Hillside Landscaping-Proper Watering
Sloped and hillside lawns and landscapes tend to develop dry dead spots during the hot part of the season. This is primarily due to water run off before it has a chance to saturate into the soil. Deep saturation is a key to a healthy lawns and plants. Deep watering helps establish deeper roots that can handle Summer heat stress.
Water that runs off or just barely breaks the surface, obviously does the lawn or landscape very little good. So how do you give landscaping and lawn on a slope better saturation?
Split your water cycle duration into two or three short cycles. If your water cycle is 30 minutes, you might split the cycle into three 10 minute cycles. So on watering days, you’ll run the system for the specified amount of time, let it soak for a few hours, then repeat this for the number of times needed.
Gardening With Spring Trees And Shrubs
Spring is the time when gardening becomes once more of interest to everyone who has any interest in gardening and any size of plot, from a window box to stately acres. In most gardens structure is formed using hard landscaping, trees and shrubs, but they are much more than just shapes. Trees make a functional and beautiful contribution to many gardens. It is vital to take time in selecting the right size and shape of spring tree and to think through what exactly you want from it. Not easily moved once established, never has the consideration of “right plant, right place” been more important in gardening than with trees! Many trees in spring, most famously fruit trees, cheer our hearts with their pink or white abundance of blossom. In fact the vast majority of flowering and fruiting trees bear their flowers in the spring season.
Magnolias are spectacular trees and shrubs which look absolutely stunning when in full bloom. Gardening is so rewarding when you can see such a wonderful sight and know that you planted that beautiful thing, that you are responsible for its site and the marvellous contribution it makes to your spring display. Even in the smaller garden, Magnolias can be grown, notably Magnolia Stellata. Most Magnolias are happy in most soils, with the proviso that they are rich in humus, although some cultivars prefer lime-free conditions. Generally in gardening terms they are slow growing but very beautiful when fully mature.
Various Prunus varieties are wonderful trees for the spring garden. To mention but one, Prunius Avium ‘Plena’ reaches an eventual height of 50ft, it is hardy, prefers full sun and is a deciduous spreading tree. Its bark has a reddish tinge and it produces masses and masses of purest white flowers in spring. Its leaves are dark green but turn red in the fall before they, well…fall. A smaller Prunus is Prunus ‘Shogetsu’ with pink buds opening in late spring to form big double white flowers hanging in clusters. The green leaves turn orange and red in the fall. Gardening with spring trees and shrubs tends to bring interest in seasons other than spring, as spring flowers herald fruits and deciduous plants tend to have pretty autumnal shades.
Homes and Pleasure Gardens of England
Under Edward I the mediaeval prosperity of the English may be said to have culminated. It declined under the weak or warlike reigns of his successors, until during the Wars of the Roses much that civilization had gained seemed to have been lost. The Tudor accession brought the Wars of the Roses to an end and inaugurated a new epoch.
The sites of new dwellings were not chosen based on inaccessibility like those of the castles. Now, instead of seeking a defensible position, people preferred situations that were pleasant and salubrious, where they might live protected from the cold winds, and where gardens and orchards might be cultivated advantageously. Thus, like the earlier monastic edifices, a gentleman’s house was more often built in a valley than on a hilltop. There was more room for expansion, and near the house the grounds under cultivation could be extended to answer the increasing demands for various kinds of plantations.
At first both house and gardens still seem to have been protected not only by walls, but with a moat. Such was the residence of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, at Thornbury. From a 1521 description (which is all that remains of the gardens now) it appears that the gardens were well supplied with galleries and arbors, or, as they are quaintly entitled, “roosting-places.”