Cheap Landscaping Ideas
Wanting to beautify the exterior of your home is every homeowner's dream. Maybe your perfect landscape includes trees, beautiful shrubs and abundant flower gardens lined with a white picket fence. In reality, landscaping with hardscape features such as walkways, borders, decking and patios and plantings costs both money and time. To landscape your home cheaply, you'll need to be on the lookout for deals. Landscaping cheaply involves not only the initial creation of your landscape but also the cost of maintenance in the future. Does this Spark an idea?
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Evaluate Sun Availability
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Examine your property closely over the period of a few sunny days. Document on paper which areas of your property receive levels of sunlight during the day. Sun exposure becomes your primary method of choosing which plants to use around your landscape. Full-sun, partial sun/shade or full-shade plants require different light conditions. This can make-or-break the success of your gardens. In addition, you won't be wasting money on plants that will die within a few weeks.
End of Season Sales
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End of summer sales offer discounts galore at most garden centers. Growers sell trees, shrubs and perennials (multi-season blooming flowers) at reduced prices. It's quite typical to see reductions at 20 to 30 percent. Choosing to buy during this time doesn't limit the chance of your plant becoming established and healthy. Late summer or fall provides the perfect time to plant shrubs since it is the same time you should be clipping back existing shrubs for the winter. Remember to give your plants enough time to establish new root growth before the ground freezes.
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Annuals
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Forget buying flats of annuals at upward of $3 per plant. Plant the seeds at home yourself. Easy annuals include impatiens, marigolds and zinnias. Begin potting seeds in early March to have healthy seedlings ready for transplant in your gardens after the final frost. Seedlings need warmth at the root so stash the tray on top of the refrigerator as a heat source. Garden centers offer many types of seeds as well as small seedling trays and pots to make this activity a fun, rewarding and cheap landscaping option. You can also harvest seeds from your own plants for use the following year.
Xeriscaping
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Planting a garden requires collecting your preferred plants, preparing the soil and mulching the surface to help retain water. Then you add water--and lots of it--usually straight from your garden hose. This potable water source is expensive. Consider creating low-maintenance xeriscape gardens, heat-tolerant plantings that thrive in drought conditions. The one-time expense of planting native, drought-resistant plants offers years of pleasure. Many xeriscape gardens include varied rocks throughout the plantings to add texture to the garden. Xeriscapes offer homeowners an inexpensive option while providing the beauty of a unique, simple garden.
Mulching Mowers
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Landscaping doesn't include simply your gardens, hedges and trees. It also includes your yard. Maintaining a lawn requires time and effort as well as money for fertilizer, equipment and watering. Consider using a mulching lawnmower to help keep lawn landscaping costs down. Mulching mowers chop up the grass clippings and spray these clippings around the yard. As the clippings decompose, the lawn absorbs the nutrients. This natural way to fertilize the lawn cuts down on expenses for lawn treatments as well as bagging clipping and waste removal. Consider dumping excess grass clippings into garden beds before layering mulches to reduce weeds and form compost for fertilizing your gardens.
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