Monthly Garden Checklist

Keeping your garden at its best

Garden Flowers-garden-monthly-checklist
Garden flowers

Installing a garden is one thing, maintaining that garden is another story. I have seen gardens that were installed and because of improper care of those gardens, they lost that luster and beauty.

One of the advantages of installing a garden is it can increase the value of your property besides all the other added benefits. I must agree that no matter the size of the garden

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Common Gardening Mistakes

Avoiding these Garden Mistakes

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Garden Flowers

Gardening can be such a beautiful and rewarding experience as we connect with nature, giving nature a helping. There are many types of gardening from bromeliad gardens, flower gardens to herb gardens, container gardens, formal and informal gardens and so on. The list seems to be endless but the good in all of this is you can have a garden that is tailor-made just for you based on several factors we will look into a little later.

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Garden Light Fixtures

Lighting Your Part To Beauty

Garden light fixtures
Garden Lights

Over the years I have seen so many garden designs that were just breathe taking from formal to informal gardens, bromeliad gardens, flower gardens, xeriscaping, raised bed gardens, aquascaping, interior plantscape, vegetables and herb gardens, etc…

It is just so amazing and truly awesome to give nature a helping hand and watch as that once drabbed area becomes a thing of beauty full of color and life

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Office Plant Care

Tips for Caring for Office Plants

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Guzmania plants

Indoor plants have their benefits, I have worked with these plants over the years as an interior plantscape designer transforming office space and bringing so much delight to persons that worked in those areas.

It brought such change as persons connect with nature indoors. It was truly amazing and give me such a great feeling. In this article, we will be looking at how to take care of office plants.

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How To Grow Plants From Cut Flowers

Growing flower cuttings plain and simple

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Rose arrangement

Growing flowers from cuttings is a great way to save a few $$$$ while increasing the number of plants in your garden. Oh, the joy of watching those cuttings grow and blossom is pretty amazing.

But what are the steps that are involved in this whole process? The process of growing flowers from cuttings is plain and simple all it takes is knowing how and

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How To Use Sugar And Vinegar To Preserve Cut Flowers

Steps to Preserving Cut Flowers in  Sugar and Vinegar

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Flower arrangement

As a child growing up Christmas was always an exciting time in our home because of the Christmas tree that my parents brought, we all got to decorate the tree and most of all watched as those gifts filled the entire area under the tree.

But what my Mom did was always added some sugar to the water that the Christmas tree stood in because I was told that this would preserve the tree and caused it to last longer meaning the aroma of the wonderful pine would be around a lot longer filling our home.

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Top 10 Cut Flowers

Flower arrangement-top-10-cut-flowers Using Cut Flowers Indoors

Flower cuttings, brightening your world with these beautiful flowers. Even Mother Nature has to stop to admire their beauty.

Cut flowers can really brighten your world with their beauty and style. These wonders of nature have been used over the years and on many occasions to express one’s feelings and to brighten up an area.

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How To Preserve Cut Flowers

Beautiful rose arrangement-how-to-preserve-cut-flowers

Prolonging Your Cut Flowers

Sending flowers is a tradition that has passed down from generation to generation. Giving flowers is a way to express our feelings for that special one.

Whether it’s a get well gift that says I am hoping you get better soon or a bouquet that is saying you are the only one for me and I love you, flowers have been used on these occasions and so much more to show our true feelings.

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How To Graft A Tree

Simple Steps to Tree Grafting

Tree grafting is a pretty neat way of duplicating the same species of plant or producing something different while at the seem time-saving a few dollars. The very first time I was introduced to grafting a tree was many years ago when I worked as a landscape tech

It was interesting to see how this method was carried out. Here in the Bahamas, we call this method tree mossing. In this article, we will be looking at how this is done as we enter the world of tree grafting.

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Starting Your Own Ornamental Pest Control Business

The ornamental pest control business

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Garden flowers

If you have a love for working outdoors and giving mother nature a helping hand then ornamental pest control is the right job for you. I have spent some 20 plus years in the field of landscape and gardening and have worked in many different areas which include

landscape design and installation, landscape maintenance, nurseryman, interior plant scape design and installation, interior plant maintenance, irrigation, and so on, but one area that I really loved was working as a plant pest technician.

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Starting An Interior Plantscape Business

What do I need to have an interior plantscape business?

Startup Cost: $1000-$1500

Home Base: You can start part-time and go full time once you have enough clients

Training: There are online courses that you can take, on the job training, or self-taught by purchasing books

Let’s get rolling

Croton plant-starting-a-interior-plantscape-business
Crotons

If you love working with plants and also with nature interior plantscape is for you. I worked as an interior plantscape technician for many years and I really loved working with plants. My training came from right there on the job where I was placed with several interior plant scape technicians.

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Cleaning a fish pond

Successful Tips on how to Clean a Fish Pond

In one of my articles, we looked at how to build a backyard fish pond, in this article however we will be looking at how to clean our fish pond. As we noted earlier installing a fish pond can liven up any Landscape and Garden area providing lots of fun for adults as well as kids.

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Pond fish

But in order for us to enjoy our fish pond, we are faced with the challenge of keeping it clean so that our fish will not only stay healthy but the pond itself would not become an eyesore. Many companies charge a fee to come and give our ponds a good cleaning. These fees can become, hefty base on the condition of your pond.
This article was written as a DIY (do it yourself ) guide. If you are willing to take on the challenge and don’t mind getting dirty along with saving on that pond cleaning bill then this article is for you, so with that said let’s look at pond cleaning more closely.

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Build your own backyard fish pond

How to DIY my Fish Pond

One special feature of landscape and gardening is adding a fish pond to brighten up and bringing life to that garden area. A few years ago I worked as a foreman taking care of a two-acre property and one of my delights in working on this property was the fish pond.

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Pond fish swimming among water lilies

At times both my co-workers and I would visit this pond and watch as these beautiful fish along with turtles swim gracefully back and forth, seeming to enjoy those long cool summer days. We were also given the responsibility to make sure that they were well fed.

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Pruning Methods

Simple Steps to Successful Pruning

As a landscape and interior plantscape designer, one of the tasks that I had to commonly perform was making sure that the plants that I installed were properly maintained. Even as a nurseryman this was one of my responsibilities. So I  did the basic stuff like watering, fertilizing, insect control, and of course pruning.

“To prune or not to prune?”

Pruning is important to a plant’s life because by pruning you can actually add years to your plant. Pruning can take your plant through a period of rejuvenation. In other words, because of pruning, your plant can go through a rest period causing your plant to become more healthy.

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Roses Queen of Flowers

Simple Steps to Growing Roses

Roses are in my opinion the ‘queen of flowers’. It’s amazing how roses are used so widely especially on valentine’s day where we see them in great abundance as lovers express their love for each other by either buying a single rose or a rose arrangement. But whatever the occasion, these exotic flowers are loved by millions around the world. The story is told of a farmer’s wife who grew roses because of her love for them and the story goes on to say when asked about pruning her rose bushes she exclaimed that she would “rather chop off one of her chicken’s head than to cut a flower from her rose bush”. That is loving roses to the highest extremity.

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Preparing your Garden for planting

Steps to Successful Gardening

Before planting a garden it is always important to map out where the garden is going to be.  The perfect location is

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Cabbage

crucial because that will determine if your Garden will be successful or not. Be mindful to choose an area that is in a sunny location because plants need a considerable amount of sunlight in order to grow and survive. With good watering practices, your plants will be able to photosynthesize (the process of plants making food).

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