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How To Create A Curb In The Garden - 1
How To Create A Curb In The Garden - 1

Video: How To Create A Curb In The Garden - 1

Video: How To Create A Curb In The Garden - 1
Video: Curb It Yourself 1 2024, March
Anonim

Choosing a form of landscaping

We choose the design of our garden plot in the same way as the design of our house - after all, we also live here, live in close contact with nature. And we create our own world with the help of living colors of plants. In such creativity lies the art of landscape design - the ability to create an organic and beautiful corner of wildlife. But the whole secret is to make your corner match you, your tastes and aspirations. The beginning of creating your own garden comes with the choice of its style. In landscape design, two main styles are distinguished - regular and free.

Any corner of the wilderness can serve as an example of a free style; it is distinguished by the free layout of plants, the rejection of the rules of strict symmetry, the absence of straight lines and clear angles. Of great importance in the design of plots in a free style is the creation of lawns, mixborders, rockeries, unformed hedges and paths with smooth curves in it.

In turn, a regular style garden is laid out according to the principle of strict symmetry, where the straightness of the garden paths and rows of plantings is observed. Clear geometric shapes are an indispensable attribute of regular garden planning.

Choosing the style of your own garden, you are simultaneously choosing the method of landscaping, only in this case, when placing plants in the garden, you can achieve harmony and interconnection between its individual parts. In a garden of regular planning, the creation of flower beds, strict borders, pergolas and straight paths plays a leading role.

Border

Considering the existing forms of landscaping, we see that some of them are completely independent and act as separate elements of the garden or accents, while others are connecting links, their function is to guide the eye, indicate boundaries, shape or emphasize. It is to the latter that the most interesting form of landscaping - a border - belongs. The border refers to the regular composition of gardens and flower beds, although now, with the light hand of European gardeners, it has migrated to vegetable gardens. All this for a reason! After all, the border is like a frame for a picture, it is the final element that not only limits, but also emphasizes the beauty of the plant composition.

The secret of creating a border is simple - it is a uniform, dense and narrow border, consisting, most often, of the same type of plants, planted in one or three rows. The classic border should differ in height from the plants that it surrounds or emphasizes, that is, be either lower or higher, and the height of the border itself ranges from 5 to 30 cm (the border should not be confused with border hedges, the height which can be up to a meter). Most often, the border is used in an ornamental garden and flower garden. There is even a whole group of floral and ornamental-deciduous plants, which are called so - curbs.

The main distinguishing feature of a curb plant should be compactness and short stature. Most often, decorative deciduous plants that are interesting in texture are used to create a border: rich green, silvery, yellow, variegated or burgundy red. The classic European border is a sheared boxwood. This is a truly versatile curb plant: compact, decorative, very slow growing and excellent shearing tolerance. When creating the Summer Garden, Peter I also brought from Europe a huge number of boxwood seedlings for landscaping. One season the borders of the Summer Garden were presentable in a European way, but only until the first winter.

In the spring, the gardeners of St. Petersburg again faced the same problem: from what to create frames for the paintings of the Summer Garden painted with flowers. And the solution was found: lingonberry. This primordially Russian plant meets all the requirements for border plants: undersized, compact and decorative. Moreover, by the fall, the lingonberry borders will be decorated with red berry beads.

So, let's consider the option found by the gardeners of the time of Peter the Great: lingonberry border. Its advantages: durable (possible use 15-20 years), perennial (does not need annual renewal), decorative from snow to snow, tolerates haircut well and grows slowly, can give an additional harvest of healing leaves and berries.

Its disadvantages: a rather long period of creation (with self-cultivation of planting material - up to three years), it is difficult to get varietal planting material, with regular shearing, tangible losses in the yield are possible.

It is not difficult to prepare planting material on your own - lingonberries reproduce well both by seeds and vegetatively. The seeds are completely stratified when the berries are stored on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator for 4-5 months. After that, the berries are crushed, the seeds are washed and sown in prepared seedling boxes with a mixture of peat, sand and garden soil in a ratio of 2/2/1, lightly pressing into the surface.

The soil mixture must have a strongly acidic reaction. The box is closed with glass or foil for two weeks - until germination, then the shelter is gradually removed. The seedlings are ripped open already on the site into the school, into the prepared soil of the same composition that was in the nursery, and a strongly acidic reaction. Growing seedlings takes a year or two.

Vegetative propagation is carried out in early spring by cutting stem or root cuttings. Cuttings are cut 5-10 cm long (with 3-6 buds), lowered with the lower end, removing the leaves from it, into the root former for 12-24 hours, after which they are washed and planted obliquely in a school or greenhouse. The rooting rate is quite high, but seedlings should be planted in a permanent place only after a year or two, depending on their development. For planting lingonberries, in the place of the future curb, they dig a trench 30 cm wide, 20-30 cm deep (depending on the composition of the soil) and the required length.

The trench is filled with sour high-moor peat with a small addition of sand and garden soil. It is better to plant seedlings in the spring, before the buds swell, but ready-made seedlings sold with a closed root system can be planted at any time of the year, they are planted without deepening. Planting can be carried out at the end of August - September. For a good, dense border, both single-row and double-row (checkerboard) planting are suitable. Single row is carried out with a distance of 10 cm between plants, double row - 15 cm between plants and 15 cm between rows.

Before planting, the soil of the curb should be filled with a complex chlorine-free long-acting fertilizer and the subsequent feeding should be started only after a year. From mulching materials, you can choose those that acidify the soil: sawdust, tree bark, pine needles.

Caring for a lingonberry border is easy. Young plants should be pinched for better branching immediately after planting, and in the future this operation can replace a haircut, which is usually carried out on a vigorous curb twice a year: in spring and in July, and on a weak one only in the middle of summer. You should not get carried away with dressings: lingonberries do not like this, it is better to carry them out as needed with complex chlorine-free fertilizers or a solution of organic fertilizers.

The lingonberry border grows over the years, and you will need to think about thinning it, but the excess planting material can easily be used to create a new border or as a medicinal raw material. The lingonberry border is very decorative and functional both in the flower garden and in the garden along the paths, for bordering parterres and flower beds.

As already noted, with the light hand of European gardeners, the border, as an element of regular planning, has also moved to vegetable gardens. Of course, who does not want to see their garden not only as a conveyor for the production of vegetables, but also as a work of art. But here one problem arises: a good gardener observes the crop rotation, what about such a stable thing as a curb? Make it mobile, of course!

And here a vegetable or edible border will come in handy.

For flower gardens, there are types of annual border plants, but this does not suit everyone: it is much more convenient to fill ready-made perennial frames with flowers. A vegetable garden is a completely different matter, here mobility is only welcome, it is only necessary to take into account the compatibility of plants. But there are universal crops related to green vegetables that are begging to take on a new role. Advantages of edible borders: they are created very quickly, are decorative all the time of their growing season, do not require individual care, can be easily removed or transferred to another place.

Cons of edible borders: short shelf life, dual use - food and decoration. The border of late-ripening head lettuce looks great not only in the garden, but also in the garden and even in the flower garden. Dense and bright lettuce leaves serve as a wonderful decoration, moreover, the salad is compatible with almost all garden crops. In order to extend the life of the salad border, the seeds should be sown immediately to a permanent place. The lettuce plant tolerates short-term frosts well, while after thawing its leaves do not lose their decorative and taste qualities.

Thinning for food can start immediately after germination or wait a month. In the thinning phase, the head and half-head varieties are used for food as leafy ones. We focus on the final distance in the row of 20-25 cm. On the 60-70th day after germination, the salad acquires a marketable form inherent in its variety, but even then, having reached ripeness, modern varieties do not coarse for a long time and do not go into the arrow, but remain very decorative and tasty (for example, late-ripening half-cabbage salad of Azart variety).

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