Planting trees has many benefits: improved wildlife habitat, high-quality trees for timber or specialty wood products, revegetated buffers along streams to protect water quality, increased species diversity and resiliency, enhanced attractiveness, and a more valuable estate for your family or heirs.
Pruning is removing parts of a plant, either above or below ground. Training, an associative term, usually refers to shaping a plant to the desired form. Gardeners prune and train to ensure safety; maintain a plant’s good health; limit or promote growth; to shape; to encourage flowering and fruiting, and to renew and repair. Put more simply, you prune to keep yourself safe, to keep plants hale and hearty, and to make them do—as far as humanly possible and sensible—what you want them to do. Don’t assume that frequent pruning is necessary for every woody plant in your landscape. Desultory pruning is a mistake too. Always know why you’re sawing, snipping, and shearing.
Concerns about water usage across the country have some homeowners considering a switch to artificial turf, but the beneficial impact of natural lawns extends far beyond water use. If you’re thinking about making a change from live grass to synthetic alternatives, reconsider the environmental and personal benefits that natural lawns bring to your life.
Flowers are a simple way to beautify and personalize one’s living environment with color and fragrant scents. One of the best ways to enjoy flowers is to start a flower garden. Flower gardens are often found in one’s yard, but for people with minimal space, an indoor garden of potted flowers is also an option. Once a person decides to start the project, he or she will need to learn how to start a flower garden. There are many ways to learn about flower gardening, such as conducting an Internet search, visiting one’s local nursery to speak with a floral expert, or talking with neighbors and friends for useful flower gardening tips.
Many kids sit at the window, watching falling snow, dreaming of all the fun they’ll have sledding, making snowmen, or throwing snowballs. As adults, most of us sit at the window, dreaming of heated driveways or snow that would shovel itself.
An expanse of green lawn provides a place to lounge, play, and picnic on warm summer days. A healthy, lush lawn doesn’t happen by magic. Without proper care, your lawn can become filled with weeds, suffer from a lack of nutrients, or develop a ragged appearance. Although you should tend to your lawn year-round, spring is a good time to work on improving the vitality of your grass.
You need to make sure that you treat your new lawn like a newly born baby – look after it! Feed it, water it, caress it, talk to it if you have to, but most of all do not neglect it. The first two to three weeks are the “critical phase” in the establishment of a new lawn from the turf. All too often, lawn owners have a new lawn laid then fail to look after it and then blame the company who supplied or laid the turf when problems develop a few weeks later. Follow these simple rules to ensure that your newly laid lawn gets a head start.
Irrigating a farm can double the amount of food it produces. But even with that potential, 80 percent of farmland worldwide is not irrigated, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Part of the problem may be the high cost of irrigation equipment. Also, the prospect of wasteful irrigation techniques raises the specter of environmental damage including water shortages, erosion and soil salinization.