Stowe Landscape Gardens
A beautiful creation of the 18th century, Stowe is one of Europe’s most influential landscape gardens. Hidden among spectacular vistas and vast open spaces are magical secret corners, hidden meanings and over 40 monuments and temples. A perfect day out from exploring the temples to a family picnic or for those seeking peace and tranquility, Stowe has something for everyone. With the changing seasons, continuing restoration and a calendar of events for all the family each visit provides something new.
Rural Gardens
A meadow is a lawn that is managed so that plants other than grass are encouraged. This style suits rural gardens perfectly, but even a small area in a town garden, carefully managed sot hat it looks attractive and colourful and not like a piece of waste ground, provides a breath of the countryside and a valuable refuge for wildlife in an urban setting. Long grass provides food for many caterpillars and a home for insects that help to control garden pests.
Your ideal meadow may well be populated by what some people would consider weeds, but they must be the right kind of weeds, and this needs careful planning and some management. You may also wish to add more conventional border plants and bulbs and to encourage them to naturalize informally. The effects you create can also be planned to vary with the season.
The important point to remember about wildflowers is that they need porr soil, so you need to think in a completely different way to when gardening conventionally. You must not improve or add nutrients to the soil as you would in beds and borders, nor feed, scarify, aerate or top-dress as you would a lawn. The kind of regime needed to maintain a meadow is not labour-intensive, but it may encourage undesirable weeds among the wildflowers and these will need to be removed.
Because a meadow is a more natural environment than a lawn, and it is to be hoped that the plants you introduce will naturalize, account must be taken of your soil conditions and what will thrive in them. It is well worth taking a look at local wild areas, perhaps with the aid os a good wildflower guide, to see what grows well locally. A moist area will support different plants to dry chalkland, and working with your soil will make it easier to establish plants. But however authentic you wish your meadow to be, never be tempted to dig up plants from the wild.
Specialized plants such as terrestrial orchids will only flourish where conditions suit them, and are usually an indicator that the meadow is ancient and has been well cared for. An old meadow will have a richly diverse floral and become home to a wide range of insects. However even a young meadow can be a useful oasis for wildlife and with time more plants will encroach fromt he surrounding countryside.
Having a meadow is not an excuse for not mowing. It must be cut twice a year, in early summer, after spring flowers have set seed, and again in late autumn. Mowings must be raked up and removed to prevent their nutrients being added to the soil and encourageing course grasses at the expense of wildflowers. Most lawnmowers will not be able to cope with such long grass. The traditional mowing tool is a scythe, but this is a dangerous tool and a nylon-line trimmer is much safter for small areas or hire a long grass mower.
Play Areas For Children
Children love their own play area and will especially enjoy a play house, or even a tree house if they are old enough. It is their part of the garden and the chances are that by keeping most of their rough-and-tumble activity in one place, the rest of the garden will remain looking smart and beautiful.
If you have a large garden you have the potential for a small adventure playground. Climbing frames made from rustic poles blend happily into the garden. Chipped bark spread over the ground to soften any falls and prevent slippery, muddy areas. Always make sure such structures are absolutely stable.
A delightful little crooked house, complete with veranda and a cute chimney, built on stilts with a short stairway leading up to it. It is a dream house for a child with imagination. Always make sure elevated structures are absolutely safe, and take advice from a builder if in doubt.
A play house is a young child’s delight, and it may be possible to accommodate one at the end of the patio so that supervision is possible when required. It doesn’t have to be left in the original wood finish. Painting it an attractive colour may transform it into a desirable garden feature and the children will love it, especially if consulted about the colour.
Children’s needs often have to be accommodated within an existing garden, or designed into a new one in a way that when the facilities have been outgrown, they can be removed without leaving an obstructive space or in need of re-designing.
An area for children reflect their ages, and of course with a growing family there may be a spread of ages to accommodate, all needing different kinds of stimulation.
Growing Plants To Eat
Growing plants that you can eat as well as admire is a bonus. Some vegetables, such as ruby chard and beetroot, even cut leaved lettuce, are pretty as ornamental plants in beds and borders. Try planting vegetables and fruit in beds and borders with flowers.
A kitchen garden is likely to be visually more acceptable if it is broken up into small beds with decorative edging. The crops are easy to cultivate without having to walk on the soil, as all parts can be reached with a hoe from the paths. It is possible to arrange the beds in a geometrical pattern to emphasize the sense of design. The paths between them can also be made interesting, depending on the materials used and how they are laid.
In a cottage garden, it’s perfectly natural to see a corner given over to growing vegetables. Provided it is a weed-free and nest area, it should not look unattractive. Adding a few bright flowers around the edge, like french marigolds will make it look more ornamental-and it is thought that these plants can help to deter pests.
Old fashion cottage gardens often used to have vegetables in the front garden, and crops like pumpkins and squashes were very decorative towards the end of the season. Don’t be afraid to use a few flowers alongside the vegetables. This practice used to be quite common and makes a far more pleasing garden then vegetables alone.
Gardening Magazines
Various gardening magazines are available in the market. But would you like to know which stands out from the rest? Here are a selection of gardening magazines that anyone in love with his or her garden will appreciate.
COUNTRY GARDENS often showcases the more unusual gardens around the country. It introduces wonderful new ways to enjoy garden sights and scents. It helps the avid gardener to create an eye-pleasing, fragrance - filled country garden.
This magazine has very useful advice on setting up and caring for your garden. Every issue contains profiles of fascinating people and their gardens, inspiration for gardens and detailed garden plans. Best of all, it’s a trusted source of information that’s easy to understand. Every season carries a vast harvest of ideas to delight, motivate and guide any gardener.
How about a gardening magazine for those who want to become a better gardener? FINE GARDENING MAGAZINE from The Taunton Press brings you amazing design ideas, beneficial techniques, and the know-how to get the best results from your gardening endeavors.
In each issue you’ll find eye-opening bits of advice from the experts, detailed information on all types of plants, effective techniques and time-saving tips, straightforward tool reviews from editors and readers and planting suggestions for specific regions.
But for more intensive information on how to maintain a garden packed with style and color, then you’ll want to read GARDEN DESIGN. This gardening magazine brings out eye-popping photos, illustrations and useful recommendations on how to create a picture-perfect garden. It is written and designed for those who are passionate about their homes and gardens. Garden Design is more than just a dig-in-the-dirt gardening magazine; it’s for people who enjoy bringing in more aesthetic value for their homes through their gardens.
Garden Design encourages you to create stylish outdoor living spaces and rare gardens through cultivating rare breeds of plants, with updates on the best tools and techniques. It contains magnificent photographs and articles that capture the imaginations of gardeners everywhere.
For passionate gardeners, HOLTICULTURE MAGAZINE is the ultimate guide to gardening. The authoritative voice of gardeners, Horticulture serves as an essential guide and trusted friend, and is a main resource for serious gardeners from every corner of the country.
These magazines aim to instruct, inform, and inspire serious home gardeners. There are gardening magazines for beginners and expert gardeners. Discover or develop your green thumb with their latest gardening techniques and garden design information.
For Australian readers, there is BURKE’S BACKYARD. Springing form a TV series of the same name, Burke’s Backyard focuses on gardening décor as well as the all-important garden makeovers that have become so popular.
YOUR GARDEN is another beauty, claiming the prestige of being Australia’s gardening magazine, it usually features two or three popular flowers and how best to grow them, with a wealth of tips and information on other plants, tools and products for the garden.
GARDENING AUSTRALIA springs from the ABC’s feature of that name it features many wonderful articles by gardening experts and often holds a free catalogue from one of the larger nurseries.
