Gardening Plants and Lawns: Care, Uses, Design

Learn about the care for and uses of landscape plants, including trees and shrubs. Some landscape plants have a practical function. For instance, ground covers on hillsides can prevent erosion, shrubs in a foundation planting can reduce your heating bill, and trees can serve as windbreaks. But in all these cases, aesthetics, as well as functionality, will be considered. Other plants, of course, will be grown mainly for their beauty, whether singly or in groups.

Landscape Design for Beginners

A lot of thought goes into achieving an effective landscape design. As the discipline where gardening and art intersect, landscape design demands both knowledge of garden plants’, growing requirements and an eye for arranging them. These resources will aid beginners in choosing the optimal landscape plants for the job, while offering ideas for their arrangement in the yard through examples.

Shrubs

Shrubs are the workhorses among the landscape plants, serving a number of functions in landscape design. Some shrubs are ground covers; others are planted in rows to be trimmed into hedges, while still other shrubs are used as specimens.

Vines and Ground Covers

Perhaps no other category of landscape plants boasts the versatility of vines. A lot of that versatility has to do with the fact that vines can either stay close to the ground (function as ground covers) or climb. Other ground covers aren’t vines at all, but rather shrubs or perennials.

Annuals, Perennials, Tropicals: Shade Plants and Sun Plants

Perennials are landscape plants with a variety of uses. Some will plant them in a row, for example, to form a garden border. Some larger perennials, such as peonies, can be use in foundation plantings or as specimens, to supply seasonal color. Annuals, meanwhile, are often used to supplement perennials with sustained blasts of vibrant color. In regions with cold winters, tropical plants are sometimes used as if they were annuals. Whether planting perennials or annuals, pay attention to sunlight requirements.

Plant Care

Ensuring that landscape plants perform well involves forethought, and that includes providing proper drainage for them. Proper plant care begins with how you install landscape plants in the ground. From that point on, there are preventive measures you can take to maximize performance.

Lawn Care

Before you make the commitment to have a big, beautiful lawn, make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into! All things considered, lawn care may become the single most time-consuming task in your yard.

Yard Maintenance: Lawns, Lawn Mowers and Gardens

The best part of landscaping is that it’s seasonal. Your tasks in the yard change as the seasons change. Those of us who spend a lot of time out in the yard become acutely aware of not just inter-seasonal changes, but even intra-seasonal changes.