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Steve Boulden - EzineArticles.com Expert Author
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- Environmentally Responsible Lawns
[News-and-Society:Environmental] Most lawns are far from being environmentally responsible and friendly. Their constant demand of water, dependence on chemicals, and need for insecticides and herbicides, makes them more of an environmental casualty than anything else.
- Design Your Landscaping With Christmas Decorating in Mind
[Home-and-Family:Holidays] Decorating for Christmas and other holidays is a big deal to a lot of folks. And so planning electrical access into the landscaping specifically for decorations can prove to be a convenience when it comes time to decorate the yard for the holidays.
- Small Garden Design Considerations
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] A garden, even a small one, can accent and add beauty to a home. With a little focus on detail, you can make a nice little garden in an unused corner or even an area as small as a table top.
- Landscaping For Outdoor Cooking, Dining and Entertaining
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Does your landscaping plan take outdoor cooking and dining into account? If not, you might consider the benefits of adding a barbecue or outdoor kitchen to your garden or landscaping. Here are some great design and placement tips and ideas.
- Designing Tips For the Desert Landscape
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Natural desert planting has great visual strength. To reduce transpiration and conserve water, Nature has rolled out a whole bag of clever tricks. Read on to find out more about desert landscaping.
- Make Your Garden a Bird Friendly Zone
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] If you want an even closer relationship with the local bird population, you can provide them with a home. Nesting boxes can be either home made or purchased from garden centers.
- Planting Small Courtyards to Avoid Claustrophobia
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Being closed spaces, small courtyards generally have very defined and hard boundaries. With little else to work with, plantings provide a necessary design element.
- Creative Support and Care For Climbing Roses
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Are roses the most admired of all plants? It is difficult to know how to prove it, but just looking around seems to suggest it's true. You can even find space for a display of climbing roses in a quite small space by simply providing a structure for them to climb on.
- Landscaping Ideas From Assessing Family Needs
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Your outdoor landscaping can provide a natural and functional extension of your home if designed to consider your family's needs. It can be helpful to take a poll of your family members to see what they want or what they don't like.
- Landscaping For Access Areas
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Walkways, privacy hedges, shrubs, border gardens, edging, fencing, trellises, screens, and railings are just a few ways to guide traffic to and through your access areas? Want more ideas? Read on.
- Espalier - How to Build Garden Espaliers
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] The word "espalier" is both a verb and a noun. It means to create a wall of fruit. That is done by creating a framework to support the limbs of the fruiting plant. The structure can be free-standing, in the middle of a lawn or garden plot; or it can be erected against an existing (preferably south-facing) wall that will provide warmth and shelter, as is often done in more northern areas.
- Designing Roof and Balcony Gardens
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] One of your first thoughts in planning a balcony or roof garden should be to research the construction and strength of the building. Can it take the weight of the materials you'll use?
- Patio Design and Effects of Color
[Home-Improvement:Patio-Deck] In patio design, If you want your patio to have a light, bright look you need to take care that you do not mix too many colors. Real brightness requires that you use a bright color sparingly.
- Patio Design - Creative Functional Furniture Ideas
[Home-Improvement:Patio-Deck] Generally, on most patios, seating and furniture is a necessary element. With a little thought, you can add some style with functionality to your patio with the right furniture choices.
- Patio Design Ideas - Creative Shade Awnings
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Patios are generally designed to catch the sun. Not necessarily, in warmer areas, the heat of the midday sun, but enough sun to give you that good sense of relaxation and well being that we get when exposed to lots of vitamin D. Patios are also a hub for family-centered activities: a place for meals; for children to play; for lengthy conversations that lead to important decisions; and for friends to gather outside around the barbecue.
- Successfully Growing Container Succulents
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] For succulents, cacti, and other plants, one of the joys of growing in containers, especially indoors, is the process of choosing the containers. You can choose whatever complements your interior decor.
- What to Plant For Creative Garden Design
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] When creating garden and landscape design planting ideas, there are always a lot of things to take into consideration. What functions you want your plants to perform should always be one of the first on the list.
- Plant Collections and Creative Alpine Gardens
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Alpine gardens are often the result of a collectors passion. Plant collections can be more or less broadly defined to include whole plant families or just the cultivars of a particular species such as Alpine plants.
- Yellow Plants in Creative Landscaping
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] In the garden and landscaping, yellow is one of the most visible colors of all and it always gets noticed. So where and how you place it is important and deserves consideration. Here are some real good tips for using yellow plants.
- How to Avoid Hiring Bad Landscaping Contractors
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] When hiring a landscape contractor, It's not a good idea to completely trust the word of any single source and especially the companies who provide a list of pre-screened and pre-qualified contractors. Do your own homework.
- Strictly Formal Gardens, Symmetry and Neatness
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] With formal gardens, man's landscaping effects are not disguised. Instead, they are emphasized, with straight lines, mirrored curves and a balanced appearance. And there's more. Read on.
- Creative Hardscaping With Retaining Walls
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Much easier to plan for and install are stone or rock walls which most often serve as informal dividers between certain areas. Retaining walls are generally an easy do it yourself project.
- Developing a Landscape Plan
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] It is not always easy to visualize all aspects of landscape design without a plot plan that is scaled-to-size. If it's a new property, it will help you to familiarize yourself with the site. If it's an existing landscape overhaul, drawing your plan will help you to be more creative.
- Creating Activity Areas in Landscaping
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] General landscape theme and specifics of garden bed shapes, placement, and layout need to be functional as well as aesthetically pleasing. Planning your landscaping activity areas just takes a little planning and thought. Let's see what else it takes.
- Designing Outdoor Garden Living Spaces
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Your outdoor living spaces and gardens should suit your family's lifestyle as well as be an extension of your home. Such outdoor areas should be designed to maximize their space and be functional for the types of activities you plan to enjoy.
- Landscaping Driveways, Walkways, and Traffic Areas
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] High traffic areas of your landscape, such as driveways, car yard, paths, and walkways must, first and foremost, be functional. Depending on how your house is positioned on your lot, you may have a front door and pathway to the street with a side door to your driveway and garage, vice versa, or only one main point of entry for both. Whichever the case, walks, driveways, and parking must be situated to provide easy access from points of entry to your house, garage (if applicable), and of course, the entrance to your home.
- Inspired Patio Design and Decorating Ideas
[Home-Improvement:Patio-Deck] Now-a-days, decorating patios has become a popular way to extend or create another room to the home. In the past, the backyards of our homes were ruled by swing sets, sandboxes, tool sheds and the family dog; but this is no longer the case.
- Artistic Landscaping - Color Theory in Landscape Design
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] When it comes to landscape design, we often mention the importance of choosing colors that complement each other. We can choose colors based on those we prefer, while also picking those that work well with each other, your home, and its surroundings. So, what are complementary colors?
- How to Attract Birds to Your Winter Garden
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Is there a way to keep the birds around your garden during the winter too? Sure there is. Incorporate your garden with a double blessing for birds by planting plants that offer food and shelter.
- Types of Drip and Watering Systems
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Okay, not all of us have the time to water every hanging plant, window box and every square foot of yard. Even if we did, it is easy to predict that most of us have had enough of watering once our hanging and potted plants have been tended. So, what are other viable options for our lawn, gardening areas, vegetable beds, and water features?
- Waterfalls As Landscape Garden Design Elements
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] A landscape waterfalls can be added to flow into your pond, pool, or water garden, be freestanding and fountain-like made of stone, fiberglass, or concrete, or formed by enhancing existing natural water features that exist in your property. If you don't have a stream or pond on your property, it's no problem. Waterfalls can still be designed from scratch or installed by using a kit.
- Add Garden Interest With Pergolas, Lanais, and Gazebos
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Lanais, pergolas, and gazebos. While offering comfort from the heat and adding interest to the garden, they are also good props for hanging plants and climbing flowers and vines.
- Border Garden Ideas For More Color - Less Edging
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Border beds can be created to spotlight long seasons of bloom on a continuum or focused around a one-season spectacular show. They can also be used to delineate visual boundaries or create physical compartments in your landscape.
- Stand Alone Landscape Design Elements
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Garden decor and accents can be created with both functional and non-functional elements. And common elements can also add decorative detail to your landscaping.
- More Considerations in Functional Garden Design
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] In garden design, objects such as sheds or lighting are often considered to not be design elements. However, many common elements can often be used as decorative additions to your landscaping.
- Hardscaping - Deciding Necessary Hardscape Garden Features
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Deciding which elements and features your yard needs can sometimes be a challenge. Giving some thought to the overall theme of your yard may help you choose what is necessary.
- No Green Thumb Needed Garden Features
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] When deciding on the non-plant features for your garden, think about the overall theme for your yard, its different uses, and your needs. This may help determine what features will work best in different areas.
- Big Game Hunting - Being Prepared For the Hunt
[Recreation-and-Sports:Hunting] Usually, if you're like most hunters, you start preparing for the trip the day after you schedule a big hunt. Here are a few tips that might help you get ready for the big day.
- Next Year's Garden Plan - Garden Planning and Planting Ideas - 2
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Get a better idea of how you are going to use your garden during the different seasons. Think about planning your garden around most used functions and times of seasons.
- Budget Minded Landscaping - Landscape Design
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Landscaping on a budget doesn't mean you have to choose and use cheap materials. Here are a few ideas that may help you keep your landscaping within your budget.
- Gardens - Planning Ahead For Next Year's Garden Ideas
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Gardens and landscapes can change a lot from year to year. So good planning and looking ahead is important. Here are a few good tips and ideas to help you plan ahead for your garden.
- Fall Garden Ideas - Checklist For Fall Gardening
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] A lot of gardeners see Fall as a time to start putting their gardens to rest for the Winter. However, the Autumn season is also a great time for maintenance, assessing, and creating new garden plans.
- Fertilizing Lawns - Lawn Care Fertilizer Advice
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Fertilizing your lawn should be an area where you spend very little time. While sometimes good to know, the technical side of caring for lawn grasses is usually more than the average do it yourselfer wants to know. A simple explanation should be good enough.
- The New Fescues - Turf Type Fescue Lawn Grass
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Fescue lawn grasses are becoming some of the more popular turf and lawn grasses available. With new strains becoming available with a lot of improved characteristics, it may be the perfect grass for your own lawn.
- Deadheading Spent Flower Blooms - How to Deadhead Flowers
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Cutting off dead blooms from your flowering plants is known as deadheading. It is a necessary step to not only keep the garden or landscape looking fresh and clean, but to also encourage new blooms from plants that would normally be finished blooming for the year.
- Landscaping Weed Barrier Fabric - How to Install Landscape Fabric
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] How to install landscaping fabric correctly. To get the best results and most years out of landscape fabrics is a two part process. Preparing the project area is just as important as the quality of material you use. Here are a few tips to help in preparing the work area and installing the fabric.
- Plant Propagation Basics, Increase the Survival Rate For Plants Cuttings
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Exact methods of propagating plants with cuttings and best time of year vary for different plants. The best survival rate depends on how and when you take cuttings.
- Rose Pruning For Fall and Winter Color
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Roses work great for a lot of different landscaping applications. In mass groups, single displays, climbers, and in many other ways, they can add a touch of class to the garden that only roses can. If you plan on planting some, it's important to keep in mind that they do need a little care and a periodic pruning.
- Garden Soil - Naturally Sterilizing Garden Soils With Solar
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Sterilizing the soil in your garden isn't usually a common garden task. However, in some instances such as nematode infestation, it may be necessary. Here's a natural method that will give you great results.
- Landscaping Planting Ideas - Additional Considerations
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Simply making your plant choices based on only color, size, and type will generally not give you the greatest success. The best planting schemes aren't complicated but they don't happen by accident either.
- Self Awareness - Only The First Step
[Self-Improvement:Motivation] Self awareness is simply to discover your unconscious actions and patterns and take them to your conscious level. In this way you can better pinpoint which patterns need to be changed by having a clearer and realistic picture of yourself. This also includes strengths, shortcomings, what you think, what you believe, your motivations, and emotional state.
- Basic Landscape Design Ideas
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Before you attempt to create a landscape design of your own, check out this article. It might just save you some time, effort, and frustration.
- How to Find Your Goal in Life
[Self-Improvement:Attraction] Most of us have an idea of what we would like to do with our lives. However, sometimes it's not solid in our minds. And sometimes we may just need to hear what we already know. What is your true calling in life?
- Front Yard Landscaping Ideas - Tips For Foundation Planting
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] When planting in front yard landscaping or any other part of the landscape, there's more to consider than just how the plant arrangements will look. Here are a few more things to keep in mind.
- Front Yard Landscaping Lessons - Driveway Access
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Front yard landscaping is generally about access and functionality as well as beautifying the home. Here we’ll look at designing around the driveway and access areas to create the front yard design.
- Tips For Designing Interior Courtyard Gardens
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Designing interior courtyards requires special attention to the vertical space to keep them from feeling closed or boxed in. Here are a few helpful guidelines to follow for designing the walls of interior courtyards.
- Landscape Fabric - The Limitations Of Landscape Fabrics
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Landscape fabric can be a very useful tool for eliminating unwanted grasses and weeds in landscapes. However, consumers should be aware of its limitations before they buy and use it.
- Landscaping Lessons - Simplicity As A Principle of Landscape Design
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] The most basic and somehow most neglected principle of landscaping is simply to just keep it simple. Simplicity truly is a principle of all art forms. And since landscaping is an art form, the same guidelines should be followed.
- Creative Landscaping With Plants - Yes, Green Is A Color
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Of the many different plants and planting schemes used in landscaping and garden design, the color green is often overlooked as an actual color design element. However, green plants can be a beautiful design element all by themselves.
- Career Testing - Guidelines For Taking Career Tests
[Business:Careers-Employment] Career tests and assessments can be great tools for helping us discover our hidden talents and abilities. However, they also can be somewhat misleading. Here are a few guidelines to follow when assessing the results of your career test.
- Small Garden Design - Creating Illusions Of More Space
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] The efficient use of space is vital in small garden design. You only have so much to work with. And while increasing actual physical space generally isn’t an option, it is possible to make small gardens feel larger than they really are by creating illusions.
- Landscaping Lessons-Proper Placement Of Trees In Landscape Design
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] A properly planned landscape design requires a little vision and thought into the future. As a professional, it’s my job to also consider the mature landscape including any damage and inconvenience that improperly placed trees could create. There’s a little more to think about than you might think.
- Lawn And Garden Detergent, or Garden Soap, or
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] There are few things that our clients question when we go to beautify their lawn, garden, or landscape. Adding detergent to our lawn and garden chemicals is one of them. You might like to know this little bit of gardening wisdom as well.
- Fruit Trees - How To Save Your Fruit Tree Blossoms From A Spring Freeze
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] A single Springtime Freeze can wipe out all hopes of a bountiful fruit harvest by killing the blossoms that are so often premature. If you have just a few trees to protect, you may find this to be an effective method to assure your tender Spring blossoms will mature to ripe fruit.
- Pictures Of Landscaping - Using Other Peoples Ideas To Design Your Landscape
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Most of us look to other peoples landscaping pictures for gathering ideas for our own landscape projects. However, most do it yourselfers search hopelessly and endlessly for an exact picture or design of their own yard. Here’s what you should really be looking for.
- Writing Great Articles? I'm No Expert, But
[Writing-and-Speaking:Writing-Articles] We all have different reasons for writing and submitting articles. However, the requirements for getting noticed, read, and published are the same for all of us. It doesn't take an expert to figure it out.
- Landscape Fabric - Is Landscape Fabric Even Necessary In Landscaping?
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] There is a popular debate as to whether landscaping fabrics are necessary in landscaping or if they even work at all. Here’s one professionals view on the matter.
- The Secret To Healthier Plants? Let's Ask My Grandfather
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Farmers and gardeners of a few decades ago knew a thing or two about healthier plants and soils. This is what I learned from one of them.
- Do It Yourself Landscape Design - Where To Begin
[Home-Improvement:DIY] Here’s one answer to an all too common home landscaping question. How do I start my design? Where do I begin?
- Fall Planting
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Fall planting of trees, shrubs, Perennials, bulbs, and cool weather grasses such as Fescue can give much better results in the Spring.
- Landscape Design - Creating Balance In Home Landscaping
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] A sense of balance is necessary in creating a professional looking landscape design. Creating balance and unity is simple and can actually make designing easier but it is often overlooked. Use these guidelines to simplify your design and to ensure that your garden or landscape has a professional finished look.
- Unifying and Separating Landscaping Planting Beds
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Using neutral colored landscaping plants to create unity or separation in landscape and garden planting schemes.
- Properly Watering Hillside and Sloped Landscaping
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] Eliminating dry spots and dead plants due to water runoff on hillside and sloped landscapes.
- How To Make Moss On Your Landscape Rocks And Garden Statues
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] You can create a lot of atmosphere in shady areas and water gardens simply by adding the element of moss to the landscape. However, natural moss can take quite a while to grow. Here's how you can make your own moss covered landscape rocks and statues without the wait.
- The Basic Principles Of Landscape Design
[Home-Improvement:Landscaping-Outdoor-Decorating] These are the same exact principles of landscaping that professionals use - written so that anyone can understand and use them.
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