Landscape ligthing II : Themes and Techniques
Landscape lighting themes vary wildly, thanks to several manufacturers providing dozens of products. Modern re-interpretations of traditional lantern lights are extremely popular today, while rustic-themed lights lend a natural touch. Classic lighting paves the way with elegance and refinement.
Path Light greet your guests with style, create just the right first impression and generate a sense of security and protection on pathways and around your home.
Deck and Rail Lights are perfect for a porch or patio.Other options for landscape lighting include Accent Lights and Flood Lights that can mount into the ground or on a wall surface or tree.
Lighting at Landscape (I): A Basic
Landscapes of almost any size and shape can be illuminate effectively with low-voltage landscape lighting. This is meant to show you how easy it is to buy and install this custom, yet cost-effective, outdoor lighting solution. With a little creativity and some gardening tools, your yard could be looking good day and night.
We always want to feel secure at home, and landscape lighting provides it in two very important ways.
- The darkness itself could make your home a target for an intruder, and well-lit front and back yards provide greater visual capabilities. An intruder would most likely skip it and move onto a dark home where they are not so visible.
- Lighting helps visitors reach your home safely. Many pathways have uneven pavers or troublesome transition spots from driveway to sidewalk, and provide many opportunities for tripping. Landscape lighting can illuminate problematic areas and protect against potential liability.
Increase the value of your home
Landscape lights adds instant curb appeal and make your landscape vision. You can create dramatic, professional-looking effects through shadows and silhouettes with low-lying bushes, or bounce the light off majestic trees.
Easily and safely installed
Low-voltage landscape lighting does not require an electrician or inspection, and, unlike some other electrical work, is safe to install. If you have passion, plants and a plan (and don’t forget a shovel), this is a rewarding and attainable do-it-yourself project
The flexibility factor
It’s inevitable. Your yard will almost certainly change its look over the years due to décors and trends, as well as growing plants that block light or that BBQ station or hot tub you have your eye on. As your landscape changes, so can your landscape lighting. Whether you decide to expand your yard’s lighting or cut back for a minimalist look, landscape lighting can be easily adjusted to fit your needs.
Water Garden : A Basic
Many outdoor home upgrading projects are seasonal. For example, it doesn’t make sense to outfit your backyard with outdoor furniture and a grill in the dead of winter.
One of the most popular year-round outdoor home upgrading projects is installing a water garden. The quiet burbling of water is enough to soothe even the most cutthroat Wall Street trader, provide a wonderful wildlife habitat and cut street noise.
While a water garden can transform any backyard environment into one designed for relaxation and innovation, what you do with it can enhance it. Typically, homeowners install a water garden for any of three reasons: to appreciate the sound of a trickling waterfall, raise fish or enjoy aquatic plant life.
There’s a landscaping rule of thumb: If your water garden has a waterfall, you should be able to hear it. So placing it in a location to maximize its benefits is key.
For fish, koi and goldfish are the two most popular choices. Keep in mind that koi eat certain kinds of plants, therefore limiting the amount of plant life you’re able to add to the mix.
Speaking of aquatic plants, there are distinctions between those that are commonly used:
- Floating plants float freely on the water surface
- The leaves of surface plants float on the water’s surface and their roots remain in the soil
- Leaves of submerged or oxygenating plants remain underwater
- Marginal or bog plants prefer their roots and lower parts submerged
Even though water gardens create a sanctuary of natural tranquility, you’ll want to follow any local building restrictions, including the need for any permit.
Because a water garden’s pumps and filters are constantly subjected to the elements, have your contractor on speed dial. Water gardens require maintenance. As much as you can, avoid installing one directly beneath a tree. Leaves that drop into the water will decay and could harm fish and plants, while clogging pumps and filters. Just be tireless in clearing leaves and debris from the filter.
Gazebo Construction
To enjoy his garden, the outdoors without suffering the inconvenience such as mosquitoes can be installed your self gazebo that plans often quite simple and easy to understand. To enjoy his garden, the outdoors without suffering the inconvenience such as mosquitoes can be installed yourself agazebo that plans often quite simple and easy to understand.
The gazebo has become a garden that is often found because it helps repel mosquitoes and other insects while being easy to do yourself. A gazebo has many advantages for comfort in a garden particularly during meals. To make one’s own gazebo plans are available on the Internet, some free or at bookstores or craft businesses.
Before you start you have to know what will be done on your plan the gazebo because they differ depending on the materials. Indeed, some require more rooms, more space and more time for construction. There are wooden gazebo, metal or vinyl. To facilitate your building and to avoid errors it is essential to get a gazebo kit that are the basis of the structure.
To build a gazebo plans are also the most expensive in most cases more complicated. So they turn to professionals and you can buy if you want to hire a contractor to build your gazebo.
Enjoy the outdoors during the summer but also during spring and autumn in your garden, from the outside with a gazebo whose plansyou have enabled an easy construction.
When you decide the best way to get your booth built, why not consider a plan to build gazebo. Even if you do not want to do the work yourself, you should have a gazebo construction plan that the contractor can work. If you are not ready to design your own gazebo from scratch, and a gazebo construction plan may be the answer. If you want to do the job yourself, your gazebo building plan you take you step by step through the process.
You can find a gazebo construction plan of a variety of sources.You can find a plan to build gazebo in books or in a magazine, a home improvement store, or you can search online for information you need to start your gazebo building plan and run on your project.Some sites will charge you a fee for their gazebo building plan and some sites allow you to download free gazebo plans. Whatever works best for you is the way you should do it.
Your plan should include gazebo building plans and a complete list of materials. Each part of the construction process should be stated in clear and concise. You will be told how to measure all the advice and perspective. You will be guided on how to cut everything the right way. Your booth building plan should cover all aspects of the proposed gazebo from start to finish.
Your gazebo construction plan may come with pages and pages of pictures that will show you in detail how to build your booth on the right path. When you buy or download a gazebo construction plan, make sure the company stands behind the plans and will be available at any time if you have any questions about the project are presented. You can save hundreds, even thousands of dollars when you build your gazebo gazebo construction plan with your own hands. You can enjoy a job well done when you choose to build your booth from a gazebo construction plan. Think of how all will be impressed when they see your work.
Pannier country
A basket wicker houses a collection of perennials with decorative foliage and purple flowers. The Japanese anemones, asters and purple spikes of Pennisetum emerge in a very elegant from the leaves of apple green and purple Heuchera. In the foreground, the Pernettya offers numerous bays pearly pink.
Flowering: May to July for Heuchera, from August to frost asters, in September-October for the Japanese anemone, and in May-June for Pernettya.
Our advice: Cut faded flowers regularly, leaves and stems dry to keep the pot without problem for 2 or 3 years.
Alignment of cabbage
A bloom over several months with ornamental cabbage
The ornamental cabbage pomment do not, but spread out over several months their beautiful curly leaves. Depending on the variety, the heart is shades of yellow, pink, red, white, purple, light green … sprouts are super durable and fear neither the cold nor the snow. And the more the temperature drops, their colors are more vivid.
Flowering: October to March.
Our advice: seeding is easy to succeed and many varieties are available. It is done in May-June, in the nursery. Transplanting pot or tray, takes place after 2 months of cultivation and watering should be regular throughout the growing season. Install the seedlings in place in a massive pot or in September.
Agreements flamboyant
Chrysanthemum, aster, cyclamen and Cotinus: agreements flamboyant
A big pot of chrysanthemums to Japan’s small coppery orange flowers produced an explosion of color. The show is enhanced by the Smoke tree (Cotinus coggygria ‘Grace’) at the beautiful purple foliage tinged with orange in the fall. In the manner of a painter, the gardener has added a mini cyclamen flowers scarlet and purple aster to balance the picture.
Flowering: August to October for the fall aster, from September to November for chrysanthemums and from September to March for the cyclamen.
Our advice: protect asters by a veil of winter or return to a local frost when temperatures are negative.
Spectacular massive
The asters are the kings of the fall. In this massif, the multitude of small white daisies forms a backdrop for the hydrangeas and chocolate bronze foliage. The scarlet-flowered sage and purple Salvia leucantha and S. guaranitica, complemented by a rustic create beautiful fuchsia colored keys.
Flowering: August to frost asters and salvias.
Our advice: during the summer, regular pollarding large asters planted in front to control their development and promote their branching. At the rear, install stakes to support tall stems.
Leaf miner stems of geranium
The adult is a brown butterfly (Cacyreus Marshall) who flits around in the summer of pots of geraniums (mistakenly called geraniums).It is sometimes called “brown” geranium.
a green caterpillar eats the buds, stems and wins in which it bores a gallery. Three successive generations in the year.
Damage: stews with no little flower and stems dry out completely mined.
Targets: the ivy and zonal geraniums. The real geraniums(Geranium perennial) of our regions are spared.
Affected areas: the insect appeared in the south of France in 1997.
Treatments: buttons attacked and undermined the stems must be destroyed. Only regular treatments during the growing season(every 7 to 10 days) with a microbiological insecticide containingBacillus thuringiensis are effective.
Garden : Diseases and pests I
The Asian long horned
These beetles black with some white macula (Anoplophoraglabripennis and A. chinensis) are long antennae. Their larvae live-in the woods where they burrow.
Damage: These insects attack healthy trees which wither quickly. Holes which escape from sawdust and dark streaks appear on the bark.
Targets: the hardwood to softwood: elm, willow, birch, maple, poplar …
Affected areas: several outbreaks have been identified in France Gien (45) and Let (07), in 2003 Saint-Anne-sur- Brivet (44) in 2004;Velars-sur-Ouch (27) and Strasbourg (67 ) in 2008, but the insect does not appear yet installed.
Treatments: These beetles are on the list of harmful organisms whose introduction and spread are banned in France. Trees with suspected symptoms can be reported to your