Landscaping is usually carried out with the intention of instilling a more cozy touch into the home and can be done regardless of whether the home owner is single and living alone or has a large family.

Whether you want to layer your garden, re-do your frontyard or have a make over done for your backyard, landscaping is the perfect answer.

Having a home that is the envy of all and sundry is the ultimate goal of any home owner This is why landscaping is becoming so popular because it guarantees a home worthy of pride on the home owner’s part and provokes jealousy on the part of the neigbours.

In this information era of ours, it is very easy to find a landscape company that will garner your trust and earn your money.

Landscaping basically is an art that has to do with the beautification of a person’s home and focuses on either the frontyard or the backyard of the home; it is a plan that make use of plants, flowers, shrubs, fences and even walls to enhance the aura of a person’s home.

Most people who are thinking about enhancing the beauty of their front yards usually want a landscaping plan that does not demand a great deal of time or energy to look after and therefore patronize the services of landscaping professionals who come up with a plan that is suited to their needs.

Landscaping can be done by landscaping professionals who are well versed in the art of landscaping; however, you can also landscape your home single handedly if you have an extensive degree of knowledge about landscaping and are confident of being able to apply what you know.

You must know that the decision to landscape your home is not one that is taken spontaneously..there is a need for you to find out about things such as zoning restrictions which may demand that you don’t use walls and fences, or that you don’t plant tress of a particular height.

In this information era of ours, it is very easy to find a landscape company that will garner your trust and earn your money.

If you reside in an area where there is no humidity and a lot of sun and you are interested in what type of plants will best suite your landscaping needs, you ought to consider plants or scrubs that thrive well in the sun and do not require much water to survive.

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To the neat gardener mulberry might be a nuisance with its messy berries dropping on the ground and purple mulberry splashings on the bird bath, but it is a joy to birds. At least fifty-two varieties of birds delight in the fruit of the mulberry, which lasts from June until September.

June is a happy month for birds as well as humans, the month of long sunny days and fragrant nights when the honeysuckle perfumes the night breeze and the song sparrow wakes to sing a sleepy serenade to the summer moon.

And whenever honeysuckle is mentioned one usually thinks of the common Japanese honeysuckle that climbs over porches and fences. This will take the place over unless sternly kept in check. Within the dense growth catbirds or chipping sparrows locate their nests, and in winter the visiting white-throated sparrows make their headquarters in the shelter of the nearly evergreen foliage.

The viburnums, with their flat clusters of flowers which later develop into berries in the fall, attract the birds. Arrow-wood has dark blue fruit, and sheep-berry, also called nanny-berry, has showy flower clusters nearly 5 inches across followed by blue berries that are both sweet and edible.

Handsomest of the viburnums is the cranberry-bush, sometimes referred to as high-bush cranberry. The large clusters of bright red berries among freshly green leaves are a fine sight in autumn. According to old botanical texts the cranberries make an “agreeable jelly,” but to make this jelly one will have to race with the birds, who make them disappear as fast as the dogwood berries.

The leaves of the cranberry-bush seem impervious to frost. Long after other shrubs are dried and shriveled the cranberry-bush is still a summer-like green. Sometimes you think it has forgotten about winter.

Many of our popular shrubs and perennials like hibiscus plants are native plants that have been brought under cultivation. Sometimes the process is reversed and a shrub escapes from the confines of the garden to make its way to the wilds where it leads its own life and gets on in the world without benefit of such items as pruning shears and fertilizer.

Such is the snowberry’s career. From a prim orderly existence in old-fashioned gardens it wandered into the great outdoors, and there it has managed to survive among its less sheltered relatives of the honeysuckle family. The little round white berries, like tiny snowballs or camphor balls, are not eaten by birds as fast as the cranberry or dogwood berries; eventually, however, they too go, especially after they become a little droopy and brown and when more desirable fruit is no longer available to the hungry birds.

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In order to plan your landscape accurately, you should have a drawing board, ruler, tape measure, paper, and patience.

A flowering shrub costs less than an evergreen, and in my opinion can achieve equally marvelous effects.

False Cost Estimates

Once you have studied the techniques of landscaping you will be able to guard against making false cost estimates. Here is a typical example of how many people go wrong: The novice would be “professional” home landscaper says to himself, “The distance across the front of my house is 40 feet – the ten plants to plant there cost me $75. Therefore, to go all around my property would cover 300 feet and this would cost approximately $550 plus dollars.” He shakes his head and resigns himself to a half-planted garden.

You will soon learn that such a method of estimating costs is inaccurate. In the first place you must try not to enclose the entire property; secondly, plants in the back yard will be given much more space in which to develop; finally, the plants in the back yard for the most part will be or should be deciduous.

Thus, a fine planting for your entire landscape even including a generous allotment of trees need not cost $550.

Installment Planting

If your budget cannot stand a large initial expense, there is no reason why you cannot spread costs over several years by installment planting, that is, setting only as many shrubs and plants as you can afford each year.

Because you will have made an overall plan, you need not worry that this gradual approach will result in a haphazard garden. As long as as you adhere to your sketches and plans you will eventually have a beautifully landscaped house and garden.

Be Original

Study of landscaping principles makes it easy to avoid imitation. You will arrive at your own firmly grounded convictions, and will be able to judge features common in your neighborhood on their merits, not on their popularity. Some you will like and incorporate into your garden. Others will seem pointless and you will ignore them without hesitation. You will, then, discover (a) that traditional methods are often obsolete, and (b) a different and less expensive garden will in the long run be better suited to your family’s needs.

Therefore, you should eliminate any ideas you have like planting croton red mammey and about how a garden should be designed. Then, as you go through the planning process, you will find that some of your ideas were good and should be included. Others will seem wrong; they will most often stem from what everybody else has in their garden like having croton red mammey. Forget these erroneous ideas; be original. Substitute new ideas you have gleaned from the reading, visiting other gardens – even public gardens and look at new commercial landscape projects. In a few years your house will be a stand-out in your neighborhood. In fact, you will soon realize, as I have many times seen, that your neighbors are beginning to copy you.

People do not copy failures, so you must be a success.

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Here are 5 Half-Hardy annuals which are easily grown and an be started or sown outdoors during May.

Antirrhinum (Snapdragon)

Universal favorites for bedding display or for cutting. Gorgeous flowers are freely produced for several months. Be sure that you pinch out the growing point when the plants are about 3 inches high. This will encourage a bushy habit. Sow seed late in the summer in cold frames if you want blossoms when no one else has them. Winter them over in the frames and set into the garden as soon as the soil can be worked. Grow creeping varieties for the rockery, dwarf varieties (1 ft.) for bedding and tall varieties (3 ft.) for display. Set the tall ones in borders. Group them in clumps.

Aster

Asters commence to bloom about the middle of August. Grow them in beds and in borders and there let them flourish until the first frost. They are easily raised from seed. They can be started under glass or they can be sown in the open about the middle of May. Read about them online or in seed catalogs and thank the plant breeders for the many types now available. Be sure that you try a few Dwarf Asters and those with full crested blossoms. Asters prefer a rich soil. They must not be grown crowded. Dwarf sorts should be spaced at least 10 inches each way. Tall varieties (2 ft.) space 18″ inches apart.

PANSY

If early blossoms are required start the seed late in January under glass. Grow on in cold frames and set into the garden towards the end of March. Pansies do well in cool weather and like a little shade. Pick blossoms often. Do not let them run to seed. The more you pick the longer they will bloom.

Start seed also in a cold frame in August. Winter over in frames and set into the garden early in spring. Old plants should be cut back to within 1-1/2 inches of the crown. Do this at the end of the season. The plants will produce new growth from the crowns and flower another year.

PETUNIA

It actually is preferable to start Petunias under glass. Grow them for display in borders, in beds, in window boxes and in pots. For color throughout the summer in large rockeries, they are wonderfully well adapted. If you love butterfly bush plant you can actually induce the bushy habit. Just don’t forget to pinch out the growing point when the plants as in butterfly bushes.

Zinnia

Being native of Mexico Zinnias thrive on heat, Give them a rich deep soil and water as needed. Varieties are many and all are interesting and easy to grow. You can have compact dwarf double Zinnias with quilled and twisted petals, Zinnias with giant double flattened blossoms or with double deeply developed blossoms. Some kinds are two toned whilst others are tipped with color contrast. They all have a place in the garden from the giants down to the tiny double baby sorts. If you want to grow extra big blossoms feed the plants judiciously and remove all the blossoms but a few. Don’t forget that you can sow the seed in the open during late May or you can start seed under glass for earlier flowers.

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In Northern United States and Canada

From now on garden wastes will become available. Stems and foliage of crops that have been harvested, annual weeds that are hoed off and raked up and later leaves fallen from trees are examples of this material. Unless it harbors pests or diseases that are carried over in the soil, these wastes can be turned into valuable fertilizing and soil conditioning compost by piling it in a suitable bin or heaping in an out-of-the-way corner and allowing it to decay. Greenwood leafy cuttings of a great many shrubs, trees and perennial herbaceous plants, including ground covers, taken in July root readily.

Now that the weather is warmer, raise the cutting height of the blades of the lawn mower so that the grass is cut not less than two inches high. Apply selective weed killers and practice hand weeding to eliminate Crab Grass and other lawn weeds. Lift and divide bearded Iris shortly after they are through blooming. Toward the end of July Siberian Iris may be treated in the same way. Iris of these types normally require this treatment every three or four years.

The end of July is a good time to transplant Madonna Lilies, Oriental Poppies and Bleeding Hearts. Root cuttings of Bleeding Hearts, Oriental Poppies, Anchusas should be taken this month. Young perennials and biennials raised from seeds sown in May or June will now be ready for transplanting to nursery beds.

Prune Rambler Roses and tie into place new shoots as soon as possible after the plants are through flowering, and are making their new shoots. Summer-prune Wistarias by cutting hack part way the long viney shoots that develop at this time. Sow Pansies at the end of the month. It is still not too late to sow Forget-me-nots, English Daisies, Wallflowers, Foxgloves and other biennials for flowering next Spring, although the plants will not be quite as husky as those sown earlier. The same remarks apply to sowing seeds now of Delphiniums, Pyrethrums, Coreopsis and other perennials.

Sow Chinese Cabbage, Endive, Lettuce and Onions for late harvests. Set out young plants of Broccoli for a late crop. This is the month to sow seeds of Snapdragons, Stocks, Primulas, Cinerarias, Salpiglossis, Leptosynes and other annuals for early Winter crops in the greenhouse.

It is not too early to begin preparations for new lawns that are to be sown in September. If you turn the soil over now and sow the area to a crop of Buckwheat or other quick-maturing green manure and then turn that under two or three weeks before sowing the lawn, you will add to the organic matter in the soil and do much to ensure a weed-free seed bed. Keep up with watering, fertilizing, staking and tying and, above all with whatever spraying is necessary.

In the South

Bermuda Grass thrives in hot weather. You can still make new lawns by sowing “hulled” seeds of this grass. Rest Roses partially at this time. Do not water them or fertilize them but keep up with the spraying or dusting program. Do some corrective pruning of fast-growing shrubs. A last application of fertilizer to Camellias and Azaleas may be given now. This is a good time to insert cuttings of these plants. Sow seeds of fast-growing annuals for fall bloom. Keep Chrysanthemums staked and fertilize them every two or three weeks.

On the West Coast

Keep Roses and braided ficus tree well watered and prune them lightly when they are through blooming. Fertilize about once a month and spray or dust regularly. This is a fine time to sow seeds of biennials and perennials. In the vegetable garden continue to make sowings of crops for harvest in Fall and early Winter. Ficus trees and annuals, such as Cornflowers, Calendulas, Poppies, Stocks, Sweet Peas, Pansies, Primula malacoides and Linarias may be sown now in mild sections.

Tie Dahlias securely to their stakes. Disbud those being grown for large blooms. Pinch early-flowering Chrysanthemums for the last time in mid-July, late-flowering ones for the last time in late July. In the northwest, July is a good time to lift, divide and replant many kinds of Spring-flowering rock garden plants.

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Design means the arrangement of parts in any work of art, such as a painting, a building, or a garden. Good design satisfies us; poor design is irritating.

The principles of good design are really quite simple. Unity, propriety, variety, scale and harmony are the main ones. Anyone can understand what they mean if we cut away the attempt to appear intellectual. Though simple words, they should be taken seriously.

Unity is created by any common bond that ties the parts together. A picture frame defines the picture and makes it a unit separate from the wall paper, but a number of pictures are given unity by having similar frames. The parts of a garden are drawn together by defining them by planting around the boundaries, by connecting them with paths of similar material or by repeating plants of the same species. Even the color of green common to most plants has a strong uniting effect.

Variety is interesting if you are a collector but too much variety is confusing. Rather than using single plants of a lot of different varieties, use large numbers of a few sorts to create the desired mass effect. Then plant one or two well-chosen specimens to create interest at strategic points against this unifying background.

Propriety too, is simple. No one puts on a dinner jacket to dig a ditch. Potted geraniums or hybrid tea roses are equally out of place when planted in a rock garden. Similarly, the symmetry and geometric form of formal gardens look out of place in the middle of a gently rolling lawn, but most pleasing from a paved terrace.

Scale simply means relative size. An elm planted beside a modern bungalow does not complement the house; it dwarfs it. A paved path 8 feet wide is suitable in a public park but in most city gardens it would be a patio.

Harmony is the easy, gradual blending of color, texture and form. Contrast is a sudden change that creates more dramatic effect but may cause conflict of interest.

These are the plant questions and answers together with principles we must keep in mind when thinking of the various units in detail. Good design, or good taste, is hard to define together with plant questions and answers but most people appreciate it when they meet it.

You need not be too tied down to rules and it is not necessary to create an artistic masterpiece. The important thing is to create a property that meets the needs of your family for pleasant outdoor living. if the artistic effect satisfies your need for beauty and comfort, then it is the right garden for you.

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