Why Use Landscape Lighting?

Outdoor lighting is a functional addition to your yard, but it can also add beauty, too. Outdoor lighting will add security to your property, and be esthetically pleasing as well. If you choose the right kinds of outdoor lighting, your home will look more inviting for visitors. Plus, you can increase the safety of your garden features by lighting stairs, decks, and patios. Line your pathways with a beautiful string of lights, or make your pool glow with landscape lighting. Properly placed lights will emphasize the beauty of your garden, spotlighting its most impressive features. Gazebos, fountains, or other garden structures might get lost in the darkness, but when illuminated, you can enjoy them at dusk as well as midday.

Flood lights can be used to draw attention to interesting areas of your garden. Recessed lighting is the perfect way to spotlight small areas or specific plants. When choosing lighting for your yard, consider both electric and solar lights. Electric lighting involves wires buried underground, but solar lights do not shine as brightly as electric lights. Consider the effect you want, as well as where you will be placing them, before choosing a type of outdoor lighting.

When you decide to use landscape lighting in your yard, make sure that they are installed correctly. If you aim the lights in the wrong direction, you will not highlight the areas you want to highlight with your lights. If you are lining pathways, your lighting will look odd unless the lights are evenly spaced along the path. Keep in mind that your garden will look different in the darkness, so check out your lighting placement in the dark first before you finalize your lights positions. There should be the same number of lights on both sides of a path or other structure so that it is symmetrical. If you are using the kind of landscape lights that come on a post which sticks in the ground, all of your low voltage lights should be the same height. Otherwise, your lighting will look haphazard and not put together.

Landscape lighting is a beautiful way to highlight areas of your yard. Besides using lighting as a safety feature, light the areas that youd like to use after dark. Youve worked too hard on your yard for it to disappear into the darkness at nightfall. Once you install landscape lighting, you can sit on your patio or deck and enjoy your garden after dusk.

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May 24 2009 | Home Improvement | 1 Comment »

Putting A Coldframe In Your Garden

If you are making out your seed orders for annual flowers, you will want to include those that are sure to produce results. It is too bad that all of our colleges and universities cant have the extensive annual flower trials that are seen at Penn State. But this is done on a smaller scale in many states.

Before you order, why not check out your own state agricultural college or agricultural experiment station to see if they have tried out any of these annuals. They will probably have a list of varieties they recommend for your particular locality.

Do you have a cold frame? If not, you dont know what you are missing. If each person who has a new home would put in a cold frame 3 x 6 feet, and then in addition to it have a little bed 3 x 10 feet in which to grow plants, his yard would soon be the envy of all his friends and neighbors.

If you do not use the cold frame and little nursery bed for anything but growing for one year the new plants and garden seedlings you buy, it will pay for itself. The loss that most gardeners take in new plants and plant seedlings that they buy is appalling. They tuck them between other larger plants in a flower bed or in some border planting and then forget them.

Here they are shaded or have to compete with roots of big plants, so they are crowded out. Besides this, all too often you forget that you have tucked them in. If you are raising baby chicks you keep them by themselves until they are pretty well grown. New and young. plants should be treated the same way.

It will help a lot if the soil in the cold frame and the nursery bed is mixed up just as if you were going to use it to pot up African violets. If you can work it to a depth of 12 inches and have it about equal parts soil, sand, and peat, you are going to be amazed at the way your plants grow.

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April 14 2009 | Home Improvement | No Comments »