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Attractive and Affordable Landscaping
By Ray Zimmerman
A well thought out landscaping plan can not only add significant beauty to your home but can also help to reduce heating and cooling costs of your residence and/or your place of business. I would like to point out that if you want to create landscaping for new construction or if you want to renovate existing landscaping, definitely hire a well-known landscaping service that has a great track record in the community. The weather conditions in the southern part of the United States are definitely hotter during the summer months than our neighbors to the North. The expense of air conditioning a residential or commercial building during the summer can be greatly reduced by planting shade trees in strategic locations when landscaping your property. If you are residing in an area with harsh winters, trees that maintain their leaves throughout the winter months will help to protect a building from the cold winter winds which will help to reduce heating costs. Of course, adding a little more insulation in the attic area will also prove to be beneficial. Regardless of your particular location, always consider energy-efficient landscaping strategies that are based on the local climate. This is were a professional landscaping service can be of significant help. When discussing your ideas with the landscaper that you have selected, always make sure that you ask for energy-efficient suggestions that can save you money in the long-run. Of course, when people think about landscaping their homes, they are primarily concerned with making their residence as beautiful as possible and at the same time, keeping their expenses down to a dull roar. It is not unusual for landscaping to run into the thousands. The larger the plants used, the more expensive the job! Hedges, shrubs and flowing plants grow quickly, especially in the south where the weather accommodates plant growth. If you use smaller plants while landscaping your property, you will significantly reduce the cost involved. You might possibly save over half and that’s a considerable amount. You might even be able to take a vacation with the money that you saved. If you keep your landscaped areas thoroughly watered, it won’t be very long before those small shrubs have grown to a point where they need to be trimmed and shaped. If you can afford the added expense, most landscaping services provide landscaping maintenance. Quite a few landscaping companies will trim your trees, shape your hedges and shrubs, as well as clean-up and fertilize your beds. They can also treat diseased plants and apply pesticides to eliminate problem insects. If you are building a new home, you might even consider having an irrigation system (commonly referred to as a sprinkler system) installed before the sod is put in place. Of course, having an irrigation system installed is a major expense. I will have to admit that I don’t miss watering my lawn. Especially during the hot summers in Louisiana. The newer systems are all high-tech and can be set to automatically water on specific days and for specific times that are preset for each section of your property. For a couple of hundred dollars more, you can purchase a system with a rain sensor which keeps your system from coming on when it’s raining. When you have decided to landscape your property, the first thing that you should do is to create a drawing of the size and location of your beds. Even though you may have very little knowledge of this sort of thing, there is plenty of information available on the internet to help you come up with some very good plans. After deciding where the beds are to be placed, you will need to decide what type of shrubs, hedges or decorative plants that you would like to use in your landscaping project. I have provided a link below to a website that provides over four thousand photos of landscaping ideas that should help to get you started. You will need to make sure that all of the plants that you want to utilize in your landscape project will grow well in your particular climate. You will also need to take into account the location of where the plants will be placed. Some plants require more shade than sun and the opposite is also true. This is where a professional landscaper can be of help. North America is actually divided into twenty different climate zones. These particular zones are based on the average winter temperature and each zone is either 10° warmer or colder than the adjacent zone. The zones stretch across North America from East to West and the zones change when traveling from North to South. If you check out the National Gardening Association, you will find a detailed chart showing the physical locations of all of the different climate zones in the United States. You will also find a wealth of information on this website. If you are interested in gardening and plants, you could spend countless hours rummaging through their website. In conclusion, always seek the help of a professional landscaper. They have a wealth of information at their finger tips and they will be more than happy to help you with your landscaping.
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Contributor's Note
Nothing looks better than a new home that has just been landscaped by a professional landscaping company. Those of us who live in Lake Charles, LA have one of the best landscapers available at our disposal.
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Landscaping Ideas & Photos
| National Gardening Association
| Find a Local Landscaper
Attractive and Affordable...
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A very interesting article on landscaping for more than one purpose...
Also, don't just call any landscaper but one with a track record of knowing your particular area well.
And always learn from trees and plants which were used for landscape design in your neighbors' gardens.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Gabriele, thank you for the kind words. Have a great day!
As always a very well written and informative article. May I add there are three flowering shrubs that should always be used in the landscape, at least here in the south. They are Crepe myrtles, Camellias, and Banana bush.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
I've had Crepe Myrtles and Camellias... but I have no idea what a Banana Bush is. I'll have to go on Google and check out a few photos. Have a good one!
Banana bush is an evergreen shrub that from a distance looks like a camellia. It blooms in the early spring with flowers that are hardly noticeable but highly fragrant. I planted one three years ago that was 2 foot tall and now it is 6 ft. tall and just as wide. It perfumed the whole yard this spring with the smell of ripe bananas.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
You are definitely the authority on vegetables and plants in our group. Way to go!
I suppose it also helps to shoot your dogs when you start landscaping. When we moved into this house the garden looked pretty enough. Now that our dogs have had more than a year to dig everywhere and uproot every single plant in sight, it don't look so pretty no more. I'd plant some new stuff but it'll have been uprooted, carried around, shaken about, and chewed on before I'm done with my post-gardening shower.
 | | nick Jul 16, 2011 05:51 | |
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
They always say... a dog is a man's best friend. I guess they were talking about when the dogs are "IN" the house. Have a great day1
This regards Nicks comment to his naughty dogs which respected no landscaping. I had a cheeky Labrador street mix. That bitch was mocking me parading in the frontgarden with a bromeliad between her teeth. She carried the uprooted Bromeliads in such a way that it looked like she was holding up a trophy. She was a clever, but also a good dog. Consequently, I made 2 foot high fences with cheap chicken wire. Both of my dogs respected that. Sometimes a fence needs to be more symbolic than anything else to function. That front garden was an example of parklike landscaping which became more and more of a hobby withing 7 years. This Durban upper Highway garden was out of this world. I am not boosting, as everybody said so. Unfortunately, it can be more difficult to landscape with some dogs, while they are still puppies.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Since I don't have any dogs, I don't have those type of problems. The only problems that I have are the neighbor's cats.
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This intel was contributed by crawfish
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