sheri Workman, does in her Fountain Valley, California, garden. Workman grows 'Abraham Darby', a lanky-stemmed David Austin shrub rose, against the wall at the back of a 2-foot-wide border and allows it to arch across the border toward the path. 'The plant is so huge in my mild climate that it grows into a fountain,' she says. 'The blooms are right in your nose when you walk by.'
For maximum color impact, you can pair roses with annuals or perennials, as Workman does. Other ornamentals help hide the roses' 'ugly legs' and give the garden a filled-in look, she says.
The dormant season (from January to March, depending on climate) is the prime time to set out bare-root plants such as roses.