The garden is not just that little piece of nature that we call our own, but to the avid gardener, it’s also a canvas to make his/her visions come true by merging human creativity with the careless beauty of nature. If you are reading this, then you probably already know the basics of gardening, but would not mind getting a few useful tips on how to add a bit more beauty to your garden. We plan to supply you with just that with the following nine tips.
9 Tips for Making Your Garden Look More Beautiful Than Ever Before
Vegetables and Herbs in the Flower Garden
People often think that vegetables and herbs should have no business in the flower garden, but they think wrong. Herbs in particular are perfect for edging the beds and borders. Mint, silver thyme, ornamental oregano, cat mint, rosemary, etc. make for great intermediate, ornamental plants in between the rows. The scent from the herbs make gardens smell beautiful, and they can also save you a trip to the supermarket.
Add a Beautiful Garden Gate
Most of us already have garden gates, but just in case you don’t, or the old one is not really looking that good anymore, it’s time to check out some wooden garden gates and get things started. The primary purpose of these is decoration, and nothing looks better in the garden than wooden gates. However, it’s important that you buy one that comes with at least 10 – 15 years of anti-rot warrantee and are pressure-treated for better protection against weather and termite damage. The collection of garden gates from FenceStore are a good example of products where aesthetics and durability have been combined into one affordable package. The gate is often the first and the last impression people have of a garden, so make sure it’s a good one.
Add a Bird Bath
Adding a bird bath has multiple advantages that go beyond just aesthetics, but even in terms of just beautifying, a strategically placed, elegant bird bath can make your garden look so much better, especially when the birds start coming in to bath and drink from it during the warmer months. As an added bonus, the droppings from those birds will likely fertilise your garden bed, while many of the harmful bugs might be eaten away by the birds regularly.
Add a Few Potted Trees
Shrubs and small trees in a pot make for great additions to the garden and when done right, they can make any garden look great. Try adding a few pots of full moon maple, Japanese maple, crape myrtle, kousa dogwood, and Washington hawthorn alongside the shrubs. You can and probably should even add a few on your patio.
Don’t Forget the Big Trees
A garden without a few big trees around it doesn’t really look complete, especially if you have the room for them. Of course, all trees are not feasible as some gardens might be too small for them, but if you do have the room, line the borders of your garden with English oaks, silver birches and weeping willows. If the garden is big enough, you could even dedicate a chunk of the plot to a big oak tree to make everything look that much better.
Add a Pond
A well-planned pond looks serene in a garden, especially when the likes of water lettuce, cardinal flower, blue iris, and creeping jenny are floating around on it. Admittedly, maintaining the pond is a bit of a hassle at times, because weed and algae can start making things look ugly in no time, but the maintenance effort is worth it. Add a waterfall or a stream to the pond, alongside encouraging fish, frogs, and newt populations to turn your artificial pond into a natural-looking lake that will take your garden one step closer to nature.
Garden Lighting
A garden is supposed to look beautiful during the day and magical when the sun goes down. The magic is of course created by clever usage of garden lights to highlight what you need to. At the very least, opt for outdoor string lighting, which adds subtle beauty and illumination to the garden at the same time. Alternatively, you can add strategic lighting which aims to highlight the most aesthetic sections of the garden and the important areas such as the pathway and the side alleys. Just make sure that the lights are facing down, because the idea is to create a mystic glow, not a harsh glare.
Add a Butterfly Feeder
You can make your own butterfly feeder by adding a little sugar water to a small dish and hanging it in a strategic location to attract the little insects to the garden. A spring or summer evening full of colourful butterflies, chirping birds, and the scent of herbs in the garden is a little slice of paradise. Aside from the beauty they bring, the dwindling butterfly population need the help from gardeners to survive. Just make sure that the feeders are nowhere near any section of the garden that might have recently been treated with pesticides.
Don’t Ignore the Grass
While flowers, herbs, bushes, and trees are the main attraction, expert gardeners know that the grass in the lawn is also just as important to any garden. While a lot of people are starting to opt for artificial grass turfs these days, it cannot possibly replace natural grass in a garden. Maintain a lush green natural grass lawn outside the garden beds to complement the colourful plants and flowers in the garden perfectly. It goes without saying that you will need to keep the grass out of the garden beds, but don’t overdo it, because that may end up killing all the grass in your lawn; an effect that’s neither healthy nor beautiful for the garden.
The tips here are of course, general in nature, so feel free to customise them according to the parameters of your own garden. It might not be possible for everyone to incorporate everything we just discussed, but even a couple of ideas can dramatically transform your outside space
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