Retaining Wall Components Building decorative garden walls is very satisfying and rewarding, as well as being good exercise. We define “decorative” or “landscape” walls as wall less than two feet high. Retaining walls for purposes like holding back hills, supporting paving or buildings, and controlling runoff are more serious projects. Let’s call them “engineered walls”, …
Retaining Walls Solve Many Landscape Problems One of the most cost-effective and dramatic improvements you can make in your landscape is to define your planting beds with retaining walls. Landscape walls can “tie together” your foundation plantings and extend your home visually, enhancing its value and making maintenance easier. They can solve landscape problems such …
How to Succeed with Clematis Vines If you’d like to enjoy the spectacular blooms of Clematis, you need to understand two key points. First, Clematis needs lots of sun but wants cool, rich, moist soil to grow in. Second, Clematis vines want to climb, and are happiest when they can run as high as possible …
Creeping Phlox is a Colorful Carpet One of the first signs of spring is the colorful billows of creeping Phlox in light blue, white and all shades of pink, creeping along rock gardens and slopes. Creeping Phlox is a hardy, dependable groundcover plant that is widely used to suppress weeds on hard-to-mow slopes. Creeping Phlox …
Is Pebble Mulch the Answer to Low Maintenance? Homeowners who want nice landscaping, but dread maintenance tasks like weeding and mulching, often turn to pebble mulch as a solution. Pebble mulching is the practice of covering landscape beds with weed barrier fabric and then spreading a few inches of pebbles or decorative stone. Stone mulch …
Getting Rid of Wild Garlic & Onions Weed control is the biggest maintenance challenge in most home landscapes. Wild garlic and wild onions might be the hardest weeds to deal with. These plants are made to survive most weed removal methods. Wild garlic plants have round, hollow, tubular leaves, with a grayish-blue powdery coating. Wild …
Proper Shearing Multiplies Shrub Blooms If you have flowering shrubs in your landscape, now is a good time to give them some “tough love”. It’s easy for you to double or triple the number of blooms on your flowering shrubs. All it takes is regular shearing once a year, particularly when the plant is young, …
Evergreen Baby Branches Have to Go Have you ever noticed how mature evergreen trees have lots of dead branches on them? They tend to be the lowest ones on the tree. Eventually they rot and fall off, making a mess and leaving unsightly stubs. Not a single branch on a young spruce or pine tree …
Multiplying the Blooms on Flowering Shrubs It’s easy for home gardeners to double or triple the number of blooms on flowering shrubs like Lilac, Hydrangea, Spirea, and Weigela. All it takes is regular shearing once a year, particularly when the plant is young, along with regular feeding. There’s a technique to doing this, and a …
Winter Color – Plan For It At this time of year we’re already starting to get weary of winter’s drab color palette, and longing for spring color. Once Christmas decorations are put away for another year, seed catalogs will start arriving, with their photoshopped, color-enhanced temptations. Sunshiny days will be a rare treat. What to …