SHM Designs: Creating an Outdoor Garden

Gardens are so important to the exterior of a house. They soften the edges and help turn your house into a HOME. Therefore, I felt it was important for me to give you some basic guidelines on planning a garden. When researching, I came across a site called eHow-Home. They had the perfect set of simple steps to take when designing a garden ( by the way this site is great for all kinds of information).

1.Choose a purpose for your garden. If it's for beauty then pick your preferences of colour, size, and shape; if it's to attract butterflies or humming birds, you will want to choose specific flowering shrubs.

2. Choose a desirable location for your garden where it can grow and be appreciated. Don't plant it near a dog run or too close to the driveway where cars might drive on it.

3 Decide whether you want perennials or annuals remembering that perennials become bigger and thicker each year, and annuals require planting each year.

4 Choose plants that adhere to weather conditions of that placement. If the garden area is windy you want hardy plants that can tolerate wind; if the area is sunny you want plants that require sun and not shade.

5 Choose plants with similar care requirements such as frequency in watering, amount of sun and soil nutrient requirements.

6 Choose colours that compliment each other and give the garden a complete appearance ie: Don't plant white flowers in front of white dogwood. Instead, plant coloured flowers to elicit the colour mixture.

7 Plan your arrangements so that each plant is accentuated ie: Tall plants at the back and graduating down so that low spreading plants are at the front. Or if it's a circle, so that tall plants are in the centre graduating down to short spreaders on the outside.

8 Use the correct mulch, as suggested in your garden catalogue, to keep the soil moist during the hot summer days.

9 Set out appropriate soaker hoses throughout so that the garden can be watered regularly and maintained through the heat spells.

10 Give your plants the proper food nutrients as required and listed in your garden catalogue.

11 Dead head the flowers to allow for more blooms. ( dead head is to snip the dead bloom off the stem)

Here are some before and after landscape pictures from HGTV. Note the impact that landscaping makes on the exterior appearance of these homes.