Lawn - Rolled And Sowing, Hedges, Planting Large-sized Trees, Flower Beds - Elements Of Your Garden

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Beautiful garden: hopes and disappointments

Completed landscape work in the country. The grass began to sprout on the lawns. I walk around the site, and my mood is getting worse and worse. Where are those tall hedges that designers have been talking about for so long? Where are the even caps of lindens and slender pyramids of firs, thujas and firs?

Instead of colorful and wildly blooming flower beds, some pitiful stalks and dried twigs stick out of the ground. And the lawns look like leopard skin. Where it is thick, where it is empty, and they are somehow wretched. Is it always like this? Or just me? There is a neighbor - and the trees are 4-5 meters long, and the rolled lawns are already green. True, he complains, everything has cost a lot. Where is the exit? Of course, the landscape specialists assure me that I need to wait a year or two, and the picture will change dramatically.

Lawn. There are two ways to make it - sowing and roll. The preparation of the soil for both types of lawn is the same. It is necessary to provide a loose nutrient layer with a thickness of at least 15 cm. It is also necessary to profile it, roll it to the required density. And this is where the differences begin. If the lawn is sowing, then you need to loosen the surface layer of the earth by 5 cm and sow seeds, and when rolling out a rolled lawn, you need to shed the underlying layer (almost to the state of a swamp) and carefully cover the sod. After that, it must be carefully rolled, secured with pegs on the slopes and then spilled again.

Further, in both cases, it remains only to wait. With a roll lawn, the pause will be 2-3 weeks, and then normal operation begins. Walking on the lawn, sunbathing on the grass are acceptable, and regular mowing of grass stand is also required.

With the sowing method of creating a lawn, the first shoots appear in 2-3 weeks, and after 4-5 weeks the first mowing will be required. After that, you will still need to sow seeds on bald patches. Normal operation of such a lawn is possible, as a rule, 1.5-2 months after sowing grasses.

Each of these technologies has its own pros and cons.

Advantages of a roll lawn:

• immediately after rolling, it takes on a decorative appearance;
• a short time is needed for its survival;
• the slopes are sodded immediately after the roll is rolled, i.e. there is no possibility of erosion.

Disadvantages:

• high cost - 1 m2 of rolled lawn is 120-220 rubles more expensive than sowing;
• a small assortment of grass mixtures used for rolled lawns (4-6 types), i.e., mainly fast-growing herbs with a powerful root system are used, the cultivation of which in summer cottages is not always justified.

Sowing lawn advantages:

• relatively low cost;
• the likelihood of careful selection of grass mixtures for a specific area (transition from the shadow zone to the parterre and sports ground).

Disadvantages:

• a long time before the emergence of shoots - 2-3 weeks, as well as the likelihood of lengthening this period due to drought or washing away of seeds by rain;
• a large amount of weeds in the first 2-3 cuttings.

Therefore, I would recommend using both schemes in combination for your site. And in the further operation of both types of lawns, there is practically no difference. One and the same problems in spring are grass clumping and damping off in places where the ice crust forms. In this case, overseeding and aeration of the lawn are done, that is, the operation in this case is the same.

Hedges

In our experience, the optimal height of seedlings should be 40-60 cm, but there are also undersized shrubs, their height at the time of planting may be even less (20-30 cm).

Planting larger shrubs is possible, but undesirable, since the normal planting density for hedges is 5 pieces per running meter. When planting larger plants, the distance between their roots will be significantly greater (2-3 plants per 1 running meter), and such a dense hedge below, as when planting seedlings with a height of 40-60 cm, cannot be achieved in this case.

According to my observations, plants in the first year after planting, especially from containers, gain root mass, and from the second year their intensive growth begins. Moreover, this plant growth is balanced with the growth of the root system, and there is no conflict between crown and roots.

Planting large-sized

Recently, some firms have positioned themselves as unique suppliers of large-sized vehicles. I want to upset them right away. Planting and replanting trees from 3 to 10 and even up to 12 m in height has been known since pre-Petrine times. Therefore, to speak about the exclusivity of such services, to put it mildly, is incorrect. Again, based on our almost fifteen years of experience in the

field of landscape design, I can say that working with large growers requires certain knowledge, experience and love for plants.

Trees with a height of 2.5-4 m with a well-formed and densely packed lump are most well transplanted. These are quite mature plants, and their lump weighs from 80 to 200 kg. Older plants with a heavy lump are transplanted only with the help of special equipment. Unfortunately, the small number of such machines and their high cost lead to the fact that the cost of transplanting one tree with a lump 1.2-1.5 m in diameter reaches 120-150 thousand rubles. In addition, large plants in nurseries must be specially prepared for transplantation. Their roots should be bayonetted (pruned) once a year to form a powerful lumpy root system.

There is one more advantage of planting 2.5-4 meter trees. Unlike their larger counterparts, you can start and continue to shape them directly under your site. And their forms can be more varied and decorative. After all, I really want to, at least a little, but move away from the standard forms that have filled our sites.

Flower beds

A separate and very serious topic, which is now spoken about quite little. The very study of the placement of flower beds should take into account many factors - the illuminance of the site, the soil, the humidity of the site, the purpose of the flower garden, its color range, plant height, plant changes as it grows, peduncles and flowering, autumn color range and many other factors. The choice of flowers depends on these circumstances: annual, perennial, their combination, planting with seeds, bushes, bulbs.

In my opinion, flower beds perform a very important function - they provide a constantly changing background of the site. By analogy with a house, this is a picture hanging on the wall. Moreover, the Japanese have a custom to periodically change pictures in accordance with the season. In the same way, flower beds should bear the stamp of mood. They should show the owner of the site the dynamics of the garden. The garden doesn't have to be tough. Of course, both trees and shrubs change during the season. The size, shape, color of spring foliage and this foliage in autumn - all this has its own dynamics, its own rate of change, but flower gardens make these changes the most harmonious. Moreover, they are not static from year to year. They can and should be changed depending on the mood and state. And as always, perennial flowers are the backbone, and annuals are its living content. Perennial flowering time is short and abundant,long flowering of summer plants organically complement each other. In addition, the flower garden is a great field for improvisation. After all, what has been done on flowers this year can be redone for next year, you can create a new flower garden pattern every year.

Therefore, try to treat your garden as a dynamic environment that needs your constant attention and influence.