Ugott Home Gardening Tips

Posts Tagged ‘Garden Areas’

Design landscaping is meant to create a setting for your home and garden areas that reflect your personality and make people feel welcomed into your world. Whatever landscape design you choose will create a sense of style for the grounds that surround your home and will set the overall tone for your visitors. Landscaping that is well-done can also significantly raise the value of your property.

There are many ways that you can improve the landscaping around your home. Some people worry that to improve their landscape design properly, they need to hire landscape architects or contractors. This can be wonderful if you can afford it, but many people very successfully undertake the landscaping design for their homes on their own.

If you would rather do your design landscaping yourself rather than hiring a professional, then the first step is to learn the basics of landscape design. Good design is actually quite simple if you know and follow the four following principles. Combine these landscaping principles with your own tastes and preferences and you will quickly be able to create a plan for your home and garden exteriors that will be a reflection of you.

The first element of it is the concept of balance. If you concentrate most of your new plants in one area, then the rest of your garden landscaping area will look rather neglected. Distribute the plants around the yard or the garden at least somewhat evenly and with a sense of flow. This will help draw the eye though the entire landscape design and engage your visitors.

The second aspect of great landscaping is proportion. The idea here is to make sure that any design feature you choose fits in appropriately, in terms of size, to the surrounding areas, fixtures and structures. Trying to wedge an huge gazebo into a tiny back yard will end up looking almost comical, and will not provide a great effect. At the same time, if you have an enormous front lawn, then you will need to add larger elements in plantings or features that will be noticed and not overwhelmed.

Transition is the third principle you need to know for your landscaping project and is closely related to proportion. Even though your design can include flowers, plants, large shrubs, bushes and even trees, the way to make them really work together in a beautiful way is with the use of transition.

It is the smooth flow from one type and size of plant to another. You want to lead the eye from delicate plants to larger ones with some in-between sizes. Color transitions can also be a very effective aspect of your overall landscaping design plan.

The last of the four concepts of landscaping is unity and it is the ultimate sense that you are trying to express with your design. All of the choices that you make in how you balance, proportion, and transition the various colors, sizes and textures of your landscape elements should be governed by a unifying theme. This is what brings the design together to work in harmony and create a spectacular home and garden.

It is best to choose a theme for your design landscaping and make sure you stick to it throughout. If you want the look of an English garden, then choose only elements that will fit with that theme. If you prefer the ambiance of a Japanese garden, then only choose features, plants and accents that reflect that theme.

One thing you either might have to watch out for or embrace is something I call Garden Creep.

This is the ability of certain gardens, let alone the plants in them, of slowly growing and spreading or even multiplying over time.

Any dedicated gardener can explain to you the visible symtomology of the disease. New garden growths appear almost randomly at times as new outbreaks of gardens pop up in sometimes rather unexpected corners and sections of the area.

This problem is also seen in certain plants as well. When they have managed to obtain a foot hold in an area, where the available space for them, is inadequate for their realistic size. You will find these plants spilling outwards or upwards into space they were never intended to occupy. This causes constant problems for entryways & walkways, as well as air space occupiers like power lines. These planbts then have to constantly attacked and kept back within their territory, often at great cost in time and money to their garden owner.

Lawn areas and sometimes even pathways in it’s way are encompassed and/or swallowed up. It even can escape from your area onto and around footpaths and along road verges.

It appears I reckon to be a possibly viral disease that affects both the gardens and their gardeners alike.

It means that these garden areas extend over a period into every little space they can infect and take over, sometimes far outside the originally intended boundaries of the initial garden/s.

Gardening vegetables becomes easier and more fun when you have the right tools. If you know which tools to use for gardening it can also make visiting a garden shop to buy tools easier. One thing which you need to keep in mind is that you should resist the temptation to buy everything that you see. You will be able to choose the perfect tools as you learn the art of gardening.

Here are a few tips on how to choose the perfect gardening tools.

The first thing you need to do is choose a spade for digging holes and cultivating your garden. Try to pick out a spade that has a handle that is comfortable. A good one to choose can be one with a D-style type hilt.

Get a hoe for weeding and to aerate your soil in your garden. There are many hoes that have long handles such as drawing hoes, digging hoes, Dutch hoes, or triangle hoes. There are also some that will have a combination having a fork on one side and a couple of prongs on the other side. Any gardener may need at least three different types of hoes. However, one should choose the hoe to be purchased by looking at one’s requirements. The onion hoe is most easy to carry as it weighs very less. The next best option is to opt for the Warren hoe which has a pointed end. You can purchase the other types of hoes when you are more adept with your gardening skills.

Choose a trowel and a hand fork to use in smaller garden areas or raised beds that do not have a lot of space. It is a good idea to use ones that have wood handles, as the metal can get cold when gardening in the winter.

Choose a four-pronged fork for lifting vegetable crops and general cultivation in your garden. Try to pick a fork that has a head and neck that is made of one piece of wood, which will make it safer and more stable.

Choose a garden rake to level and break up the soil in your garden. A stronger rake is a flathead one with more teeth. Rakes will have 3-foot wide carbon steel blades that have 5-foot shafts made of either wood, vinyl coated metal, plastic, or aluminum.

You can use a cultivator in order to break up the soil in smaller gardens. There are either three or five pronged types of cultivators.

You can also look into a power cultivator or a rototiller for larger gardens. You should choose an electric model with a front, middle, or rear engine. Pick the right sized horsepower depending on the size of your garden.

Safety is also of prime importance when you are enjoying the gardening work that you are doing. The following tips would help you stay safe.

You have to choose the gardening tools that you are comfortable with so they are not too heavy or too long. When you choose tools make sure they are also comfortable in your hand. Many of the less expensive tools will have plastic handles and may not be as good as the wooden ones.

When using the tools always try to work with a good set of gloves. Gloves will keep your hands from blistering. When you are hoeing always make sure that your back is straight so you do not injure your back.