by Genevieve on March 2, 2010
Thinking of selling your home, or having a party? While a garden makeover may seem like an overwhelming task, if you know where to focus your energy you can get great results without having to fix everything.
Use these four tips in the garden areas most likely to be seen first – near the front door, areas visible from windows or the patio where you might entertain, and next to pathways.
Focus on the edges
Most people don’t see the details of a garden; they notice the overall effect. If you have lawn creeping into your garden beds, or weeds growing along the edges of your garden beds, cleaning up your borders so that you have a clean, simple, flowing line is an easy action that can make a slightly unfinished or messy area of the garden look tidy and cared-for. [Click here to continue reading…]
by Genevieve on February 16, 2010
Douglas Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, wants to change the way we landscape- radically. He’s a native plant buff and makes a scientific case for planting more natives in our gardens to preserve biodiversity.
This five-part podcast (it’s only about 45 minutes long all put together) presented some game-changing info that’s making me really re-think how I garden.
Some highlights:
Bugs are good. They pollinate, birds eat them, and much as some folks don’t like them, it’s not overstating things to say us humans would be in serious danger without them.
Bugs are also very picky. They can sense the chemical composition of plants with their legs, and when it comes time to reproduce, many bugs will simply die if they can’t find a plant with the exact chemical signature they are looking for.
[Click here to continue reading…]
