Weekend Gardener

Blog based on my best-selling ebook "The Weekend Gardener"- The Busy Persons' Guide To A Beautiful Backyard Garden by Victor K. Pryles

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Doing The Obvious


Next, please do the obvious. The real key to easy-care landscaping is to begin with plants that are suited to your climate and to the particular exposure, soil, moisture, and other conditions in which you are planning to grow them. These are what I like to call "happy" plants. They grow better because they find their environment ideally suited to them.

You'll be happier too, because you have fewer problems with them.

Plants, in addition to needing the proper temperature quotient, also remain healthy when they receive the proper rainfall in their natural temperate zone. Going 'native' in the garden is a good idea. Creating a garden ecosystem together with plants that are in their natrual environment makes total sense. Yet, it has been told that Native Easteners will move to the Southwest where the average rainfall can be as little as two inches or under in the desert regions and fill their gardens with water-loving plants that they should have left at the old homestead.

Plants grow naturally i many different habitats--- deserts, swamps, bogs, woods, meadows, and rocky screes. Perennial borders, foundation plantings, and open lawns hardly duplicate such natural settings and many times offer plants far from their own ideal. Therefore, natural settings should be considered as well as native plants when constructing your ideal Weekend Garden.

It is important to scale down your wish list to keep high-maintenance areas small scale. Instead of planting an orchard, plant a row of low-maintenance blueberries. Rather than planting a large formal garden of herbs, which would require a lot of preperation and tending, why not compromise? Confine particular herbs you really want in clay planters.

Another way to scale down the scope of your gardening is to reduce the amount of your property that you will actively cultivate. Keeping your garden on a smaller scale conserves water and reduces tending and maintenance. Remember an open area can often give fine relief to a more ornate fully landscaped section of your yeard. Don't feel like every inch of property must be developed.

You've accomplished a great deal by following the step-by-step outline introduced in this blog over the last few days. You can now say you have truly taken 'new eyes' to your property and given some serious thought to how you wish to proceed. When I did the same project I used a whole weekend just making notes, re-visiting the property a second and third time, refining that list, dreaming and imagining what I'd love to see out there and making my notes.

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