Border garden beds are wonderful additions to your landscape when you want to highlight an edge, such as a driveway, fence, walkway, front porch, or patio. They can be used to delineate visual boundaries or create physical compartments in your landscape. When it comes to highlighting permanent features, such as a trellis or gazebo, or dividing spaces in your yard or vegetable garden, border gardens are just the thing. As they often follow an edge, they are usually rectangular in shape, but can also be designed to include gentle curves for less formal gardens.

Most gardeners plant taller annuals and perennials to the back of these beds, placing shorter items towards the front. Border beds can be created to spotlight long seasons of bloom on a continuum or focused around a one-season spectacular show. If you opt for the one-season showcase, be sure to plan the rest of your landscaping to balance out the seasons during which your border bed lies fallow.

Nearby shrubs, ground cover, and ornamental grasses can help your yard to that regard and can offer visual interest and texture year-round. I prefer to choose interesting foliage, such as hostas and alumroots, and long-lasting blooms like coreopsis. A good border, unless it is full of wild perennial plantings, should not be more than several feet in width; more than that, its width makes the bed difficult to tend, weed, and maintain.  Read more...

A great way to add value to your home is by adding an outdoor living space as an investment in your home and your lifestyle. Adding footage to your house does not have to be under a roof, as patios are growing into full size rooms complete with furniture, fireplaces, and kitchens. Stamped concrete patios blend the materials of your home with the nature around it, which make them a perfect transition from indoor to outdoor.

Any look is possible with stamped concrete. It is, simply, concrete that is patterned or textured to look like brick, stone, wood, tile, slate, or other various materials. It can also follow patterns like herringbone, basketweave, cobblestone, or custom designs like fanning or symbols. When deciding on your patio layout, consider breaking from the normal open, square concrete block. Making a pathway to a gate at the side of the yard or a garden in the back makes your lawn more accessible and utilized. Keep growing tree roots and flourishing plants in mind, as they may interfere with your traffic later.  Read more...

Decorating rustic is becoming more and more popular all the time and good lighting is essential in this type of setting. Using the right outside lighting is a good choice to help you feel relaxed and confident about the look of your property.

It is the rare product that is both practical and fashionable as few things actually combine style and substance, but rustic outdoor lighting does, allowing you to create a beautiful yard that is also safe and pleasing to the eye. This kind of outside lamp fixture provides the right function with the look you truly want, you could not ask for more.

What Is Rustic Outdoor Lighting?

Rustic outdoor lighting usually centers on nature and wildlife themes suitable for cabins, homes and lodges. The many different designs available includes bear lamps, lodge lamps, wall sconce , western, old fashioned lanterns, designer exterior, rustic hanging lantern lights, wrought iron wall sconces, decorative, rustic exterior lamps, outdoor garden, outdoor wall, patio and outdoor cabin accent lanterns.

You will also find a large variety of copper hanging lanterns available too. Many of these designs are also available for use outdoors. If you go about searching for these, you’ll be amazed to see the enormous variety, ranging from western and southwestern to Adirondack and log cabin. A top selling design in country lamps are the wagon wheels. You can also find old fashioned looking lamps, worn down lights, and many other rustic looking outside items.  Read more...

Home and garden decorating is a hot topic. This is evident in television programming. Every second television show is related to decorating your home and garden. Programs such as The Decorating Challenge, Curb Appeal and The House Doctor are great examples of home and garden decorating shows.

These programs are quite interesting and quite helpful for people who are looking for ideas to make changes to their home and garden. These shows take everyday living spaces and transform them into beautiful, inviting places. Since these programs generally work with a budget, they help people realize that home and garden decorating can be accomplished without going to great expense. They also demonstrate that even small changes can make an enormous difference in home and garden decorating.

Home and garden decorating involves anything, materials, paint, fabric, accessories; items that can be used to make decorative improvements to a home or garden. When considering making changes around the house or in the back garden, some people may feel intimidated because they aren’t creative nor do they have any crafty skills.

Home and gardening programs, magazines, books and catalogs, show homeowners that it isn’t necessary to be a skilled individual to make home and garden decorating changes. These resources teach people that simple, basic changes and additions can transform a space, either home or garden, into something completely different and beautiful.  Read more...