Creating raised garden beds is a wonderful way to get a garden started easily. When you plant your flowers or vegetables in raised garden beds, you don't have to pull weeds first, turn soil, or dig out a lot of rocks and other debris. Instead, you simply choose the location you want your garden bed to be, lay down your bed retainer walls, and fill it with dirt.

Raised garden beds are popular because they're easy, but also because they allow you to start growing seeds and small starter plants earlier in the season. A raised garden bed will become warmer earlier in the season than a ground based garden bed, and that allows you to start your gardening earlier in the year.

The first step to creating your raised garden bed is to choose the materials you'll use for the walls of the bed. There are a wide variety of materials that can be used to create your garden bed. Rocks for instance, can be piled together into a rock wall design. Bricks can also be used to create a more formal looking garden bed too. Wood or railroad ties are easy, attractive and sometimes even free too.

Regardless of what you choose to create your garden bed with, you'll need to gather enough materials to make the bed as high as you'd like it. Some people like to create garden beds just a foot or two tall, while others create tiered garden beds which have multiple levels ranging from a foot or two in height, to four or five feet at the tallest level. How you design yours is completely up to you of course, and your budget.

Once you've decided on the materials you'll use to create your raised garden bed, the next step is to choose the location for the bed. Where you place your garden bed will depend on how much space you need, and how much sunlight you'll need too. If you're building a raised garden bed to plant a vegetable garden for instance, you'll want to place the bed in a location which gets at least five to six hours of sunlight each day.

Now that you have your materials and location chosen, it's time to build the bed. And all you need to do is simply lay out your material in the design you want for the garden bed to create the bed frame. Once the frame for your garden bed is ready, then you just need to fill it with soil. Put enough soil into the new garden bed to bring it to at least one or two inches below the top of your garden bed frame.

All that's left now is planting. You can plant small starter seedling plants in your bed, sow seeds directly, or put more mature plants in, whichever you prefer. After planting your plants in the new garden bed, surround them with some type of mulch material such as tree bark or dry grass clippings, so the plants and bed won't dry out too quickly during hot spells.

Tags: Flowers, Vegetables, Raised garden beds

Rock gardening is an easy way to make your lawn and garden beautiful, yet keep it very low maintenance. Rock gardens are particularly useful for areas of your yard which tend to be quite dry, but they're also quite beautiful in water run off areas too, because you can design them to look like miniature river beds.

Creating a rock garden isn't too difficult, but there is some planning involved. The first step to planning your rock garden is to select the area which you plan to place it. You'll also want to decide on the types of plants you'll have in your rock garden, and what kind of rocks you'd like to have as well.

In most cases, little river rocks and pebbles are excellent to use for a general rock garden bed. You may want to select your rocks and pebbles based on color or uniformity of size and shape, or you might want to simply go out and collect a variety of interesting rocks to put into the garden instead.

The most attractive rock gardens usually have a base rock bed of small pebbles and stones though, and a variety of plants cropping up between them. Then larger, more interesting elements are placed into the rock garden as focal points, shade areas, and to simply make the rock garden more attractive.

Some rock gardens for instance, have a few larger rocks or even small boulders placed in strategic areas to create both interest and variety in the garden. Placing small boulders in your rock garden also makes it easy to add a small fountain or trickling stream too, plus you'll be able to plant moss and other interesting plants on the boulders themselves close to the water.

Once you've chosen the location for your rock garden though, you'll need to fully clear the area as best as you can. Remove all weeds and as much of the roots from previous weeds and plants as you can, then remove any other unwanted debris. You'll be left with a fairly mundane dirt lot, but this is the blank canvas you'll be able to create your beautiful rock garden in.

After the garden area has been cleared, you'll need to place your plants into this area. Unlike other gardens though, a rock garden tends to have small plants that sprout up here and there. So you don't want to place too many plants, and you don't want them to be too close together either. Just scatter a few in various areas of the new garden plot.

After you have your plants in the ground, if you plan to place larger boulders in the rock garden, put those in their chosen locations first. Then start spreading your base rock or pebbles. Make the rock layer as thick as you'd like, and be sure to get the rocks in close to the base of your new plants and boulders too. Rock garden plants usually like to climb over, around, and through the rock bed that you create, so don't be afraid of putting the rocks too close.

Now you simply need to place any finishing touches or focal points into your rock garden. You can place water elements, interesting pieces of wood or even old wagon wheels if you'd like.

Tags: Rock Gardening

Many new gardeners don't often understand how important it is to use mulch around the base of their flowers, plants, shrubs and trees. It doesn't matter what kind of gardening you're doing though: flower garden, vegetable gardening, container gardening, or planting bushes and trees, putting mulch around your garden beds will help you in a number of ways.

1. Mulching your garden plants and flowers will help you conserve water. By covering the ground around your bushes, flowers, trees and other garden spots, you're able to help protect your plants from the strong, hot sunlight of summertime, and this helps keep the soil around them moist for longer periods of time.

2. Weed control. Putting mulch around your plants and flower beds also helps prevent weeds from growing and invading your flower beds. Since mulch serves to keep the sun from reaching the soil around the base of your flowers, weeds will have a much more difficult time growing there. And the few hardy ones that do sprout up will be much easier to see and remove.

3. Cold protection. Mulch is extremly important and useful in areas which freeze each winter season. It's particularly important to place a thick layer of mulch around the base of tropical plants when you live in an area that freezes each winter. If you have a thick enough layer of mulch, you can often prevent your tropical plants from freezing and dying due to the cold weather.

Many types of mulch also just add another layer of beauty and sophistication to your garden beds too.

There are a wide variety of materials which can be used for mulching your garden. An excellent organic material is wood chips, shavings, or bark. Since wood is an organic material, it will slowly break down and be mixed into your garden soil, providing more vitamins and nutrients for future years.

Grass clippings or dried leaves which fall from your trees each fall are also excellent natural materials to use for mulching your plants and flowers, as is straw and hay. Since these are also organic materials, they will contribute to the overall richness and fertility of your soil as they breakdown too.

Some people prefer to use mulch materials which will last for many more years at a time though, and some popular ones include plastic, and rubber material made from recycled tires. These often come in the form of circular rings for placing under trees and bushes easily.

Rocks and pebbles can act as a mulch too though, because covering the bare soil around your flowers and plants with pebbles or rocks serves the same purpose: Retaining moisture and preventing weed growth. Traditionally though, most mulch was designed to both protect the plants and flowers while feeding and enriching the soil too.

Tags: Garden mulch, Gardening