How-To Articles ... Design it
Find out how to do your own home garden landscapingLandscaping Posts
Are you just starting on the adventure of creating your own home landscape? Are you looking for fresh ideas and a new perspective to improve your property? There are lots of ideas here for those who answer “yes” to either of those questions. Find home garden landscaping articles, plant information, and “how-to” garden skills that a homeowner needs to make their dream garden a reality.
Landscaping is certainly an art and requires a certain amount of know-how, but it is entirely in the capability of the average homeowner to accomplish a very attractive landscape with only the desire to plan it out and put some effort into it. In many ways it is like that other domain of home ownership: interior decoration.
Yes, many hire professionally trained experts to design and purchase the furnishings, but there are also many of us who enjoy doing the job ourselves.
Landscaping your yard is composed of the same elements of design and color that rooms within the house utilize. With reference to the information you need as you plan and then plant your yard, you will gain your own set of skills and master the art.
And the garden is, thankfully, very forgiving.
Landscape Infographic
Click to enlarge, for a quick visual overview of steps to landscaping your own property.
Landscaping Topics
Seed Starting Tips
Want a quick cheatsheet for seed starting success? This is it. Grouping seed success tips together in easy viewing format. Followed by links to in-depth articles, if you want to know more. Containers Keep them clean and sterile. Choose the type best for your needs:...
Spring Flowering Spireas
If you enjoyed reading about the five choice shrubs for small gardens, no doubt the Spirea bushes stood out as some of the easiest to grow. They are the quiet supporters of the garden most of the season, but during spring they can really stand out. Spring flowering...
How To Grow and Propagate Lovely Lilacs
Lilacs are beloved old fashioned flowering shrubs grown for their fragrance. Lilac plants come in colors ranging from white to pink, and rich purples, as well as its namesake hue. Syringa vulgaris lent its common name, "lilac", to a tint of purple that is warmed by...
5 Outstanding Shrubs for Small Spaces
Planning A Small Garden: Shrubs You Will Love What makes a shrub qualify as "best small shrub" for your garden? Compact dimensions, for sure, but to add that "certain something", exciting bloom or all season interest certainly factors into the equation. For those who...
List of Flowering Perennials for Dry Shade
The Difficult Spot Dry shade is usually considered a very difficult spot for plants. Under Maple trees, with their heavy shade and shallow roots, or under overhanging eaves next to a building, these areas are less than ideal. We may want to mulch them with stones or...
Sun, Partial Sun or Partial Shade, Dappled Sun, Full Shade
Light requirements for plants are listed in all the resources, but what is meant by "Full Sun, Partial Sun- Partial Shade, Dappled Sun, Full Shade" designations for sunlight? Why Sunlight Conditions Are Important Ilona's green thumb tips Knowing which situation is...
Growing Delicious Greens
Guide to Growing Baby Greens for Good Health Homegrown Salad Mix Source Tasty Salad Greens from Your Own Garden One of the first crops most of us try (and have success with) are salad greens. Because they are so simple to grow they give us an instant sense of garden...
Attract The Good Bugs To Your Garden
Bringing beneficial insects into the garden is only part of the story. Attracting good bugs and keeping them there to control pests or pollinate plants is an important part of organic gardening practice. What Types of Insects Benefit The Garden? Praying Mantis Praying...
Growing the Best Ornamental Bushes with Berries
Most of thoughts about ornamental bushes gravitate towards those which bloom in the spring. We are in love with the flowers of spring, their fragrance and color. Some shrubs are even iconic of the beginning of our gardening season: lilacs, forsythias, witch hazels....
Premiere Garden Ornament: a Lovely Bird Bath
Do You Have Room for a Bird Bath? A bird bath is more than a garden ornament, it is an important accessory for the birds which visit your garden. They need access to water not only for drinking but for cooling off in the summer heat. I don't like to see yard ornaments...
Attract and Nurture Butterflies in a Sunny Garden
A circle of sunshine and flowers to attract a mob of butterflies is dream for many of us. We can imagine ourselves stretched out comfortably in a lawn chair, drink in hand, while entertained by graceful fluttering wings in jeweled colors visit the bright flower beds....
Simple but Stunning Containers
Sometimes Less Really IS More While a container recipe with a range of plant material can be amazingly beautiful, there are times we simply want the flower statement to be powerful and simple. This can give a stunning effect. Especially true when planters are viewed...
Ideas From a French Garden
A video tour of a French garden presents a slew of ideas to create pleasing features in our own home places. (The Aussie Garden makeover at the end of this post lays out how that works, practically). Les Jardins de Maizicourt in Northern France First, let's look at...
5 Points for Successful Homegrown Seedlings
Two big reasons to start your own plants from seed: It is far more economical to have large numbers of plants when grown this way. Varieties that are rare or nigh impossible to source, otherwise, are available. With a little know how most seedlings will sprout and...
New: Fairy Garden Terrarium Ideas
Home Decor at Banggood has glass balls that hang on an iron rod, they have several tutorial illustrations, including this one. Once you have the basic how-to, there are many ideas in filling them with creative vignettes. Pinterest is a treasure trove of ideas, but you...
Milkweed Makes Mainstream
Once, it was a field plant of waste or fallow ground. A weed of wild and unkempt places which delighted only children who were fascinated b the silky down of the open boat-shaped pods. Now, with the decline of the Monarch butterflies, their favored food source,...
5 Secrets for Growing Your Own Seedbank
ou may wish to grow your own seed supply for plants that you love. Perhaps they are hard to get or simply grow well in your garden and you wish to have a continuing stock. If that is your plan here are 5 "secrets" of success to get you started. It...
Top Tips for Planting Trees
Why People Plant Trees Reasons to plant trees are sometimes the same used to procrastinate tree planting. It all boils down to time and expense. If you are looking for a way to improve the value of your property, and making the yard a place for the family to enjoy,...
Spring Container of Bulbs
View the video for: Pretty effects for earliest container plantings: spring bulbs. One thing I would add to the information is that in Ohio it would be important to store the container in a frost free area. Somewhere the bulbs would get chilled, but not frozen...
Why Homeowners Should Be Familiar with Garden Design
Just as the inside of a building needs a design plan and benefits from a sense of style, so does does the property around it. This is an important reason why homeowners should be familiar with good garden design. Style and design aren't just a pretty face for a...
Gold Flowers For A Cottage Garden
Have you ever wanted a monochromatic garden, one made with most or all the flowers in just one glorious color? Here are selections for a golden afternoon of color all season long.
Buddleia Bushes, The Butterfly Magnet
Premier Plant for the Butterfly Garden Buddleia davidii So attractive to butterflies that its common name is "Butterfly Bush", the group of shrubs bloom throughout the summer and lend a graceful note to the garden. The nectar filled, conical inflorescence of flowers...
Blue Sky Flowers
Heavenly Blue Come Down Into The Garden I was traveling the Highway in an area of the Western United States and looking down below me at a home in the desert (to my Ohioan eyes) on to a patch of shimmering blue shining from a circle in the yard. This oasis of blue sky...
Flower Scheme for a Design that Keeps Curb Appeal in the Pink
A pink flower scheme is one of the easiest of all monochromatic plans to create. The use of a single color of the spectrum ensures a cohesive, yet interesting, landscape effect.
Butterfly Garden, Make Your Yard A Destination
Butterfly gardens are simply a collection of plants, butterfly friendly methods, and the addition of a few special features. Anyone can have one in any size space. The magic begins when the butterflies discover it and arrive. Make your own butterfly garden, or a...
Asclepias tuberosa ‘Butterfly Weed’
Butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa, isn't as popular as it could be. Maybe the combination of the "weed" appellation and the bright orange color, but this is really a fine garden plant. Its clear orange brings a pleasing "pop" to the garden, no less for its drawing...
A Tranquil, White, Scented Garden
The White Garden Making an all white garden used to be quite a popular undertaking. Although the idea probably started (in modern gardening times anyway) with Gertrude Jekyll in her book, Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden, it was Vita Sackville-West who created the...
The Serene Blue Garden
While color-themed gardens intrigue in the planning stages, they can be a bit difficult to pull off. One drawback is the self-limiting nature of it... there are so many plants that attract our attention and to reduce them to only one color is quite a task. Then, next,...
