Category — Garden Design

Gardening doesn’t have to be an expensive hobby. Some of the most beautiful gardens I’ve ever grown cost me nothing but sweat and sore muscles – and paid off with the kind of satisfaction you’ll never get from a paid-for landscape. Throughout the spring and summer, I have the pleasure of tending the miniature rose bush I got for Mother’s Day six years ago, the Virginia bluebells that grew in my mother’s garden, the border of hostas that my son dug up from behind a neighboring store (with the store owner’s permission, of course!) It is a found garden – a friendship garden – a special garden that was never planned, and is all the more beautiful because of it.

Building a Found Garden takes a bit of foresight – but just a bit. To start, you’ll need three things:

A Sunny Spot In Your Yard

Location is everything. Find a spot in your yard that gets plenty of sun during the day – at least 6-8 hours of full sun is ideal. If you don’t have a spot like that, though, you can work around it by being careful in your selection of plants. If the spot you want to fill with flowers is shady, look in other shady gardens for plants that do well in the shade.

Simple Garden Tools

A spade and a rake are all the tools you’ll need to get your garden going. If you’re really skimping it, and only can afford one tool – get a 4-tine pitchfork. It’s one of the most versatile gardening tools ever created. You can loosen and turn soil with it, shake out the biggest of the rocks, and even use it to mound earth for trenches.
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Friends, Neighbors and Vacant LotsThe beauty of a found garden is how it grows and what it comes to mean. If a neighbor has a beautiful garden, chances are good that they’d be happy to share a few cuttings for your garden. The woods behind your house or the vacant lot across the street can yield a bumper crop of stones to build walls and borders. Keep your eyes open for plants along the side of the road.

Building a Border From Found Materials

Borders and walls are an easy way to set off a flower bed or garden patch from the rest of your yard. You can use broken paving stones, bricks, and construction blocks – any material that is weatherproof. Simply dig a trench around your garden perimeter that is 2-3 inches wider than the base of the stones or bricks, stand them on end, and pack dirt around them.

Acquiring Plants for a Found Garden

If you have gardeners among your acquaintances, you won’t have to look far at all for flowers, border plants, bushes and more. If you do your building during “gardening season”, you can take advantage of the cultivation efforts of friends and neighbors. If you notice a neighbor out in his garden transplanting or moving plants, don’t be shy. Ask for root divisions or cuttings for your own garden. True gardeners believe in sharing the wealth.

DO NOT dig up plants from public gardens, wildlife sanctuaries, along highways or in public parks. It’s illegal in nearly every state, and many states have protected species of flowers and plants. Stick to friends, neighbors and properties whose owners are known to you.

Among the best plants to propagate from root divisions are:

Hosta – Shade-tolerant perennials that make beautiful borders or ground cover, hostas are easily among the most popular border plants in the United States. They spread so easily that gardeners often thin them by root division.

Iris and day lilies – Like hostas , irises and day lilies spread quickly. Gardeners often thin them in the autumn to prepare for a spring growing season, and are nearly always willing to part with a few root divisions. Plant in the fall and let them winter over – they’ll bloom in the spring.

Virginia bluebells – Wildly beautiful, the delicate violet flowers of the Virginia bluebell open in the sun, and close in the shade. They also grow like wildfire wherever you plant them.

Container gardens can create a natural sanctuary in a busy city street, along rooftops or on balconies. You can easily accentuate the welcoming look of a deck or patio with colorful pots of annuals, or fill your window boxes with beautiful shrub roses or any number of small perennials. Whether you arrange your pots in a group for a massed effect or highlight a smaller space with a single specimen, you’ll be delighted with this simple way to create a garden.

Container gardening enables you to easily vary your color scheme, and as each plant finishes flowering, it can be replaced with another. Whether you choose to harmonize or contrast your colors, make sure there is variety in the height of each plant. Think also of the shape and texture of the leaves. Tall strap-like leaves will give a good vertical background to low-growing, wide-leaved plants. Choose plants with a long flowering season, or have others of a different type ready to replace them as they finish blooming.

Experiment with creative containers. You might have an old porcelain bowl or copper urn you can use, or perhaps you’d rather make something really modern with timber or tiles. If you decide to buy your containers ready-made, terracotta pots look wonderful, but tend to absorb water. You don’t want your plants to dry out, so paint the interior of these pots with a special sealer available from hardware stores.
Cheaper plastic pots can also be painted on the outside with water-based paints for good effect. When purchasing pots, don’t forget to buy matching saucers to catch the drips. This will save cement floors getting stained, or timber floors rotting.
Always use a good quality potting mix in your containers. This will ensure the best performance possible from your plants.

If you have steps leading up to your front door, an attractive pot plant on each one will delight your visitors. Indoors, pots of plants or flowers help to create a cosy and welcoming atmosphere.
Decide ahead of time where you want your pots to be positioned, then buy plants that suit the situation. There is no point buying sun lovers for a shady position, for they will not do well. Some plants also have really large roots, so they are best kept for the open garden.

If you have plenty of space at your front door, a group of potted plants off to one side will be more visually appealing than two similar plants placed each side. Unless they are spectacular, they will look rather boring.
Group the pots in odd numbers rather than even, and vary the height and type. To tie the group together, add large rocks that are similar in appearance and just slightly different in size. Three or five pots of the same type and color, but in different sizes also looks affective.

With a creative mind and some determination, you will soon have a container garden that will be the envy of friends and strangers alike.

If you’ve always shied away from growing roses because you believed their press, it’s time to put away your misconceptions. Far from being the finicky, pest-ridden creatures that they’re made out to be, roses are surprisingly easy to grow and maintain. Roses have five basic needs:Plenty of sun! With very few exceptions, roses love the sun. Choose a spot for them that gets at least six full hours of sun per day, and they’ll reward you with beautiful, showy blooms.

Lots of Water! Roses are thirsty little critters, too. Plan on giving your rose garden a good daily drenching to supplement rain – and add a second if rain is scarce.

Control Pest-y Critters! Roses ARE prone to attract pesky bugs like Japanese beetles and aphids. There are all sorts of natural treatments if you object to a weekly-or-so spraying with a pesticide designed for roses. On the flip side – the only time that I saw major problems with infestations were my grandmother’s prize blue-blood strains. Hybrids and ramblers seem not to be bothered much at all.

Feed them! You’ll get more, fuller and more colorful blooms if you feed your roses once a month with a good, balanced fertilizer.

Pick your roses! Seriously – roses love to be pruned and groomed. The more you pick your roses, the more you’ll get.

So – have you got a spot in your yard that gets at least six hours of sun a day, is close enough to the garden hose that watering is easy, and is easily accessible by paths and walkways? In that case – you have a great spot for a rose garden.

A few ideas for rose garden designs you might not have considered are:

A Rose Fence Garden
Climbing and rambling roses are ambitious climbers. You can completely cover a chain link fence with a plant every 2-3 feet. Start with bare-stemmed root stock, and train new growth along the chain links and support frames. Within 3-4 years, you’ll have a full wall of blossoming roses.

A Corner Rose Garden
Got a bare, sunny corner in your yard? It’s the perfect spot for a climbing rose garden. Start with a few large boulders or rocks, plant 3-5 ground-cover or rambling roses, and stay out of the way. Within a few years, you’ll find you’re spending more time containing them than trying to make them grow.

A Centerpiece Rose Garden for Your Front Entrance
My mother gets credit for this one. She simply planted a rose bush at the base of her driveway lamp, and trained a few stalks to grow up along the lamp post. The result – stunning! Red roses twine around the pole, and over the top of the lamp and spill around the ground at its base.

A Patio Rose Garden
Miniature hybrids and tea roses are quite happy growing in terracotta pots and other containers. If you have a sunny patio, try filling a large strawberry jar with a couple of tea rose bushes, and plant the pockets with trailing alyssum and purple lobelia.

A Mixed-Up Rose Garden
Roses love to share – especially with garlic and onion plants. The tall, spiky foliage of onion, garlic and chive sets camouflage leggy rose stalks. Add a border of low-growing ground cover, and let the roses provide shade for shrinking violets and impatiens. Added bonus: garlic and onions keep away many rose pests.