It takes some courage, but planting a flowerbed with one color can make for a stunning focal point in your garden.
A color scheme based on a single color is known as a monochromatic design. A garden bed or border so designed has the principle properties of boldness, simplicity, and clarity. It is a style that demands some courage on behalf of the designer - many, probably the majority of home gardeners are frightened off the idea, or believe they are missing out by not stuffing into the bed, as wide a range of color as possible.
Understanding the design function of landscaping shrubs can help you make wiser choices when planning your garden, or adding some plants to an existing border.
When choosing which shrubs to include in your garden, your starting point may be based on your favorite likes and dislikes. As counter intuitive as it may sound, this approach is mistaken. Instead, you can think like a professional garden designer, by allotting a specific design role to each element in the garden, including the landscape shrubs and bushes.
Reaching the level of the top professionals in garden design takes years of study and experience. There is nothing stopping you though, understanding their approach and mindset.
Designing your garden not only involves creating a grand plan from A-Z, but also adding some shrubs or bedding plants to an existing composition. Whatever its scale or significance, any change in the garden should be approached with the mindset and attitude of a professional designer. While not everyone can successfully design a garden, there is nothing preventing you from seeing things as would a top designer.
While one should be reluctant to use herbicides at the best of times, there are two kinds that are especially worth avoiding altogether.
Chemical weed killers or herbicides should be used as sparingly as possible in gardens as a whole, but especially in private ones. Excessive use of them is bad for the ecological balance in the garden itself, as much wild life is deterred from establishing itself, and in the wider sense, is a serious form of pollution.
The best way to derive inspiration from a garden design book, or from walking around a fine public park, is to relax, enjoy the sights, and try to understand the principles behind what you see.
All of us involved in gardening, whether home gardeners or landscape professionals, ought to have the will and desire to learn continuously about our amazing occupation. A stroll in the local park, apart from being a pleasant experience in itself, is an opportunity for gaining just one more insight, or learning something new. This is even more so when one visits some great and famous garden, or even while thumbing through a garden design book. The question is, do you know how to learn from these experiences?
There are uglier weeds than Wood Sorrel, (Oxalis) but not many as difficult to treat. Within a bed of ground cover plants for example, it can be disastrous.
Oxalis, commonly known as Wood Sorrel, is hardly one of the ugliest of weeds. On the contrary, many species are favored perennials in garden beds, with their delicate, clover-like leaves, and attractive blooms. Yet one species of Wood Sorrel, Oxalis pes-caprae, can be in certain circumstances, one of the most annoying and difficult weeds to eradicate.
If you’ve never heard of the Dodder weed, this would be good place to start. For if it gets into your garden, it could ruin it!
The most problematical garden weed that I am familiar with, could quite easily be the star of some dreadful sci-fi horror movie. Commonly known as Dodder, its botanical name is Cuscuta. Originally from North America, it has spread to Europe, the Mediterranean countries and beyond. If you’ve ever seen yellow or reddish string-like filaments, wrapping themselves around low?growing plants, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. Cuscuta has been known to ruin complete crops ? it could ruin your garden.
We usually think of a weed as an unwanted plant in the garden. However, a far greater problem is caused by garden plants that escape into natural habitats.
When people hear the word “weed? they usually think of some nasty, ugly herbaceous plant ruining their flowerbed, such as bindweed or Mallow. Weeds are most commonly unwanted plants because they are deemed “ugly?. Actually any plant, wild or cultivated, is a weed if it is growing where it is unwanted. The worse types are those that are difficult to control. The very worst, are those that are virtually uncontrollable and as a result do tremendous damage not only to parks and gardens, but to the local environment as well.
The naive gardener thinks of the flowerbed exclusively in terms of color. The professional garden designer takes into account other factors as well.
When designing a flower garden, color maybe the single most important consideration, but need not be the only one. Bedding or herbaceous plants have form, size, and shape. Their leaves also possess a definite, visual texture. An excellent way of achieving a satisfying and harmonious composition in the flowerbed is to group together plants whose leaves are finely cut, serrated, or toothed. By so doing, the variety that is attained by contrasting colors is balanced by the unity achieved by the common leaf texture.
Growing annual flowers is not easy in dry climates because of the water shortages. Here are some tips for enjoying flower color, without using too much water.
Annual flowers play an undeniably important role in ornamental gardening. Trees and shrubs can supply flower color at a height that is usually from eye-level upwards, while herbaceous perennials, like annuals, flower at a height ranging from ground level to about a meter. (3ft) While by no means essential for a successful garden, annual plants nonetheless fulfill a number of needs.
