It’s Time to Beautify Your Outdoors

As spring approaches and the snow starts to melt, a homeowner starts to look for ways to improve the yard's appearance and function, or create “outdoor rooms” around the house, a recent landscaping design concept. Gardening and landscaping designs come in a potentially overwhelming variety of plans and styles so careful planning is necessary to choose the perfect approach for your needs, style, and purpose. Think about your space and what your physical limitations are. Ask what purpose you want your gardening to serve. Determine how much time are you willing to spend on maintaining your outdoor space before getting started.

If you approach the landscaping as decorating outdoor rooms, start by breaking up the yard into separate areas. Each area will have its own purpose making the yard more functional and less cluttered.

There are several ways to create outdoor rooms: structures such as pergolas, gazebos, trellises and planters can be used to frame an outdoor room. Outdoor rooms can also be defined with plantings of shrubs, borders or trees. Groundcover materials can be another way to divide areas, from low-growing plants or grass to brick formations or patio stones. In each area choose colors that work well together to create a consistent and attractive space. Color should be considered when choosing the flowers, furniture, and accessories. Remember to keep bloom time in mind when planning your color combinations.

Use gates, arbors, and paths to create graceful transitions from one outdoor room to the next. The plantings in these transitional areas need to be coordinated with both the spaces they connect.

The most valuable gardening advice to getting started is to start small. Gardening can be a relaxing and extremely rewarding hobby. Keep it simple in the beginning. Smaller projects allow the gardener to focus on ideal care and leave less opportunity for problems arising simultaneously. Gardens can always be made larger, as plants multiply and more are added. Expansion is always an option to a thriving garden. Downsizing an overwhelming and wildly growing garden is very difficult and not very rewarding.

To start, get to know your plants by reading the tags that mark the pots to know exactly what conditions each plant requires. You do not want to plant shade-loving plants in full sunlit areas. You won’t be able to mix plants that need to be watered a lot with ones that do not need much watering. As the plants you chose start to grow and be comfortable with their surroundings you will have to seek advice beyond the tag information if any problems develop.

Most importantly, have fun gardening and decorating your custom outdoor rooms this spring.

Dayelle Swensson is an avid writer for the web on a number of topics. Having gardened herself for many years, she is able to advise others about a variety of things including gardening tips, lawn and tree care, watering, hose reel and keeping your home garden looking good and healthy.