Backyard Landscaping Ideas

From the simple cottage rose garden to an estate-style design the rose fits any garden size.
Types of roses
Not every rose will grow everywhere, but this much-loved flower has inspired much experimenting with cross-breeding and there are species available for almost any climate. Because the topic is so broad, we’ve listed only a few outstanding varieties [...]

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Slopes are one of the most common landscaping problems, particularly in houses above street level. Although a gentle slope
(two or three degrees) can help direct water from buildings, and can be landscaped as a flat area would be, a slope of 4 percent or more requires special treatment. Here are some design ideas and plant [...]

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Sinkholes — sunken layers in the land caused by changes in material beneath the land’s surface — are a serious problem in some areas. Particularly in Georgia and Florida, sinkholes are a common landscape blight.

Though most are only 10 to 12 feet in diameter, sinkholes have been known to expand to hundreds of feet in [...]

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Repairinga Sunken Lawn
If your lawn’s suffering from this relatively common problem, there are several things you can do about it depending on the size of the sunken area. If the area is large, however, be sure the problem wasn’t caused by a sinkhole, which requires different treatment [See BLI's
Repairing a Sinkhole].

Covering the area

If [...]

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Landscapingto Hide Eyesores
Whether it’s a useful but unattractive compost pile, a satellite dish that’s incongruous with your French colonial home, or sewer vent pipes that are just plain ugly, most home landscapes have something the home owner would rather not display to the neighborhood. Here are some simple, affordable solutions to common garden eyesores.

Air conditioners, [...]

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Hanging Garden
This design works well as a garden plan or combined with other plans.
Raising plants eliminates the bending and crawling needed to tend
planting beds, and can fit more plants into a small space.

Plant Choice

The types of plants you choose will depend on how you want to
display them. Do you want to fill your patio with [...]

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Attracting Native Birds
[If you'd like to attract hummingbirds, please visit BLI's Hummingbird garden.]

Before you set up bird houses or start buying seed, you’ll want to know the specific housing and food requirments of the bird species in your area. Guide books such as “Collins Bird Guide for Britain and Europe” by Lars Svensson or, in [...]

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The Night Garden

If you’re like most people, when you arrive home at the end of the day, your
garden’s already gone to bed and you miss out on the result of all those weekends of
work you put into it. A well-designed night garden, however, offers a landscape that at
6 p.m. is just starting to wake up. [...]

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The Butterfly Garden
Butterflies pollinate flowers and add living color and a feeling of
calm to any garden. Whether your a lepodoptrist in training,
trying to attract
insects to pollinate your plants, or just want to add some
life to your landscape with a few simple
additions you can create a butterfly haven.

Meeting the locals

Each species of butterfly [...]

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The Hummingbird Garden
Hummingbirds are nature’s soap opera. If these little birds
are native to your area, creating a hummingbird garden will not only give these birds new
habitat, but will provide some good entertainment.

Plants choice

Most of the nectar-rich flowers hummingbirds seek offer red, tube- or trumpet-shaped blooms. However, a garden of only one or two favorite [...]

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