The older I become, the more intolerant I grow of messes. I find this true whether we're talking about a mess in the house or in the shed, on a bookshelf or on a landscape. While I'm too easy-going to join the ranks of the "neat freaks," I've certainly come to view orderliness as an under-appreciated virtue.
The mess of an overgrown garden doesn't annoy me quite as much as messes elsewhere, because it can offer some redeeming value, visually ("the wild look" has a certain charm in the plant world). But if your garden has become a little too wild-looking for your tastes, Marie Iannotti has the answer. "At some point, everyone's garden starts to look a little overgrown," scribes About.com's Gardening Guide. View her tips in this photo...
A container garden will deck out a patio in style during the warm-weather months. But what about winter? In cold climates, does Old Man Winter's return to power spell exile for outdoor container gardens?
Not really, if you're willing to make some compromises to the freezing temperatures. Obviously, the only live plants you'll want to incorporate into outdoor winter container gardens will be those that are extremely hardy and retain their foliage. But if you don't take "garden" too literally -- as in growing live plants -- there are many other possibilities.
Think along the same lines as you would for creating other outdoor winter d...
My prior two landscaping courses covered the basics of landscaping and were geared to a wide audience. The "Alternative Landscaping" course, by contrast, is designed for a narrower, more "committed" crowd who, not content merely to have a pretty landscape, wish to dig a bit deeper and question our attitudes toward the landscape.
Some of the topics addressed in the Alternative Landscaping course include:
- Pest control without chemicals
- Companion Planting
- Earth Day
- Invasive plants
- Organic weed control
Dill Weed
Q & A on Garden Mulch
Dill weed is attractive enough to qualify as "edible landscaping." Like the variegated sage plants, for example, it serves double duty, offering visual appeal prior to being harvested as a culinary herb. Other contributions of dill weed to the landscape include its use:
- In Butterfly Gardens
- As a
Garden mulch is one of the unsung heroes of landscaping, while landscape plants and hardscape get all the glory. You won't call neighbors over to brag about a new layer of garden mulch. That honor will go to, say, a flowering shrub bursting with blooms, or a glistening new deck. But in its own low-key manner, garden mulch is your landscape design's savior -- in more ways than one.Grow Your Own Bird Food
Read FAQ: Garden MulchMore news & reviews:Most people who tend plants in the yard also set out bird food for the wild birds. The two passions almost go hand-in-hand. They can overlap even more if you grow your own bird food, says Marie Iannotti.
No, I'm not talking about growing exactly the same kind of seed that you would find in the typical bag of bird food (although many do grow sunflowers to beautify their yards, then harvest the seeds for bird food). But as About.com's Gardening Guide discusses in this article, there are many flowers you can grow that attract wild birds with their seeds, including:
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