Category: Gardening

Gardening

How to Create a Sustainable Garden

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Sustainable Garden

It can be a challenge to work out how to live a life that promotes and encourages sustainability. When you’re surrounded by single-use products and non-environmentally-friendly practises, taking the first step is both frightening and tricky. However, you would be amazed at just how easy it is to create a sustainable garden for your family. Here are a few helpful tips and tricks, used by renovations experts, to start you on the right path.

Get the Right Tools

If you’re not a natural-born gardener, then you may not even know where to start. How about beginning with a few essential tools? Head to your local gardening centre and pick up a compost bin, a rainwater barrel, a shovel and spade, and a soil tiller. These few items can put you on the right path to complete sustainability.

Choose the Garden Location

While you might think you can plant a garden at random and see it produce results, a landscaper will tell you that’s not often the case. You have to factor sunshine, water, and shelter into your decision. If you don’t, then you may be extremely disappointed when the time comes to harvest.

If you’re not sure where the best place might be to plant, then draw an area out and watch how much sunshine it gets during the day. Also, pay attention to moisture levels to be on the safe side.

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Gardening

How Often Should I Be Watering My Lawns?

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Watering My Lawns

It can seem like a bit of a guessing game when it comes to lawn care and when you should mow your lawns. There doesn’t appear to be any “one size fits all” approach, as plenty of variables come into play.

Where you live, your climate, weather patterns, grass type, and current grass health may all factor into the question you’re asking yourself: how often should I be watering my lawns? And have I been doing it wrong all this time?

Don’t Over-water Your Lawns

To keep your lawns thriving, green, and beautiful in what is often a drought-plagued country, you might think that watering more is doing your gardens a favour. It’s not. When you water your lawns a lot, as in, every day, they don’t get a chance to seek out water for themselves and lengthen their roots.

If you over water your lawns, their roots are short, and they are more likely to sulk when you stop watering them as often. What’s more, a damp lawn is an open invitation for moisture-loving pests and disease to move in.

Let Your Lawn Tell You When It Wants Water

Lawns can communicate with you without saying anything, so listen to what they are saying. A lawn that needs water is one that is starting to wilt or change color from green to brown. Read these signs and water when your grass gets to this point. Grass needs time between watering to deliver air to the roots and encourage them to seek water sources deep in the ground.

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Gardening

Getting The Most Out Of Your Irrigation System

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Irrigation System

Experts in everything landscaping, Landscapers Network, have found that one of the most difficult things for landscapers, such as Northpark Woodworks, when designing new garden areas is setting up a decent irrigation system. Water restrictions are common throughout Australia, and it’s therefore extremely important to make sure that you’re irrigation system is efficient, effective and installed properly.

If you fancy yourself as a bit of a handyman, you might decide to install your own irrigation system. While this can save you a bit of money on landscaping costs, it’s important to do some research before you begin. If you don’t, you might find that you’re simply wasting water and that you’re plants aren’t benefiting as much as they should.

With this in mind, Sydney Landscapers Divine Landscapes put together a few tips to help you get the most out of your irrigation system. Consider the following:

Make Sure You’re Not Irrigating The Road

Nothing annoys me more than driving down a quiet street in the middle of the day and seeing water flowing down the road from poorly placed sprinklers. To put it simply, this is a terrible water of water – water that you’re paying for with your hard earned dollars!

The whole point of setting up an automatic irrigation system is to make things easier for yourself. Make sure that you’re sprinklers are well placed (if you have to use sprinklers) and that they’re only watering the areas you want watered. Make sure that they aren’t spraying the street, paths or any other irrelevant area.

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Gardening

Garden Preparation for Winter

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Garden Preparation

The experts at Space Landscape Designs tell us that summer is still with us, but it’s always good to plan for autumn and winter to make sure your garden stays at its best and prepares itself for the next couple of seasons. Many of your plants and shrubs will feel and look good if you give them a proper trim before winter hits. Plants such as perennials and ornamental grasses won’t mind a short back and sides. Landscape plants can retain their shape for the following spring if they get a healthy pruning.

Different Strokes …

Remember – not ALL plants need to be pruned for autumn. If you have rhododendrons, azaleas and lilac, that bloom in spring for instance, don’t cut these back. Just a light trim after they bloom is okay. You don’t want to accidentally prune the flowers.

How About Winter Protection?

There is a phenomenon called “transpiration” in your landscape plants in winter. It means that they lose moisture faster than they can take it in. This can cause severe damage to the leafy tissue of the plants. If this keeps happening over a few winters, the leaves will permanently disappear and that affects photosynthesis.

You can winter protect your lawn and plants with a few sprays to protect them from the cold weather. Perhaps three times is enough through Autumn. These sprays are not 100% fool-proof, but they will certainly go a long way towards protecting the health of your plants.

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Gardening

What Is Green Landscaping?

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Green Landscaping

Green landscaping has nothing to do with just having more plant life. It’s a commonly held misconception that having lots of plants, trees, and turf is automatically going to be better for the environment. You might feel more in tune with nature while you’re enjoying your extensively groomed and maintained yard, but the amount of resources that go into many such areas is astounding.

To do your landscaping in a green way, you could choose someone like Lone Pine Landscapes and enter a mindset of saving all resources, including power, money, and time. A truly green landscape is going to encourage the growth and health of local wildlife, without affected the soil, air, or water in a negative way. These can be great places for family and friends to play and relax, without worrying about what kinds of nasty substances they might be absorbing into their bodies, and without fearing harm of the environment.

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Eco-Friendly

5 Eco-Safe Landscaping Ideas

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green landscaping ideas

You might want a lovely garden to enjoy when you’re relaxing at home. But does the idea of ruining the environment just so that you can have a little piece of nature on your property, worry you? It doesn’t have to! There are plenty of modern, smart, and even affordable green landscaping ideas for you to consider. Helping to save Mother Earth can literally start with landscape design right in your own backyard if you do it the responsible way.

  1. Less Lawn Is Greener?

While you might have less actual green in your yard, in terms of lawn coverage, going without as much grass is really the greener option. Even removing turf that’s already in your yard can save a lot of water and cash. If you hate the idea of having a yard that’s completely void of any grass, consider simply reducing the amount that you have. Replace it with some eco-friendly plants instead, or a walking area that’s sustainable.

  1. Consider Artificial Grass

Okay, you’re probably reeling in horror at the suggestion that synthetic turf could possibly be in line with a go-green attitude. But think about it for a minute; the average landscape that’s covered with grass uses an insane amount of water and other resources to keep in lush and green. There’s also the cost of maintenance, including using lawnmowers than run off petrol most of the time. Your own green oasis is far more resource intense than even a natural garden landscape. If you want to reduce your overall costs and your imprint on the planet, it absolutely makes sense to use synthetic turf and or products such as stone or rocks in your yard. Some areas even offer rebates to homeowners who are willing to do this.

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