6 Tips for Creating an Eco-Friendly Landscape

I'm a big fan of blogs. The life experiences of one individual provide a wealth of knowledge for everything each one of us do every single day.

One of my favorite blogs is the Eastern Shore Gardener blog. While I'm located in the middle of the state, I have plenty of family and friends who live in a very different growing condition than what I see here in central Maryland.

Eastern Shore Gardener author Barbara Ellis published a fantastic article about creating an eco-friendly landscape.  And guess what? Eco-friendly landscapes also cut down on maintenance as well. Enjoy!

Caring for Ground Covers

Planting ground cover on your property requires careful consideration of the best type of plant for the location. Ground covers might be the perfect plant for tough locations but they do require maintenance. To perform the correct function of beautifying your landscape, these plants require fertilizing, mulching and weeding like any other plant in the landscape.

Enhancing the Soil

Plant care begins with soil preparation. The best case scenario features adding peat moss, compost or another type of soil conditioner to the garden bed before planting the ground cover. If not, don't panic. You can still carefully stir up the soil between juvenile plants to add organic matter to the soil. Use a rake, hoe or wheeled cultivator between plants. Strain out and remove any weeds during this process.

Soil pH Primer

Spring is a great time of year to create a plan to improve whole landscape health. Gardens and lawns both benefit greatly from soil additives and amendments. The root cause of failure to see drastic improvement with any landscape amendment is lack of proper planning.

Soil pH is absolutely key to selecting the correct additives to apply to your landscape. Before you purchase a bag of lime, manure, peat moss or anything else, take a soil sample and run it up to your nearest gardening center for evaluation. The minor cost of the test will save so much money and time in the long run, preventing the wasted expense and application time of very costly soil amendments.

Check out this article for more basics on soil pH A Beginners Guide to Soil pH

Photo: Wikimedia Commons,  Public Domain.

Landscape Design for Beginners

The home landscape is a work of living art. It changes with the seasons, reflects the preferences of the owner as well as the whims of change of the designer. Landscape becomes the frame for a home. Landscape design for beginners may seem like a daunting task of thousands of choices of trees, shrubs and flowers. DIY landscape design for beginners includes having a grand plan for the entire landscape that forms a pleasing environment for the family.

Scaled Drawing

Measure the house and any hardscape, permanent features in the landscape. Hardscape includes the driveway, sidewalk, porch, front steps, retaining walls, decks, patios, pool decks or fencing. Use a measuring tape and create an accurate drawing. Before you balk at this, imagine the incredible perspective you will have with this blank slate drawing.