May, 2011
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Garden Design for Novices
Designing your garden and maintaining it can be a very rewarding, satisfying and relaxing way to spend your spare time. Even the most neglected piece of land can be turned into a beautiful, productive garden, full of colour, wildlife and places to sit and relax. If you are interested in gardening or are keen to undertake some garden design at home, then this article is for you. If you want to create the garden of your dreams and learn how to maintain it successfully then read on…..
Successful garden design
Planning the best garden begins with deciding what the space is to be used for. It may sound obvious, but many people fail to consider this simple concept. Do you need an area for your children to run around in? Are you interested in growing your own fruit and vegetables? Do you need a shed to house your tools and gardening equipment? These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself when planning your garden. Having mapped out your goals you need to think about how much time you want to spend maintaining the garden. If you are someone who likes to get stuck in and is looking forward to getting their hands dirty then you may want a variety of flower beds and vegetable beds. If you prefer to look at your garden rather than work in it then you may be happier with a nice terraced or paved area with just a few pots and other items of interest, reducing the need for excessive garden maintenance.
It is a good idea to get a paper and pencil out at this point. Maybe a quick sketch can really help you bring your ideas to life. Nothing fancy is needed here – perhaps you could plan where the beds will be and the lawn. If you require a patio area, you could add it to the sketch, or a pergola maybe. You could get help with this part of the equation by a specialist company if you are drawing a blank.
Ongoing garden maintenance
You should remember that it is not just the initial work that will need to be undertaken to create the perfect garden. Ongoing maintenance will undoubtedly be needed. Depending on how you design your garden will depend on how much maintenance work needs doing, and how regularly. If you dream of a cottage style garden then there are always going to be beds to weed, plants to deadhead, trees to prune, hedges to trim and so on. If you are pushed for time, are you really going to be able to carry out all the necessary tasks?
Some gardens don’t require a large amount of work. This is especially true of those that rely on non-plant related features such as water fountains and statues. It is possible to create an interesting and unique space in even the smallest garden without using too much greenery. Decking is another great way to enjoy your garden without needing to spend too much time working in it. Add a few pots here and there, perhaps a small fish pond, and you have a contemporary and relaxing environment in which to read a book or entertain friends.
Garden services
However, there is a third option. This allows you to have any garden you want without having to do a lot of work – hire a company to do it for you. There are companies who can do garden maintenance for you. They can clean out the pond, water the plants, deadhead the roses, prune the trees, harvest the fruit and vegetables, mow the lawn…..the list really does go on and on and includes all garden design too. This is a fantastic option for those who don’t have the spare time to carry out the work themselves but want to enjoy a beautiful garden at home.
However you choose to design, maintain and enjoy your garden, make sure you end up with a space that you enjoy and can’t wait to spend time in, regardless of whether that is with some secateurs or a good book and glass of wine in your hand!
Kathryn Dawson writes articles for Bristol Garden Services, a landscape gardening and garden design providing Bristol garden maintenance to customers at reasonable costs. Let their professional and welcoming team help you with your garden fencing Bristol. Bristol Garden Services are passionate about gardening and have grown their business on their reputation for being friendly and reliable. The company has been building and maintaining gardens since 1980.
Article from articlesbase.com
The Hard and the Soft ? An All Round Picture of Landscape Garden Designs
English garden designer, Dan Pearson, recently gave a half-day symposium at the Chicago Botanic Garden and talked about his design philosophy and his book Spirit: Garden Inspiration.
Video Rating: 5 / 5
Did you know that landscape garden designs are made up of two discrete elements? That it is these elements, working together, that produce the finished article, that blending of nature and order that we humans like to call a garden? One would have supposed (at least, this one would have supposed) that “landscape gardening”, as a term, applied basically to the arrangement of plants and trees and grass and what not into a vaguely pleasing scheme. Actually, landscape gardening involves a total rearranging and ordering of an outdoors environment, where two distinctly opposed strands bind together to form a coherent whole.
The first strand of landscape garden designs, unsurprisingly, is the plants- the grass, the trees. The non man made organic matter of which many gardens are mostly constituted. Not all, of course – think rock gardens and patios and you’ll realise that some gardens are only very slightly made up of plants. The “soft” elements of a garden, referred to collectively as soft landscaping, are everything that grows in it. A landscape gardener will arrange these elements so as to present a coherent feeling or view, often with several different, seasonal, views incorporated. These elements might not all hail from the same country of origin, or have the same nutritional requirements. Effectively, soft landscape garden designs strive to create an ecosystem that one is not likely to find outside the fences and borders of suburbia – where plants from all sorts of background are drawn together for their beauty, either in terms of colour or shape.
The second strand of the landscape garden design is the stuff that doesn’t grow- rocks, fences, trellises, sheds. This stuff, the man made stuff, is called hard landscaping, and it’s what gives every garden its definite status as a garden. An arrangement of plants without borders, after all, isn’t really a garden – a garden needs beginnings, endings and divisions otherwise it loses the control the gardener has sought to impose on Nature. Hard landscape garden designs, or rather the hard landscaping elements of garden designs, involve stamping a definite human hand on the wild world – putting paths through it to show where a person should walk; putting a fence around it to show where outsiders cannot walk; and putting a shed in it to enable safe storage of the tools used to prevent all those plants from “growing wild”.
That’s a phrase often used in the gardening world, and a very telling one at that. The whole point, it seems, of landscape garden designs, is to take the wilderness out of the wild. One cannot have plants “growing wild” in gardens, because that would mean that the gardener has lost control – that all the plants he or she has tried to civilise, by pruning and cutting and bedding and hemming the lot in with paths and borders and fences, have revolted, risen up, returned to Nature.
Landscape gardening is an epic and beautiful thing – a constant struggle against the over enthusiastic fertility of the world, an attempt to keep that world nicely ordered. The best landscape garden designs do this almost without thinking – and they do it by blending the natural and the man made in perfect proportion.
Landscape garden designs allow one to use colour, seasonality and growth rate to create an ever changing, ever growing living picture.
Article from articlesbase.com
How To Refinish Wood Furniture
www.schneidermans.com One of most common questions we get asked here at Schneiderman’s Furniture is “What is the difference between solid wood and veneered wood furniture?” One is not necessarily better than the other. In this video Chad & Susan from Schneiderman’s show us what to look for in a piece of wood furniture and how to decide what’s best for you.
Video Rating: 0 / 5
Solid wood furniture often holds a special place in our homes and lives because it is so durable and beautiful and can easily be passed down from one generation to the next. Well built solid wood furniture is harder to come by these days and often costs a small fortune when bought new. More and more people are finding and buying older pieces of furniture and refinishing them to bring them back to their former glory.
The process of taking and old piece of wooden furniture that has been neglected or forgotten and restoring it to a beautiful piece of furniture can be time consuming and frustrating at times, but it can also be incredibly rewarding when you’re done. Here are the general steps required in refinishing a piece of wooden furniture:
1. Pick a piece of furniture – The first step is obviously having a piece of furniture to refinish. If it is the first time you have tried such a project it should probably be something relatively simple in design and without a lot of ornate decorations. You may also want to avoid trying your hand at refinishing priceless antiques and furniture that is in need of extensive repair. A simple chest of drawers or a single chair is a good start. Assess the piece of furniture and make sure it is mostly sturdy and able to be refinished. A flea market or large garage sale is sometimes the perfect place to find old dressers or toyboxes that have been painted over but are just waiting to be refinished.
2. Removing the finish – Now that you have a piece of furniture you’ll want to remove the existing finish. Often this finish is paint and it can be removed several ways. Using a chemical paint stripper that is made exclusively for wood is a good start, but you’ll also need a lot of elbow grease, some steel brushes and a paint scraper to really get that paint off. This is sometimes the most time consuming part of the entire job. Once you begin to remove the finish you should try to identify what type of wood your furniture is made out of because that may affect how you sand and even how you ultimately refinish the piece.
3. Sanding – Once the majority of the previous finish has been removed from every square inch of your piece of furniture you can begin sanding it. Typically you sand with a lower grade grit (lower number, rougher sanding) and move up to higher grades. Yes, you will sand the same piece multiple times. First you may go over a piece of furniture with an 80 grit piece of paper and then you may go over it again with a 120 grit sandpaper and then you may go over it a third time with a 220 grit sand paper. The “grit” refers to how many grits of sand are in a square inch of the paper. The higher the grit the smaller the sand grits and the smoother the sanding job. You sand a piece of wooden furniture for several reasons. You are removing any excess finish and you are also preparing the wood for the next finish. Be careful about over sanding! Some stains and finishes actually have a hard time adhering to a wood surface that it too smooth.
4. Repair – Once you’re done sanding you should check the piece over and make any structural repairs if they are needed. Check dovetail joints to make sure they are tight and consider replacing any metal hardware if it is not functioning properly or could damage the wood of the furniture.
5. Finish – Finally, you can now apply a finish to your new piece of furniture! There are several different options for staining from water based to oil based to Gel stains. They all have advantages and disadvantages and the stain you choose may depend upon the type of wood you’re working with and refinishing. After applying several coats of stain you’ll then want to add a protecting coat which will also depend up the type of wood and the type of stain you are using.
The process of refinishing a piece of wood, no matter how large or how small, is a long one which often requires a lot of patience, a little bit of creativity and a fair bit of persistance. Many people find that once they’ve refinished one piece of furniture that they can’t wait to find the next piece of wooden furniture to fix up and refinish!
Visit HomeImprovementsDepot.com to explore more online home improvement tips and tricks for the average homeowner and amateur handyman.
Article from articlesbase.com
San Francisco Garden Design for Nature and Beauty
Many rain garden designs are present at different locations all over the world. The beauty of this rain garden design is that they help in improving the atmosphere in and around the surroundings. Moreover, there are some impeccable rain garden designs in the San Francisco city of the California state in the United States of America. The city is famous for these rain gardens and their mesmerizing designs, which pull the tourists from all over the globe.
San Francisco garden design is popular for their silent atmosphere, which is unique and suitable for the art of meditation. The garden designs have a major impact on the lifestyle of the people at San Francisco, as there are many houses, which are present in the middle of these gardens. Houses are surrounded with the type of garden design that the dwellers prefer.
Rain garden design is the most famous type of garden design that the population of the city like, as this type of garden design is always helping in giving a fresh look to the house and its surrounding atmosphere. The people also implement some innovative ideas, which help in enhancing the atmosphere in a better way. These are ideas such as growing trees, which have greater shady portions in the garden. The planning of the garden design is very important for the implementation of any ideas, as it has to determine well in advance.
Dedicated gardeners have a special place at their premises in order to have a natural setup of the San Francisco garden design. A yard for spending quality time with family is present in the garden where you can have some special celebrations.
Moreover, the san francisco garden design helps in increasing the value of the property and it has the capacity to turn the surroundings of the house and bring vibrant color. The garden design allows keeping the atmosphere cool and creates wonderful sceneries in the location.
Thus, if in case you are having a plan of setting up a garden design you need to gather information regarding the process of getting the job accomplished.
The Author is a professional writer, presently writing for san francisco landscaping and landscapers san francisco.
Article from articlesbase.com
Amish Dining Room Furniture for Every Home
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Everyone should have a place where all worries are left behind, a place where you can charge up your batteries and get ready for another day of work, a home where we build our privacy away from the eyes of the world. And since not all of us would want their home to look like their office – all steel and glass – there is the traditional way of decorating your home with simple yet elegant furniture that will give it a relaxed and comfortable look.
And if you want to make your home really at home you should consider buying Amish furniture. It is all about great, high quality, hand-made furniture that may not be considered the latest in fashion but it surely is the most beautiful on the entire market. We are talking about furniture made by people who really know how to do it since they have been practicing this craft for some time. Even if the Amish furniture was initially, and still is made for the simple use of the Amish people, this great classical style is in high demand with the general public. And it was just a matter of time until you could find original Amish dining room furniture or dining tables all around the States.
Your entire home can be decorated with Amish style furniture. As obvious as many people think it is for this type of furniture to be designed for your bedroom or living room, you should know that actually every room in your home can be decorated in Amish style. Not only does this furniture come in a variety of materials and styles, but there is also a piece of furniture for each room in your home, including dining rooms, hallways, kitchens, bathrooms, dens, and so forth.
Like all the other pieces of furniture in your home, the dining room furniture is important because this is the room where all the family get together for meals, whether it’s every day’s family dinner or a holiday dinner with all the members of your family. Enjoying each other’s presence is very important, but being in a comfortable room, where you feel relaxed and at home is also to die for. If you think of your dining room furniture in terms of durability and sturdiness, you should opt for Amish dining tables and chairs.
Probably the best thing about Amish dining tables, and the rest of the Amish furniture for that matter, is its beauty, which is given by its simplicity. The dining rooms have this classic look that will never go out of style. Creating the tradition of dining with your family gathered around the same dining table for generations is now very easy, because this type of furniture was certainly made to last for many generations.
The dining tables come is large variety, so as to meet all tastes and needs. You have a choice of leg base dining tables, trestle base dining tables, or pedestal base dining tables, in order to make the best choice according to the space available in your dining room, to the price or simply to your taste of what your dining room furniture should look like.
If you are looking for dining room furniture or dining tables please visit http://www.onlineamishfurniture.com
If you are looking for dining room furniture or dining tables please visit http://www.onlineamishfurniture.com
Article from articlesbase.com
Fall Is For Flowers
Have you ever wondered if what you know about flowers that bloom in the fall is accurate? Consider the following paragraphs and compare what you know to the latest info on flowers that bloom in the fall.
To many people, fall is the time of year when the gardening season is drawing to a close, and it is time to close the flower bed and prepare for winter. Even though most gardeners are ready to hang up their garden tools and get ready for the next season, gardeners can continue to enjoy the beauty of the fall season, since there are a number of beautiful flowers blooming all through the autumn of the year.
There are many fall bulbs available to the average gardener, and it is important to choose the right ones. When initially planting the bulbs, it is important to take care to choose the best location within the garden. It is important to choose a location where the delicate fall bulbs will not be overshadowed by larger plants or hidden in with the surrounding ground cover.
One advantage of fall bulbs, however, is that they are hardy. After they have been in the ground a few years, these bulbs will be able to take their rightful place and thrive in any garden setting.
One of the most frequently seen of all fall bulbs is the hardy cyclamens (Cyclamen Hederifolium). These bulbs are able to come back year after year, and they have been known to last for a decade or even more. In addition, the hardy cyclamen produces breathtaking blooms, and it is generally a very undemanding plant.
Other than a good quality soil, sufficient water and ample sunlight, the cyclamen needs little in order to bloom year after year. Each small cyclamen bloom has a soft pink petal that is complimented by an eye of darker pink. These small blooms are tiny version of the larger cyclamen that is often seen at Christmastime. In the home garden, the hardy cyclamen often blooms into November.
Most of this information comes straight from the flower and gardening pros. Careful reading to the end virtually guarantees that you’ll know what they know.
READ ON! ENJOY
Another popular autumn flower is the colchicum. These flowers usually bloom in the middle of September, and they are similar in appearance to crocuses but generally much larger. Most colchicums seen in the garden are hybrids of either C. Autumnale or C. Speciosum. There are some subtle differences between these two common varieties, and their blossoms come in shades of rose and violet. The sizes of colchicums vary from 10 to 12 inches. While these flowers can be used in many settings, they are a particularly beautiful way to accent a rock garden.
Autumn daffodils are another popular fall flower, and they can provide a beautiful touch of color for the garden. It is important to plant fall daffodils in a well drained flower bed and to provide them with plenty of sunlight. It is also important to avoid planting autumn daffodils in areas where moisture pools, as excessive moisture could damage the bulbs. Autumn daffodils often bloom at the same time as the colchicum, and the two can provide a striking color palette.
This article’s coverage of the information is as complete as it can be today. But you should always leave open the possibility that future research could uncover new facts.
B. Keith Johnson is a contributing author for
Flower Gardens. Visit his other sites for
Product Reviews, Free Website Content and
Free Photo Sharing
Article from articlesbase.com
Caring For Your Wood Furniture
You’ve finally got that solid American grown oak wood bedroom set of your dreams. The high quality is apparent in the way it enhances your home. Made with color-matched lumber from superior regions of the United States and a finish done by hand, your new wood furniture is a sight to behold.
Now that you’ve invested in such a perfect piece of solid wood furniture make sure you know how to care for it properly. Maintenance of hardwood furniture shouldn’t take a lot of effort, but there are steps you should take to avoid wear and damage to the beauty of your furniture.
Sometimes wear can come from things that are seemingly out of your hands. Like heat and humidity. You can’t change Mother Nature, but you can make sure changes in the weather don’t damage your wood furniture.
Try to avoid drastic changes in humidity by keeping a humidifier. Also, avoid long exposure to direct sunlight or heat sources to prevent drying and fading.
Sometimes you can cause damage unintentionally. You’d be surprised but a lot of damage happens during cleaning. You do want to dust to rid wood furniture of dust particles that can be abrasive, but you want to do it the right way. You don’t need expensive products to clean your wood furniture. In fact, it doesn’t take much to protect and enhance your wood furniture.
A simple soft cloth like a baby diaper or an old t-shirt can be used to dust your wood furniture without damaging it. Lightly moisten the cloth with a few drops of water, but be sure not to get it so wet that it leaves wetness on the furniture. The moisture in the cloth will help dust particles adhere to the cloth better.
Never use a dry cloth as that can cause tiny scratches in the wood. When you are dusting be sure to dust along the pattern of the grain. Dust underneath objects like lamps or candles by picking them up rather than sliding them across the wood surface. You may want to occasionally wax or polish your wood furniture as well.
To prevent stains and other damage from normal use, make sure to use coasters or pads. Under accessories like lamps always use felt to prevent scratches. And when writing on a wood surface use a pad underneath paper so you don’t leave indentations in the wood from your pen.
Solvents, alcohol, nail polish or polish remover, and similar substances should be kept away from your furniture. Spilling these items can cause a damaging reaction with the wood or finish.
You’re furniture is beautiful and a fine investment. Treat it as such. Make sure it lasts for years to come by taking proper care of your wood furniture.
Shelly Cone is the owner of Beach Betty Public Relations, she writes for www.ewayfurniture.com. For more information on how to care for your wood furniture visit www.ewayfurniture.com
Article from articlesbase.com
D5 Creation