Wildflower Gardening

Have you secretly been considering turning your high maintenance mixed border into a wildflower garden? It can be hard to resist when seed companies are out there promoting their instant wildflower gardens in a can, sack or roll. I spoke with a handful of gardeners who gave wildflower meadows a try. Their efforts to date have not met with much success.
Many gardeners naively believe you can simply scatter some seeds and wind up with a self-sowing meadow of bluebells and lacecaps. In truth, starting a wildflower garden is often more work than putting in a perennial border and it is not necessarily self-perpetuating.
If these plants are truly wild, (weeds, to most highway maintenance crews), why must they be coddled and coaxed out of the ground?

What is a Wildflower Garden?

According to my local Extension office, wildflowers are species of flowers that have shown themselves to be hardy and self-reproducing, with little attention form the gardener. Although they will grow wild or on their own, they are not necessarily native plants. Wildflower gardens are considered a low cost alternative to high maintenance gardening. Many wildflowers prefer poor soil and neglect, making them ideal for tough to maintain areas of your property. My wildflower garden got little attention, so where did I go wrong?

Preparing for Your Wildflowers

Even a wild look requires some planning and effort. The good news is that most of the effort is in getting it started.

• Chose a site with full to partial sun. If you want the plants to sustain themselves, you had better give them conditions they find agreeable.
• Weed control is paramount. Weeds are a successful wildflower garden's biggest threat. Of course, only you can determine what is a weed and what is a wildflower, but for the sake of simplicity I would suggest you start your garden with a clean palette and remove all existing vegetation. There are three proven methods of doing this.
  
  1. Weed or remove sod by hand. If you are starting with a small area or if you are planting where healthy grass is growing, this may be your best option.
  2. Solarization is a good way to kill all vegetation, including most seeds. Mow the area to be planted as low as your lawn mower will allow. Water the area well and then cover securely with clear plastic sheeting, leaving it there to bake in the sun for 6 - 8 weeks. This method relies on cooperation from the weather and you will probably still want to remove the dead vegetation before reseeding.
  3. Spraying a broad spectrum herbicide will kill everything within a few weeks. Be careful with herbicides. They don’t discriminate in what they kill and can accidentally drift on a breeze and wipe out garden plants. Again, you will probably want to remove the dead vegetation before reseeding.
• Till the soil shallowly to a depth of about 3 inches, once the existing vegetation is removed. You don't want to uncover and encourage more weeds. In fact, you may want to respray with the herbicide at this point to kill any weed seeds that may have surfaced.
• Rake and level the soil, leaving the grooves left from raking to help hold the seeds and give them contact with the soil.

Planting a Wildflower Garden

• Packaged seed mixes will tell you how large an area they cover. In general, use 4 pounds of seed per acre or 4 oz. per 2,500 sq. ft.
• Most wildflower seeds are very small. Mixing some sand in with the seed mixture will make it easier to spread evenly. Broadcast evenly throughout the area to be planted.
• Rake lightly again after spreading the seed.
• Water the whole area and keep the seeds moist until they are a few inches tall. A light mulching with straw, peat or compost will help retain moisture and keep the birds from eating the meadow. It’s much like starting grass seed.
• Germination should occur in 10 - 21 days and your first blooms should reward you in 5-6 weeks.

This information is taken from- http://gardening.about.com/od/wildflowergardens/a/wildflowers.htm

Dealing with Rose Diseases

Despite the best efforts to keep roses disease free, there will inevitably be period problems to deal with. Keep tabs on your rose bushes so that you can remedy the situation before it gets out of hand. Be sure to accurately identify the problem before reaching for a spray and start with the least toxic solution. You can read more about organic controls in An Overview of Some Common Organic Garden Pesticides.

The Big 4 of Rose Diseases 

Black Spot: Black spot is a fungus that is very common during humid weather because it is a water-bourne disease. As its name implies, small black spots form on leaves and stems, eventually causing the leaves to drop and weakening the plant. 

Treatment: Choose black spot resistant varieties and be meticulous about sanitation. Water the roots of the rose, avoiding the foliage. Water in the morning, so that splashed leaves have time to dry off. If Black Spot is an annual problem, try a dormant spray of lime sulfur at the end of the season and again in early summer. Once Black Spot appears, it is hard to stop. Neem oil and Sprays containing Potassium bicarbonate are somewhat effective.  

Downy Mildew: Downy mildew is a very serious disease that spreads rapidly and can defoliate a rose plant in days. It is not as common as Black Spot and favors cool, wet weather. Purple spots with yellow edges form , often on the veins on the top side of the leaves and along the stems. Pale gray fuzz can form on the under side of the leaves. The leaves will eventually become brittle and fall. 

Treatment: The good news is that Downy Mildew often clears up with the weather. To reduce the chance of Downy Mildew, practice good garden sanitation and keep the rose plants well pruned for air circulation. As with other diseases, a dormant spray may help.  

Rust: A Rust infection is easy to spot. Small orange pustules spots form on the undersides of the leaves. This fungus can also cause defoliation. Rust is most prevalent when nights are cool. 

Treatment: Treatment of Rust is similar to treatment of Black Spot, above: Good sanitation and a preventative dormant spray after pruning. Once infected, remove all infected leaves and try Neem oil for control. 

Mosaic Virus: Once a rose is infected with Rose Mosaic Virus, there’s not much to be done except check with the nursery for a replacement. Rose Mosaic Virus shows up as yellow mottling on leaves and deformed new growth. It can stunt growth or it can be a mild infection. If there are only a few affected leaves, the plant may continue growing and blooming fine. The really good news is that it won’t spread to your other roses.

This article is taken from- http://gardening.about.com/od/rose1/a/RoseDisease.htm

Gardening in winter…..

What do you think about your garden? Is it so good or not? Are you wanted to spend your time in the garden? Winter is a great time to think about the weather which you are getting mostly from your garden.

You can draw an image of making your garden beautiful in your mind, mostly it’s becomes unsuccessful for your experience. Take your time and do it properly so that you could spend your time happily in your dream garden.

After your busy day you may relaxing in garden if there already have a bed for the winter. If the weather being so gloomy in winter, it’s the perfect time to grow up the plants of the last year and the expectation for the next year. Don’t think about the enough color the planting; think broadly that you could get the biggest picture around yourself all year round.

Everyone wants to make their life like the all TV programs, but you should need to think in your won thought and make it different from others. There need so many space for your garden because so many planting in small place looks very clumsy. You should plant different type and different color flowers.

Outdoor space should be free where you can take relax, entertain and gives your child safety playground. You can put some birds which give you sound delights with them sweet songs. Sunlight is pleasurable in garden for this season. So you have to be very careful about it that sunlight can touch you everywhere in your garden. So small planting is good for your winter garden.

Sometimes your garden path may create anxiety in your mind for staying the path muddy and when it fully dry out it makes you undermine. To solve this problem you can make a lawn in your garden.

May be it possible that it was exactly this time last year you looked at your garden thoroughly and thought about how the whole space worked and how much time you had on a weekly basis. Let’s have a look at its successes and failures, and how to put those things right whilst at the same time balancing the space visually through surface and planting. Put a lot of work into it in the spring, and you’ll really pleas that you could do it.

Brick area and steel blue concrete area may in your garden. You can mix a blue pigment into the concrete when wet and it looks great. You have to make these areas very generous in proportion to the rest of the garden. It makes them all flexible spaces for a variety of uses. We now use the whole of the garden as much as possible throughout the year. The bare soil areas in your garden have been planted up with plenty of ground cover plants, which restrict weeds from getting a hold. You can use landscape fabric to reduce maintenance. It’s worth its weight in gold. You can lay over soil areas and plant through it, and then mulch over with a layer of pretty much anything you like. Pebbles, cockle shells, bark, slate chippings all look good and will also help to visually set the plants off well.

If you follow these tips your garden will match your personality and helps you to feel comfortable in your surrounding. You couldn’t get this comfort in your flat which is decorated like a high quality resort if there haven’t any front garden.

You can feel that your garden is now suitable with your busy lifestyle. You need change decorating in your garden according to your choice and personality. With a little inspiration and application you could easily turn your garden round. This is the perfect time to be thinking about it and planning ahead as it’s certainly not the time of year you’ll want to be spending time outdoors!

In the Swing

 Though many children may be budding gardeners, most of the time they prefer to play. The degree to which you plan your garden with this in mind is up to you. The famous Californian garden designer Thomas Church was once told by a young couple that his design for their town garden had to enable their daughter to ride her bicycle.

 

So Church planned the whole garden around a circular rideway – because he knew that in a limited space riding a bike round and round was more fun that up and down.
The range of garden toys on offer is huge but they don't all sit easily with your flowerbeds and lawn. So a word of advice is look for one toy or play activity that has stand-alone and long-term appeal (like the bike track). And, in the confusion of choice, don't forget that some of the oldest, simplest and cheapest options are sometimes the best. Take the swing.
In my experience children get more hours of pleasure out of a swing than any other garden toy (don't ask me why, I'm a journalist not a child psychologist). Whether on their own or playing with friends, a swing can produce seemingly endless happiness of a kind that always draws them back. This is crucial; the attention span that many toys are able to grab is limited. But if your child is playing on their swing at the start of the holidays they will still be doing so a few days before going back to school.

You can accommodate a swing in almost any garden. If you don't have a large tree you'll need to buy a swing with a metal frame from which it is suspended. We are lucky enough to have a big oak tree with a suitable horizontal branch and I made the simplest, but arguably the most effective type of swing, one with a single rope attached to the centre of a flat board seat.
The single rope means that the swing has less restrictions than the traditional one with two ropes attaching to the sides of the seat. If you live anywhere near the coast you'll be able to get a length of proper rope from a firm of boat chandlers, otherwise go to a builders' merchant.
The seat needs to be a hard wood for durability and make sure the hole you drill is dead centre. Oh, of course, make sure it is very firmly attached to the branch and check it every few months.
This article is taken from- http://www.backyardgardener.com/article/green/729.htm

Gardens of Memory

Plants have the power to remind us of people, places and past times. As we mark Remembrance Day on Sunday Stephen Anderton considers the ways in which flowers, names and scents trigger fond memories

 
Do you ever consider why it is those First World War graveyards in France are so regimented into straight lines? Maybe it’s because to have honoured the war dead with anything more easy-going and naturalistic would have been frivolous. Those men fought for their kind of civilization, and in the straight lines of crosses and trees, a living, civilized, although not natural, order remains. It was the right thing to do. 
I wouldn’t mind having a tree planted for me. (After the event, that is, not yet. Just now I still plant my own, and have all my own teeth and hair.) I guess a memorial tree ought to be something dignified and long lived, something that belongs to a person’s country rather than some flowering exotic from the other side of the world, bred for commercial appeal. In Britain it should be an oak perhaps, or a field maple, or a Scots pine. Even a simple thorn. Something that would make a contribution to the locality as well as the garden in which it was planted. Please nobody put in a flowering cherry for me. The world will think I have left all my money to my bit on the side.
Gardens are full of memories, without ever having to plant for people who have died. There are things in this garden that remind me of people all the time. Under the dining room window is a prostrate geranium, leaking out to form a pool of silver beneath a clipped osmanthus bush. It was given to me by dear old Geoffrey Smith, who visited us in Northumberland and was smitten and besotted with my infant daughter. I see smiling white hair and a babe in arms every time I look at it.

I have big tubs of agapanthus at the back of the house, either side of steps going down from the terrace on to the lawn. The original plant was given to me by Stan Grainger in Hexham, who way back had known Lewis Palmer, the man who bred all the early hardy varieties of agapanthus. This was an unnamed pale blue hybrid, which Palmer had given to Stan, and which he had kept going ever since. The flower stems and heads are enormous. Even when it’s out of flower and only the drum-heads of seed remain, it’s like passing through a guard of honour as you go down the steps. I no longer have Stan’s address. Time and people move on. But I can still see his big, arthritic hands heaving pots about.
Smells bring out memories, too. Whenever I put my nose down to a head of Patrinia scabiosifolia and the gentle rich aroma of milk and cow muck takes me back to the Yorkshire Dales and school holidays working on the farm down the lane. 

From time to time you will come across descriptions of plants that include how their names are derived. Details are trotted out about how Artemisia was named after the goddess Artemis, or that groundsel comes from the Old English for ‘ground swallower’ because it’s such a weed. My heart sinks. It is interesting, yes, but it tells you nothing vital, nothing really to remember the plant by in your gut. People say the way to remember the name of Paeonia mlokosewitschii is that is sounds like a sneeze. Well if it sounds like the way you sneeze, you probably have a bigger problem than remembering impossible Russian names.
It is the personal things, things personal to you, that raise memories of a plant or its name. You may just like the sound of its name. What could be sweeter both on the tongue and on the ear than Angelica archangelica? Nelumbo nucifera - how’s that for an African dictator or the sacred lotus? Or Galax urceolata for a 1930s sleuth, alias a ground-cover agent? Perhaps you’ve just planted a load of bolax? Bolax glebaria, to be precise. It’s not a name you forget in a hurry. It saddens me that now the name has changed to Azorella trifurcata. How do you remember that?
All gardens are full of memories, for their gardeners and the families who live in them - memories of people, and events, and conversations and ideas. According to the landscape architect Kim Wilkie, “place is the merging of lives into land”. That’s why, when you’ve made a garden and lived with it, it is so very hard to leave behind. 

This article is taken from- http://www.backyardgardener.com/article/green/1239.htm