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Front Yard Landscaping: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden

Although you may like the look of your lawn, you have to admit that it can easily be much more work than a typical garden. So, a lot of people are turning their lawns into gardens. Not only can they be easier to upkeep, but they can also provide your family with food that you can dry or can to have fresh vegetables or even fruit throughout the growing season. If you’re wondering how to turn your lawn into a garden, there are a few avenues you can take. We’ll outline them for you.

1. Sheet Mulching

One of the easiest ways to make the conversion from lawn to a garden is sheet mulching. Cut the grass as short as you possibly can to start. Get a thick layer of newspaper or cardboard and cover the newly cut grass. Make sure that your newspaper or cardboard overlaps, so you don’t accidentally let any sun through. You’ll cover this with at least four inches of compost or mulch. Cut holes through the newspaper or cardboard for your plants. You can also wait a season for your newspaper to decompose to add plants.

2. Raised Garden Boxes

If you want to keep patches or your lawn or paths, you can install raised garden beds. Spread a thick layer of cardboard or landscape cloth on the ground to help suppress the grass and build boxes on top. The boxes can be in any shape. Fill them with organic garden soil, and they’re ready for your plants. It’s a great technique if you have back problems and can’t bend to reach a traditional garden. You will need to amend and refresh the soil in the boxes each growing season.

3. Sod Tilling or Cutting

One of the oldest ways to make the switch from a lawn to a garden is sod tilling or cutting. You can cut strips of sod away with a sharp tool or till the ground to turn up the soil. Once the grass is gone, cover the exposed soil with a 6 to 10-inch layer of newspapers. Add another four to six inches of compost and three to four inches of mulch on top of the newspapers. This will enrich the soil to provide nutrients while preventing your grass from growing back. Plant whatever you want in the new space.

4. Solarization

This is the process of keeping light from reaching your lawn to kill it by covering it with a sheet of black plastic. It works best in areas that get a lot of sunlight with hot summer weather. Cut the grass as short as possible and cover the area you want to convert into garden beds with polyethylene plastic. Add garden stakes or rocks to hold it in place. The plastic will trap heat in the soil to kill weeds, grass, and some plant diseases. It has to stay on for four to eight weeks to kill the grass. Once it does, you can remove it and add mulch and compost before planting whatever you like in your new garden.

Contact Evergreen Landscaping

Do you have more questions on how to turn your lawn into a garden? Maybe you’d like professional help with this project. Either way, contact us at Evergreen Landscaping. We’re ready to help you grow a thriving garden in your yard this season.

How do Self-Watering Gardens Work

Over or underwatering can cause your garden to fall below its potential yield. You could end up with curling leaves, fewer vegetables or flowers, yellow spots, and a droopy appearance if you’re not careful. It can be tricky to know how much water your plants need at any one time, and this is where self-watering setups come into play. They essentially allow your plants to hydrate themselves, so you have less maintenance.

Consequences of Over or Under Watering

When a plant gets too much water, the water can collect and sit around the root system, and this causes oversaturation. When this happens, capillary action is impossible. This is why giving your plants too much water is the leading cause of plant death and root rot. A self-watering system separates the plants from the water, so it can’t drown the roots.

If your plant doesn’t get enough water on a daily basis, the water it manages to get usually sits on the top of the soil. This can cause the roots to dry out. As long as you make a point to refill your self-watering planter periodically, you won’t have to worry about the roots drying out.

How Self-Watering Beds or Planters Work

It’s common to water your plants from the top-down, even though plants actually absorb water from the bottom up. Self-watering setups usually come with a water reservoir that sits at the bottom of the planter or bed. The water gets drawn up from this reservoir as needed through a capillary action process.

The plant’s root systems will attract water from the reservoir and pull it upwards using cohesion, adhesion, and surface tension of the water. Once the water gets to the plant’s leaves, the plants can use the water in the photosynthesis process and for other essential functions.

Using Self-Watering Planters

There are two main types of self-watering systems that you can get. One comes with a removable water tank at the bottom of the setup, and the other setup has a tube that runs alongside it. There are also self-watering inserts that could turn traditional garden beds into self-watering ones. They all work in the same way, but the aesthetics will be different for each one.

The only thing that you need to do to keep them running at peak levels is refill the water chamber when it starts to get low. The number of times you refill it will depend on the sunlight levels, types of plants, and the time of year. However, you can plan to refill it every two to three weeks.

In between refilling the reservoir, you can keep watering the top of your plants with a light mist every few days. This will help raise the humidity levels around the plant’s leaves. If you’re growing an indoor garden, you’ll want to mist the leaves and wipe them down to get the dust off. If you don’t, the dust can stop the plant’s ability to photosynthesize. Other than this, the setup should handle all of your plant’s watering needs with minimal input from you.

Evergreen Landscaping Can Help with Self-Watering Setups

If you’re interested in getting a self-watering setup in place for your garden, contact us. We’re happy to walk you through your options and pick the one that is going to work best for you.

Understanding Sun Levels and the Seasonality of Shadows

The key to getting a lush and beautiful lawn or garden relies heavily on sun levels and how every plant has different needs. Some plants do wonderfully in bright and full sun while others burn, and some plants need shade and cooler areas to thrive. How the sun changes throughout the day and during the season also factors in, and we’re going to give you a quick breakdown of the most important points below.

Understanding Sun Levels

When you purchase plants or even pick out grass seed, it’ll have a preferred sun level listed on the package. You want to get as close to this sun level as possible when you plant them to ensure they get enough but not too much light and heat. The most basic sun levels include:

• Full Sun – Six hours at a minimum of direct sun every day
• Part Sun – Three to six hours of direct sun every day
• Part Shade – Three to six hours of sun every day, but they’ll need protection during the middle of the day from the most intense sun
• Full Shade – Less than three hours of direct sunlight a day

Unless the plant is full or partial sun, you want to put them in an area where shadows shield them from the direct mid-day sun. This is too hot for them to be in the direct light, and it’s very easy for them to burn or wilt. Once they do, it’s difficult to get them back to full health unless you immediately take steps to fix how much light they get and at what time of day they get it. Also, water in the early morning or evening hours to avoid magnifying the light and burning your plant’s leaves.

What is the Seasonality of Shadows?

When you think of the seasons, shadows come into play. Spring and summer are the seasons where the days get longer, and there are fewer shadows. Once fall and winter hit, you’ll get less direct sunlight and much longer shadows. So, an area that was perfect for your part sun plant may now be too shaded for them to continue to grow well. If this is the case, you may find yourself moving your plants to continue giving them the correct light amount.

The season with the shortest shadows starts during the Spring Equinox in March, and it goes until the end of August in the Midwest climates. Then, the days slowly start getting shorter and the shadows longer. This will change, depending on your location. However, almost every part of the United States will notice shorter days in the fall and winter months over the spring and summer months. You want to plan accordingly, especially if you have plants out all year-round.

Doing things like planting things in containers where you can easily move them from space to space or putting up temporary shade structures in the warmer months that you can take down in the cooler months can help your plants thrive.

Contact Evergreen Landscaping

Are you not sure which plants will work best with your sun levels? Maybe you have questions on how to optimize your garden or landscape level, so they all get the correct amount of light. Whatever the reason, you can contact us at Evergreen Landscaping. Our staff will answer your questions and help you find the perfect balance of sun and shade for your plants.

What is Hydroseeding?

When you perform seeding applications, you want a method that is going to cover a lot of areas while giving you full and even results. This is where hydroseeding comes in. If you’ve never heard of it, this quick overview will fill you in on everything you need to know.

How Hydroseeding Started

Maurice Mandell of the Connecticut Highway Department gets credit for starting hydroseeding or hydro mulching in the 1940s. His concept involved mixing water and seed before spraying it on areas around the highways and roads in Connecticut to sow grass to prevent erosion and encourage grass growth after construction. Hydroseeding is a very technical process that involves some specialized equipment, and it’s good for any size project but small. In 1953, Charles Finn of Finn Corporation invented the world’s first hydroseeder. They’re currently the biggest hydroseeder manufacturer in the world.

Defining Hydroseeding

Hydroseeding involves spraying a water-based slurry of mulch, seeds, soil additives, and fertilizer to plant seeds. This is one of the most efficient methods of planting for virtually every application but very small areas. The key to the higher efficiency rate of this process is that you combine all of the essential materials for healthy, quick seed germination in a single application. You’ll need:

• Fertilizer
• Great seed to soil contact
• Seed protection
• Moisture retention

The first thing you have to do determine which additives you need to add to condition your soil for the highest rate of growth and germination for your seeds. You have to get the soil ready for planting by loosening up any highly compacted soil to let the plant roots break in and grow deep. When you get your soil test results back, you can pick out the correct seed blend to create the grass or plants you want to grow.

You’ll usually plant grass during hydroseeding, but it’s typically a mix of plants and grass in the seeds. Pick out the correct fertilizer and additives. These additives could include aluminum sulfate, elemental sulfur, nitrogen, iron sulfate, or lime. If you’re hydroseeding on a hill or slope, add tackifiers. Finally, you should add mulch to give your seeds the best opportunity to have a healthy and quick start with even and sustained growth.

When is the Best Time to Hydroseed?

Your climate will be the biggest factor that impacts when it’s the best time to hydroseed. Ideally, the temperature will fall in the cool but not cold range, and you should have a reasonable amount of rainfall in the forecast. Rain will help offset your watering costs. Generally speaking, fall is the best time to hydroseed because the seeds can establish themselves before going dormant.

Hydroseeding in the early spring months is also acceptable. The cooler temperature and rainy spring weather can create excellent growing conditions. However, if the spring gets directly followed by a hot summer, you’ll spend more watering for the first year to keep the grass alive and growing. Don’t plant it in the summer unless you have a cheap and abundant water source and a lot of time to tend to it.

Evergreen Landscaping Can Help with Hydroseeding

If you’re interested in learning more about hydroseeding or if you want to use it to help create a lush lawn, contact us. Our staff is ready to help in any way they can.

Themed Garden Designs

Does your garden have a theme? Maybe you’ve never tried to create a theme with your garden, and you have no idea where to start. At the core, a themed garden design is landscaping based on a specific idea or concept. There are several more well-known garden themes out there, including:

• Butterfly gardens
• Chinese gardens
• Desert gardens
• Japanese gardens
• Wildlife gardens
• Zen gardens

Arguably one of the hardest parts of this process is coming up with the central design idea. Once you pick out an idea that you like, everything else should gradually fall into place. The easiest way to go about this is to think of what you enjoy and let the concept grow from this thought process.

Your garden theme design can vary widely, and you’re spoiled for choice. The only limits to your theme are your imagination. However, this can also be overwhelming, so we’ll give you several theme ideas with examples of flowers you can incorporate into your own yard below.

Wildflower Themed Garden

If you love how wildflowers look, you can easily design a wildflower-friendly garden that you’ll fill with native plants. Depending on your location, bluebells, penstemon, lupine, and coneflower are all excellent picks. Maybe you love wildflowers, but you’re more of a night person. If this is the case, the moonflower, Casa Blanca lily, Queen of the Night, and Gardenia Augusta are all solid choices that bloom during the evening hours.

Color Themed Garden

Do you have a favorite color or colors? You could go for a cool green garden that showcases pops of vibrant yellow or orange blooms, or maybe you want a blue garden. Marigolds, yellow roses, sunflowers, lilies, tulips, and some daisies come in shades of yellow and orange. For a blue garden, try hydrangeas, larkspur, sage, bellflowers, or morning glories. Whatever colors you choose, you can incorporate them into your plant pots or borders too.

Elizabethan Themed Garden

Perhaps you’re someone who is into a more classic design with a calming look and feel. If so, you could incorporate carefully placed benches with deep green hedges framing the garden. Other nice classic touches are water features like fountains, statues, or even a low rock wall.

Consider Your Climate and Home Style

In the early stages of developing your garden theme, consider your local climate because this impacts what will and won’t thrive in your garden. For example, it would be challenging to have a desert garden in Florida, or you would have a challenging time creating a tropical-themed garden in the American Southwest.

Your home’s style will also impact which garden theme you choose. If you live in an older, stately home, incorporating a formal Victorian garden is a great fit. But, having a rock garden with this type of home could look out of place and impact your overall aesthetic.

Contact Evergreen Landscaping

Would you like help bringing your garden theme to life? Maybe you’re not sure which plants will do best in your local climate. Either way, our staff is here to help. You can reach out and get in touch with us to start the design process and get tips and advice.