Annuals are flowers and plants which only grow for one season, then they die off and must be replanted again by seed or starter plants the next year. Some annuals create seeds though, which will drop to the ground and naturally start sprouting on their own the following year, but many must be purchased again if you want to have those flowers blooming in your yard and garden again each year.

Annuals are a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to create beautiful color in your yard and garden in the springtime. Many annuals can be purchased in small four or six inch starter pots, and they'll often already have flowers blooming when you buy them. Buying them this way allows you to take them home, put them into the ground or into pots and containers, and have an instant blooming garden right from the start.

By planting blooming annual flowers along your walkway for instance, or into a new garden bed or container, you'll have instant color and beauty in your yard as early in the season as you'd like.

Most annuals are fairly easy to plant, take care of, and grow. Most of them also come in a wide variety of flower color selections too. Some annuals are particularly hardy through drought and strong sunlight, and some actually continuously bloom from spring through summer and into late fall too. These types of annuals tend to be the most pleasing to gardeners, because there is little work needed to keep their garden look fresh and colorful almost all year round.

Vinca flowers for instance, look a little like Pansies and they come in a huge variety of flower colors. You can buy vincas which have solid colored flower petals and blooms, or ones which have variagated colors on the flowers instead. The leaves of this plant are green and glossy, but it does extremely well in high heat and direct, strong sunlight areas.

Vinca's often grow to about ten or twelve inches high, and when you pluck the expended buds off of them regularly, they bloom in some areas for months on end. In Zone 7B for instance, it's not uncommon to see Vinca's in bloom from March through September or October.

Another easy growing annual that's a favorite of most gardeners is the Pansy. This plant also has glossy green leaves and many different flower colors to choose from. The flowers themselves almost look like little faces with the way they're colored too.

Morning Glories are another annual plant in most areas, and these also produce profusive flower blooms for months on end. As long as the roots of the Morning Glory vines are kept moist and out of direct, hot sunlight, these plants will climb all over a trellis, fence, and even bushes too.

Morning Glory vines create a tight spiral pattern when they're climbing, so you need to give them small things to grab onto. A trellis with wide wooden slats is too large for the tight spirals to get around easily, but a chainlink fence is ideal. You can even use string or thin twine for the vines to wrap around and climb.

Tags: Annuals, Blue Picotee, Morning Glory

Gardeners, by their very nature, tend to like wildlife — unless it's the sort that eat their crops and flowers! But with a little forethought, you can add a whole extra dimension to your gardening pleasure and employ a whole army of helpers in the endless battle against pests.

Chief among these helpers will be birds. If you can encourage them to nest in your garden, a single pair of small birds will stuff more than one thousand unwanted bugs from your garden down the expectant throats of their chicks, daily for several weeks. And this is usually at a critical time of year, when the bugs are just getting ready to attack your fruit blossom and newly emerging vegetables. And here's the even better news: with such a convenient supply of baby food, many species will be encouraged to have a second brood of chicks, so you gain twice over!

So how do you encourage birds to nest in your garden? It's a simple matter of bribery: if you feed them with food scraps and seed through the leaner winter months and then provide suitable nesting boxes, come spring, they are very likely to take up residence, particularly if you continue to make food available to the adults.

Having their own adult food on tap allows them to spend all their time scouring your garden of unwanted bugs for their offspring. Certainly, you will have to spend a little on bird seed, but no more than you would spend on pesticides, and you gain immeasurably by the certain knowledge no chemical squirts have touched the fruit and other goodies growing in your garden. It's a shrewd investment that can't be faulted.

Nest boxes are available in all shapes and sizes, tailor-made for different species. But what they all have in common is the need for great care about their location.

They must never be placed where the full mid-day sun can touch them, otherwise the chicks will die of overheating. Nor should they be placed where icy blasts of air can freeze the chicks. The best position of all is in a shady area facing the western sunset and high enough from the ground to deter four legged predators.

If you live in a country where frogs or other amphibians have a taste for slugs and other vegetable eating pests, a small investment in a wildlife pond in a quiet corner of your garden will pay handsome dividends. Whilst they might lurk in the pond all day in a soporific stupor — don't be fooled. Come nightfall, your frogs will be off for a night on the town to dine out on the slugs and other pests, just as the slugs themselves are about to feast on your carefully cultivated cabbages!

A wildlife pond doesn't have to be too fancy. So a simple shallow depression a foot (30cm) or so deep with gently sloping sides, lined with a piece of butyl rubber (isobutylene isoprene) and with a few oxygenating plants, such as the ubiquitous Canadian Pondweed, is all you need.

And, as Kevin Costner said in "Field Of Dreams": they will come. In fact, you'll be amazed how quickly the pond life will move in — apparently out of thin air — even in an urban area.

So, with the birds tackling the bugs during the day and the frog "night shift" guarding your vegetables by night, you can sleep soundly, ready for another day of enjoying your garden.

Tags: Wildlife Garden

Creating a private garden space is a lot of fun to do, but it also provides you with years of enjoyment after the fact too. Sometimes called garden rooms, or outdoor rooms, a private garden space is made to be private. A sanctuary you can retreat to anytime you'd like, to enjoy nature, smell the beautiful flowers growing, and simply destress from the everyday hustle and bustle of life.

When planning your private garden, the general goal is usually to create a quiet place to retreat from the world. This garden doesn't have to be fully private, but it does have a much more calming effect when it's at least semi-private. So consider the location of your garden before starting to create it. If you must place the garden near busy or noisy areas such as close to the street, there are tactics you can use in your planning and design which will help dampen the noise and distractions. If possible though, you'll get the best results from a private garden space by creating it away from everyday noise and activity.

Private garden spaces usually tend to be on the small side, and many people turn small backyard patios or gazebos into their private garden space. The garden can be as large as you'd like though, depending on your own personal preferences and budget restrictions.

One of the first things you'll need to plan for is what kind of barrier you'll use for your garden. One of the reasons a private garden space is often referred to as a garden room, is because many people like to create living walls for their garden area. And these walls make the space seem more like an outdoor room because the garden space is more enclosed. If you prefer not to have your garden enclosed too much though, you can simply create an entranceway to your private garden space using an arbor or arch.

Living walls can be made by simply putting up inexpensive materials such as a chain link fence or wooden trellis, and using fast growing flower vines. Flower vines can easily be trained to grow up and over fences, trellis materials and arches too, and as these vines mature they create a thick living wall which separates your garden area from the rest of the world. These vines also tend to sheild the area from everyday noise and activity, plus they help to make the garden space cooler than the rest of the yard area may be as well.

An alternative way to create your private garden space quickly, is to simply buy flower pots and containers in a variety of sizes, then buy plants which have already started to grow. Arrange your flower boxes, pots and containers around the perimeter of the garden space, then plant the new flowers into them. If you choose flower pots and containers which have varying sizes and heights, you'll be able to strategically place them in locations which will block out everyday activities from your main line of sight. This type of private garden space won't always block out much noise though, so it's best located in a more secluded area of the yard.

Tags: Private Garden