Design Tricks For Busy Gardeners (Part 2)

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

Read the first part of the article

Creator of his garden

Curbs and mulching

As a rule, flower beds and various kinds of decorative compositions look much more impressive if they are slightly raised above the soil level and are fenced off from the rest of the territory by a border. These can be special (usually plastic) fences in the form of a wide tape or a small solid fence - it is not a problem to purchase prefabricated structures for such a fence today.

If you have the strength and desire, then the curbs can be built on your own, and here your imagination is limited only by your material capabilities. You can dig so-called curb stones or tiles around the perimeter of the composition, make decorative support walls from bricks, wood, concrete, crushed stone. You can even be sophisticated and set up terraces with wattle fences. Even ordinary moss can be planted as a curb - there are a lot of it on the edges and gas routes. Curbs from the spectacular shapes of low-growing moss are formed very quickly and at no extra cost to your wallet. They look more interesting when they are made along a complex curve, and not in a straight line. There is no need to take care of the moss curbs, it is only important to water it from time to time, and the moss becomes simply luxurious on the garden soil. By the way, and to acidity, as it turned out,he is indifferent and grows calmly not only on acidic, but also on neutral garden soil. One thing is bad: moss curbs are not suitable for everyone. For example, in our cold and rainy Ural climate, such moss borders adorned my compositions for ten years, and then in one year with an abnormal drought, when we had limited opportunities for watering, all the moss, to my great regret, completely died. So nothing lasts forever under the moon …So nothing lasts forever under the moon …So nothing lasts forever under the moon …

It is also interesting to use a kind of mini-borders inside flower beds and compositions as delimiters between plants. These can be small groups of stones, as well as roots of an unusual shape, spectacular driftwood and branches that simply add volume and make the compositions more impressive (scientifically, by the way, picturesque compositions using roots, snags and branches are called "rutaria"). Separate stones (in addition to fulfilling their main task as a decorative element) can help in caring for a flower garden, since they can be used for support when you need to reach a plant far from the path. In turn, the roots and snags cover the soil and are thus a kind of mulch, because weeds do not grow under them (of course, we are not talking about malicious perennial weeds), moisture is retained better,and you do not need to loosen. In addition, by using small stones and driftwood, interesting transitions between plant groups can be created. At the same time, some groups of plants can be planted at a higher height, some at a lower one, which gives the flower garden a special charm. Of course, you can't create an alpine slide that way, but for placing low plants with insignificant differences in height, this technique may be the most suitable.

Another, in my opinion, an almost obligatory element of compositions should be mulching material. Why? Again, for reasons of saving time and effort. After all, the presence of mulch will save you not only from weeding, but also from loosening and additional watering. You can mulch the soil between the plants with peat, small pebbles, brownish decayed wood (this is easy to find inside rotten stumps) or needles. The soil in flower beds, mulched with cedar husks and shells, or finely chopped branches, or wood chips looks very beautiful. By the way, you can make such mulch yourself without much effort if you start a garden shredder on your farm. True, here it must be admitted that beautiful mulch is not obtained from any branches (it is better to take rather thick ones and lie down for a couple of weeks after cutting). Beautiful mulch is obtained from spruce branches, large pieces of bark and crushed spruce cones. You can also use decorative stones and pebbles to mulch individual elements of the compositions.

Mixed landings

Often, avid gardeners and gardeners do not have a separate place for landscape compositions, because the entire area is occupied by crops that are more important to them (and in my opinion). But this is not scary, because you still will not find time and effort to build some grandiose decorative compositions. But you may well be able to find opportunities for ennobling some small patches of land, possibly partly occupied by more important crops. In reality, this may be quite enough to decorate your site. Remember that there is no corner in your garden that cannot be decorated with suitable plants.

For example, you can safely turn narrow areas of soil along the main paths or at the entrance to the site, near which some berry bushes, and, perhaps, even cherries or plums, are planted into spectacular mixborders (as among designers it is customary to call mixed flower beds consisting of several types of plants). Plants are placed in such mixborders in groups or individually, achieving a harmonious composition. You will not spend much effort to create such compositions and you will not take up extra land (the soil in such areas, most likely, was already empty, but there was an abundance of weeds), but you will get a composition pleasing to the eye. Most likely, you won't have to buy extra plants either - something suitable will definitely be found in your garden.

Container compositions

Container floriculture is now in vogue, and on the pages of magazines you can get a lot of ideas on how to improve your garden and add a zest to it by connecting mobile garden compositions in various kinds of containers. True, at first glance it seems that busy gardeners are not at all up to such excesses. But if you take a closer look at this method of decorating a garden, then everything looks different. The use of containers will open up a lot of possibilities for decorating the site and, with the right approach, will not create unnecessary worries, because container planting is the fastest and easiest way to create complex flower arrangements.

With a minimum of effort, with the help of containers you can plant greenery and paint with paints those areas that you could not cope with earlier due to various reasons, for example, due to the impossibility of planting the desired plants in the area of interest or due to the difficulty in creating stationary compositions of the height and shape you need. At the same time, by creating compositions using spectacular tall stands for flowerpots, you can hide unsightly areas of the garden (old fence, wall of a house, etc.) and / or zonal fence off the flower garden from the adjacent garden beds and greenhouses. At the same time, the possibilities for the arrangement of plants are significantly expanded, and in a small space it becomes possible to use a lot of floral and ornamental plants - different in color, texture and aroma. The main thing here is not to overdo it and achieveso that the containers fit naturally into the garden design of the area concerned. It is important that when looking at it, a feeling of complete harmony is created. Of course, when selecting groups of plants in one container, their requirements for light and humidity must be taken into account.

It is also worth noting that not only the usual flowers can be grown in containers, but also exotic plants that cannot be planted in the ground in a harsh climate. For such demanding crops, it is easier to create specific conditions in a container, and in case of unfavorable weather conditions, the containers can be easily brought to the veranda and thereby protect the plants, for example, from frost.

Flower containers can be of various shapes and are made from wood, metal, plastic, clay, etc. The only prerequisite is the presence of holes in them for the juice of excess water. Quite often it is also necessary to use a fairly large drainage layer (the drainage layer depends on the height of the container and the preferences of the plants planted in it). Low-rise containers may not have a drainage layer, but they are more difficult to grow plants in because of the excessive drying out of the soil in hot weather. This problem can also be solved by using hydrogel soil. For example, in my garden, just low containers are mainly used, and the plants develop well in them, but only on soil with a hydrogel. And here you need to keep in mindthat even in this case, in conditions of extreme heat, plants in low containers will require daily watering. In this regard, it is easier with tall containers, but there you cannot do without drainage. If drainage is not done, then water stagnation and soil acidification are possible in containers, which is dangerous for plants. Naturally, the soil in containers should be with the addition of sand and the acidity required by the plants.

You should also provide for the possibility of feeding. Here options are possible: you can carry out traditional frequent feeding (about once every 2 weeks) with diluted complex fertilizer. Or go the other way - use long-lasting fertilizers: I solved this problem as follows: I included a hydrogel in the soil, which was soaked not in water, but in a solution of Kemira Lux fertilizer, and I also added a packet of APIONs to each container. APION is a special form of fertilizer that provides long-term and controlled nutrition throughout the entire period of growth and fruiting of the plant. The secret of APION is a shell, which is a semi-permeable membrane. The shell forms a cavity that is filled with a soluble complex of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium in the ratio 18: 6: 18, trace elements and humates). I have been using them in my garden for a long time.

Svetlana Shlyakhtina, Yekaterinburg

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