Small Backyard Landscaping Ideas

It is interesting to note, that every new idea, is a culmination of several other ideas. This is a rule that works well for any creative field, that includes these backyard landscaping ideas for small yards.

• Designing any area, open or closed, begins with planning. Planning gives you a chance to explore different options, before finally choosing one that suits you. Step into your backyard, and visualize it, the way you would like it. Refer to a few magazines for some help.
• Ensure that the ideas you have visualized can be maintained well. This depends on the time you have at hand, the kind of weather that prevails in your area, and the kind of small backyard landscaping ideas you have chosen.
• An interesting way to jazz up your backyard, is to create a small pathway, which needn't necessarily be straight, and lay the pavers or tiles in a diagonal manner. This gives the illusion of spaciousness, and also helps achieve an interesting flooring pattern.
• Try to include a small seating arrangement that can be your perfect getaway at any time you need it. If the space permits, you can even string up a hammock in your backyard. It is not necessary to have the usual tables and chairs for seating. A swing, or a seating created by retaining walls, or a small rock garden is a unique way to fulfill your seating requirements. You may also create an area that is stepped up from the rest of the backyard, and incorporate your seating arrangement there, by throwing some colorful cushions on the floor, and making it a unique seating arrangement. Tempting, isn't it?
• If you have the space, try to plant trees in the corners of your garden, surrounded by smaller shrubs. This creates an interesting focal point in the garden. Highlight it further by planting flower beds around it, by trying out various flower bed ideas. Your garden could begin in that corner, and spread out into the rest of the space.
• If you have a patio, an interesting way to incorporate plants into the landscape is to have hanging planters at different levels. The variety in levels, along with an interesting mix of plants, creates the ultimate visual appeal for a small backyard. Moreover, break free of the mundane terracotta pots, and try some new materials such as stainless steel or ceramic pots, to enhance the aesthetics of the backyard. You can also experiment with different container shapes, such as long rectangular containers, or round containers.
• Do not clutter your backyard with too many plants or furniture. Also, to create the illusion of space in a small backyard, try to have a small patch of mowed grass, that is untouched by furniture, or flowers, or plants. A patch of green is not only visually appealing, but also soothes the senses.
• Among the small backyard landscaping ideas, the presence of a water feature in the backyard should not be forgotten. Though it is not essential, it adds the perfect finishing touch to your backyard. As is the case with grass, even the presence of a water feature, particularly with running water, calms the mind and appeals to the senses.
• Remember to incorporate appropriate landscape lighting in your backyard landscape design. While the mornings are taken care of, for a relaxing evening, having the right kind of light is necessary. Do not opt for very bright lights, instead place dim lamps along the walls surrounding your backyard for the right effect.

Winter Gardening Design

Just because the garden is asleep doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to do for winter gardeners. Winter gardening takes advantage of little or no plant growth at this time of year to force us to concentrate on admittedly less attractive, but equally important tasks. There are many things you can do this time of year to make sure that your winter garden turns into the spring garden of your dreams.

*If the cold permits, use the winter in the garden to work on structure and hardscaping. This is a great time to plan or build arbors, built in seating, edging and paths. Winter allows you to see the bones of the garden to help you visualize where it needs some hardscaping. Perhaps your paths need to be redirected, or you see a spot that could use a trellis and some height. Take advantage of the bare winter garden to provide your plants with a background and structure.

*Use this time to redesign your flower beds. If you haven’t already created a garden notebook, now is a good time to start. Draw a diagram of each part of your garden, and mark the spot of the flowers, shrubs and bulbs. You may have to add items as spring approaches, and up pops that plant you had forgotten about! Get a basic layout of your garden, and consider what worked last year, and what didn’t. Note blank spots in the garden, and use paper templates to try new combinations of flowers within your beds. Color your paper templates to help you visualize the effect on the garden. Make a separate page for each plant you have in your garden, and note as much information as you can about it.

Vegetable Gardening Design

The Rewards of Vegetable Gardening

If you love to have fresh produces in the spring and summer, you should consider creating a home vegetable garden. Growing a vegetable garden is a fun and healthy hobby that anyone can excel at.

While gardening, you may find that your troubles and stresses of the day simply float away. Home vegetable gardening relieves stress and allows you to be out in the sun. Vegetable gardening is proven to lower blood pressure and clear the mind. Also, the act of nurturing plants and watching them grow is rather soothing. And it can look good too!

The Pros of Organic Gardening

One great aspect of home vegetable gardening is that it does not require a bunch of chemicals. Therefore, home vegetable gardening allows you to have more natural, juicy, and healthier vegetables that are also better for the environment. Using a lot of chemicals on vegetables is not only unhealthy for your body, but also takes a large toll on the environment. Growing your own vegetable garden and using less chemicals yields natural food.

Organic vegetables are always the best-tasting because they will not be picked until they are completely ripe and you are ready to pick them. One more pro of growing your own organic vegetable garden is that it will save you money. Instead of buying all your organic vegetables at the store, you will have your own selection of vegetables at your disposal whenever you want them.

Small Home Garden

the small garden design begins and ends with thoughtful, precise planning. However, small does not mean limited. A small garden design can still deliver a huge “wow” factor.

Small Garden Design: The Problems

A small garden design comes with big challenges. Perhaps your property abuts the two-story blank wall of a neighbor’s townhouse. Maybe the space is all straight lines and right angles. Or you’ve remodeled your home, changed the elevation, added a new room and reduced the size of your backyard, all of which affect the relationship to the existing landscape.

Turning Liabilities into Assets

With small garden design, as with all landscape design, the goal is to create spaces in which the home and architectural elements have a relationship with the yard and surrounding area. First, consider the big picture—your assets and liabilities. Begin by looking at the large, possibly immoveable factors, such as trees, a long fence-line or pool equipment, and decide if they are liabilities or assets. In this way, you test the viability and capacity of the site, a determination that will help clarify your landscape design options. Landscape designers or landscape architects can bring expertise and experience to this process.

Small Garden Design: Features to Consider

• Hardscapes. Decks, patios, pergolas, arbors and gates can be used to help define a small space, break it up or create interest. These choices, in effect, create other rooms. Your material selection adds further texture, thus making the space livelier.

Home Garden Pictures

Not all garden pests are harmful for your garden. Some garden pests, in fact, provide excellent pest control to protect your plants from other quite harmful insects. Isn’t nature wonderful? Here are 5 well-known garden pests which you wouldn't object to having in your garden. Some very useful techniques are also offered on how you can attract these insects that are in your area over to your garden.

1. Praying mantis. Praying mantises are regarded as the consummate small-sized predator. They are something to behold in their natural environment. The manner in which they hunt down their prey is methodical and meticulous. This makes them efficiently dangerous for other garden insects, but they are never dangerous for your garden. They harm it not at all.

Praying mantises can immediately put a stop to any pest infestation that may have started in your area. As a matter of fact, most gardening shops sell praying mantises for this purpose alone. That’s how useful they are.

2. Ladybugs. If you're living in North America, then chances are very good that your garden will host this kind of bug. They are extremely widespread and so are very common.

Ladybugs feed on soft-bodied insects. These soft-bodies are harmful for your garden. Ladybugs will even feed on the eggs and larvae of these harmful garden pests. This is what makes ladybugs an excellent feature of natural pest control.

Garden And Home

This plant, in some of its varieties, is probably the most popular ornament of the parlor. The ease of culture, its beautiful foliage, its rapid growth, and evergreen character all combine to make it a favorite.

The soil should be a rich loam; the richer the soil the more rapid will be the growth. Yet avoid stimulating manures. Slips root readily, taken off at any leaf joint, and placed either in earth or water; in the latter they will soon throw out roots, and may then be transferred to pots.

The only precaution to be taken in growing ivy is to keep it from frost while in growth and if frozen, to keep the sun away from it, thawing it out with cold water from whatever garden water feature (http://www.garden-fountains.com/Detail.bok?no=2922) you possess. In summer the plants may be set out of doors, and will make vigorous growth.

There are many species, of which the most common is Hedera Helix, the common twining ivy, a native of Europe, of which there are many varieties. The leaves of these varieties vary quite a bit and many distinctions have been founded on these variations.

There are two very beautiful kinds, the silver and golden, the foliage being beautifully variegated with white and gold. The Tree or Aborescent Ivy is merely a form of the common variety, which is shown by its returning to the primal Aborescent form not infrequently. The leaves are entire, and the plant often, retains its form for years.

Garden For Home

The garden should be near the house and away from trees. If it's some distance away from the house, it will not be as well looked after, nor will most use be made of vegetables grown. Vegetables near trees cannot get full sunshine; even more important, tree roots will rob them of water and fertilizer they need to do their best.

If you can, move the garden spot every 10 years or so to help keep down diseases. Proper rotation and use of disease-resistant varieties will help, but sooner or later the old garden spot becomes so full of various disease spores and nematodes that you cannot grow a good crop of many vegetables without use of special soil fumigants.

Soil should, of course, be well drained. Few vegetables can stand "wet feet." A sandy loam with a clay subsoil is best. Heavy clay soils may be made quite suitable by adding heavy quantities of stable manure or compost, or by turning under cover crops, preferably legumes such as vetch, clover soybeans.

Since the best quality quantity of vegetables cannot be duced on anything but a fertile soil, do whatever is needed to make it fertile.

Requirements for growth.

1. Proper degree of heat.
2. Moisture.
3. Oxygen in the air is essential for seed germination and good growth.

English peas, for example, will sprout when soil termperature is only a few degrees above freezing, while seed such as tomatoes will not germinate at all.