Pruning roses is crucial if you want to grow beautiful, lush roses. Over the years, roses have been highly hybridized and cross bred in order to produce beautiful blooms. This has effected their growth habits. Today, keeping the bush size and shape appealing requires some human intervention in the form of pruning.

Pruning roses isn’t as complicated or mysterious as people make it out to be. In fact, there are just a few basic rules. If you keep these in mind whenever you pick up your pruning shears, you’ll be rewarded with beautiful rose bushes that your friends and neighbors will envy.

1) When to Prune

Rose pruning should be done in the spring, just as the leaf buds begin to swell. It is very important that the pruning is done before the seasons active growth begins. Young roses should not be pruned at all. They need to reach a strong, mature size (2-3 years) before pruning is necessary.

2) How Much to Prune

Christmas trees are often shipped long distances before they reach their destination. Usually they are cut several weeks before Christmas. Some of these trees travel more than 2,000 miles before they adorn the home of the purchaser. Montana trees may travel as far as Oklahoma. Texas or California. In fact, in 1955, Montana shipped trees to 27 states and Cuba.

I saw spruce from Maine in a market stand in New Orleans. Montana is producing over three million trees annually for the Christmas trade. It is estimated that over 25 million Christmas trees were produced in 1955 in the United States. Douglas fir and Balsam fir far outnumber other species in the numbers of Christmas trees marketed at the present time.

Naturally, persons who can go out and harvest their own can be assured of securing a fresh tree. Many have to purchase their trees from a sales yard. When bringing your tree home, place it in a cool shaded place as soon as possible and plunge the butt or bottom end into a container of water.

Christmas will soon be here and you will be wanting to make up Christmas arrangements and Christmas decorations. It’s so much more fun for most of us if we can go out into our own gardens and gather these materials. There is no reason why every one of us can’t grow them.

To be sure, some of the more tender broadleafed evergreens such as cherry laurel and Chinese holly can be grown only in the milder parts of this area.

We can all grow (even though you may think you can’t) hardy strains of boxwood, firethorn, wintercreeper (Ettonymus) , Japanese holly, American holly and if you will acidify the soil-rhododendron. And even in the most severe regions it is surprising how many protected spots can be found where allegedly tender plants will prove hardy. It is amazing what a little winter sun protection and wind protection will do to carry through these doubtful plants. Plan to plant them next spring.

Solar powered landscape lighting is a way to decorate and to light up your landscaping without the use of any wiring. More and more garden enthusiasts opt for solar powered landscape lighting instead of other landscape lighting options. Never again will you have to worry about long and unsightly wires in your garden, if you opt for the solar landscape lighting.

Solar powered landscape lighting produces light with the aid of natural free of charge solar energy, making this type of lighting both cost efficient and friendly to the environment.

No wiring makes it easy to install and to relocate your solar powered landscape lighting units. Absence of wires makes the units safe for children. Small animals in your garden cannot harm your beautiful landscape lighting, since there are no wires to be damaged.

Why do more and more gardeners opt for solar powered landscape lighting?

1. Solar powered landscape lighting provides the homeowners with a wide range of units to choose from for their landscape lighting design, including floodlights, flashlights, bollard lights, step lights, garden lights, light strings, lantern lights, hanging path lights, wall lights and adorable floating pool lights.

Garden design through the centuries has developed from man’s attempt to establish a satisfying relationship with nature, and from his social customs. Gardens have been molded by his philosophy and living standards as well as by the climate and character of the land in which he lived. Fads and fancies have influenced the design at times, but such innovations have not survived unless they were based on firm concepts.

Ruskin wrote: “Architecture is the art which so arranges a structure that a view of it brings a sense of pleasure, power and mental health to all who see it.” Good landscape planning must stand the same test.

History

Three great historical forces have influenced garden design: the Chinese, Persian and Greco-Roman.

Chinese art was based on the premise that man was part of nature and that his peace depended on his orderly adjustment to her moods. Inspiration came from the power of her storms, mountains and waterfalls. This art developed over centuries, traveled to Japan and began to influence European gardens about 200 years ago.

It’s always around this time of the year that I appreciate the design elements of our outdoor lighting scheme. The days are getting shorter and I find that I am turning on our outdoor lights slightly earlier each day. The result of decent outdoor lighting is that we can still use our outdoor space into late August and September.

During the earlier summer months my backyard was a functional and safe place to socialize and relax without resorting to outdoor lights. Where I live the sun can still be shining until 9.30pm. In fact, during the month of June the skies became dark and the backyard becomes too dark to be safe right around the time I wanted some BBQ guests to leave so it worked out perfectly.

We started to create our outdoor lighting scheme about 5 years ago. My spouse and I were charmed by the simplicity and beautiful effect of the outdoor lights of a French restaurant we visited in Mexico. Since that time we have experimented with many different types of outdoor lighting designs. Our scheme is a work in progress and it gets refined each year. Some years we use a lot of string lights while in other years we use spot lights and twinkly lights. We generally tend to stick to white lights although we sometimes use the odd colored spotlight.

Design means the arrangement of parts in any work of art, such as a painting, a building, or a garden. Good design satisfies us; poor design is irritating.

The principles of good design are really quite simple. Unity, propriety, variety, scale and harmony are the main ones. Anyone can understand what they mean if we cut away the attempt to appear intellectual. Though simple words, they should be taken seriously.

Unity is created by any common bond that ties the parts together. A picture frame defines the picture and makes it a unit separate from the wall paper, but a number of pictures are given unity by having similar frames. The parts of a garden are drawn together by defining them by planting around the boundaries, by connecting them with paths of similar material or by repeating plants of the same species. Even the color of green common to most plants has a strong uniting effect.

Variety is interesting if you are a collector but too much variety is confusing. Rather than using single plants of a lot of different varieties, use large numbers of a few sorts to create the desired mass effect. Then plant one or two well-chosen specimens to create interest at strategic points against this unifying background.

Low voltage outdoor lighting is a secure, affordable and easy way to implement an outdoor lighting option. Most homeowners can light up their yard with a low voltage outdoor lighting doing it themselves, without even having to pay for an electrician.

Dangerous regular 120 watt electric current is stepped down to merely 12 V in the low voltage outdoor lighting systems, making it so much safer. Electric in such systems runs through a loop from one end of the transformer to another.

There are several important advantages of the low voltage outdoor lighting setups, when compared to regular lighting:

1. It is very easy to set up your own low voltage outdoor lighting. The system usually comes in kits, which include everything needed to assemble the lighting (the transformer, cables and fixtures). You would just have to buy the bulbs with a preferred wattage.

2. Low voltage outdoor lighting is very cost-efficient. Such lighting may use bulbs with as little as 4 watts. Most kits come with low watt bright halogen lamps. However, low voltage fluorescent lamps are also available, which are yet more energy efficient.

Have you ever thought about installing an outdoor spot light? It is easier than you thought and these lights serve more purposes than originally thought. Most homes or business establishments that have outdoor lighting schemes can benefit from the installation of outdoor spot lights. Outdoor spotlights have a number of different purposes ranging from providing extra security, high-lighting pathways, providing extra safety, and providing a nice form of ambiance. Properly positioned spot lights are a wonderful addition to any outdoor lighting scheme.

Initially, when we think of spot lights we picture figure skating events or rock concerts. At least that is what comes first to my mind. These days the use of spot lights has transcended the historical uses and now you can find spot lights in many different locations. These lights are regularly used in commercial spaces, industrial spaces, urban spaces, and residential spaces.

Spot lights are often confused with flood lights. These two types of lights are different and serve different purposes, however, they posses some overlapping similarities. The most obvious similarity between these lights is that they are generally installed at a significant distance from the subject matter they are intended to illuminate. The most obvious difference between the lights is the focus of illumination. Flood lights disperse the light and light up a large area such as a parking lot. Spot lights narrow the focus of illumination and target a small area of illumination such as a person.

“Garden Gnomes For Sale”

So said the sign I passed on my way to a business meeting. For some reason, when I got home, I decided to read about garden gnomes and found there was a fascinating history!

Seems that garden gnomes first appeared in the early 1800’s, in Germany. About 1840, they came on the scene in England. People believed that having garden gnomes would make for better plants, and also bring good luck.

Apparently Sir Charles Isham, the 10th Baronet of Lamport Hall, brought around 20 garden gnomes from Germany - the first to arrive in England. He proudly set them up in the rockery in his garden. Unfortunately only one remains - “Lampy” - and it’s a sad sign of the times that he has to be insured against theft - for a million pounds.

The original statues were hand crafted from terracotta, which remained the material of choice right up until the 1960s. These clay garden gnomes were often cherished, collectible ornaments that stayed in the family and were passed down through the generations.