Tips on Garden Design

By Jason Flinstone

A historical survey shows that the form of the garden was to a large extent dictated by its function. The function, in turn, was affected by many things, including climate and lifestyle. From the Renaissance onwards most gardens were large and designed mainly for show and for tranquil pursuits such as the gentle stroll; they were invariably tended by gardeners.

It is equally important that the style of the garden is in keeping with the inside if the house and garden are to be seen as a whole. Not only does the house lead out to the garden and thus form a unit in the physical sense but the garden can usually be seen from the windows of the house and should harmonize with the interior as much as possible.

In this context it is often easier to define style in a negative way: concrete slabs, for instance, lack the subtlety and texture needed for paving a cottage garden, and asbestos pots would he out of character in the garden of a traditional brick house.

A good garden plan not only demonstrate the enormous range of needs and activities which can be catered for within such a limited space, they also show how a design based on individual needs will transform the same basic plot into a unique, well planned garden.

The demands of a single family can vary enormously over a number of years. Where they are likely to be in the same home for sonic time it is important that the garden plan is flexible enough to reflect these changing needs. A young couple might use the garden mainly for sunbathing or entertaining and would want a simple layout which is easy to look after. The arrival of children would impose many new demands, from pram-standing space to soft play areas and tricycle runs. With a growing family a bigger area of the garden might be devoted to vegetables, with a large terrace space for outdoor activities and family meals.

As children leave home the garden area should become quieter and parents should have more time to spend in it. They may concentrate more on the plants themselves, possibly with special interests developing such as roses or a greenhouse. However, what can be looked after with ease at fifty becomes something of a chore at seventy. - 15265

About the Author:

Garden herbs has many benefits to your health as well as adding flavors to your cooking.

Licorice

By Amy Paul

Licorice grows wild in southern Europe, the Middle East, Asia Minor and Afghanistan, and is raised commercially in the former USSR, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany and elsewhere.

From then on, however, its spread was rapid and nowadays it is the most widely grown of all leguminous plants, being raised over huge areas of arable land. The seeds contain a great deal of protein (40%), similar in composition to that of meat, and are thus a very nutritious food.

Pontefract cakes and other sweets from licorice are made there to this day, but from imported, not home-grown roots. The liquid extract may also be used in making delicate sweet drinks and to disguise the unpleasant taste of some drugs. In Victorian times it was the custom to eat licorice every Friday as a purgative.

In the Middle Ages fennel had all sorts of uses. The fruits were used to flavour sweets, fish sauces and soups. It was recommended for the treatment of cataracts, worms in the cars, and to promote the flow of milk from the breast. The following recipe is for 'cold brewit': 'take mush made from almonds, dry it on a cloth and when dry put it in a vessel; to this add salt, sugar, the white powder of ginger and juice from fennel.

Fennel is generally grown as a biennial. The seeds - double achenes - are sown outdoors in the open in July. If properly tended plants may yield seeds for three to four successive years.

The roots are dug up in the autumn of the third year, washed, peeled and dried slowly. They are sweet and have a characteristic but faint smell. Licorice can be grown in your herb garden and be used as spices to give delicious tastes to your food. You can grow licorice herb to decorate your garden and make it beautiful. - 15265

About the Author:

Planting screens the boundaries and focuses the eye on the feature at the end of the herb garden.

Long Pepper

By Matthew Cook

The spice known as long pepper is obtained from two species of plants: one is Piper longum from India and the other is Piper officinarum from the Sunda Islands, Philippines and Moluccas. In both instances the dried unripe berries are used as seasoning. They are more pungent than black pepper and, unlike black pepper, form joined, compact fruits resembling hard, black catkins up to 5 cm (2 in) long.

The only peoples that use it are those living in warmer climates (it is used in the same way as black pepper). In the past it was more highly prized and much more in demand than nowadays.

The Latin word 'piper' then gave rise to the common names used in the various European languages, e. g. pepper, Pfeffer, poiNire. Long pepper played a remarkably important role in European trade in the Middle Ages.

Besides being far more pungent, pepper cubeb is also morphologically different from black pepper and long pepper. Though the fruits (berries) resemble those of black pepper they appear to have long stalks (these stalks arc actually elongated ovaries). They are harvested before they ripen so that the surface becomes wrinkled during the drying process.

The strong biting quality of cubeb is not caused by piperine, as in black pepper, but by cubebine and by the large amount of essential oil they contain (as much as 12% whereas black pepper contains 4% at the most).

For this reason it is recommended to buy peppers whole, not ground, and to grind them just before use. - 15265

About the Author:

Having knowledge about herbs gardening is necessary to manage a healthy and thriving herb garden.

Vanilla

By John Piano

Ginger, with its tall leafy stems up to 1.2 m (4 ft) high, somewhat resembles a reed. The flower stems are about 25 cm (10 in) tall.

The flowers are large and coloured pale green; each opens for a single day and can be pollinated by one kind of bee found only in Mexico. Thanks to this small bee, Mexico maintained its monopoly on the export of vanilla for 300 years up until the 19th century. It was known to the Aztecs, who used it to flavour cocoa long before the discovery of America by Europeans.

Nowadays, it is raised not only in Mexico but elsewhere, chiefly in Madagascar, for it can be pollinated by artificial means. It is propagated by cuttings and trained up artificial supports or small trees. It begins to bear fruits in the third year. These are 16-to 30-cm-(6- to 12-in-) long pod ;like capsules (known as vanilla pods) which are harvested while still immature so they do not burst.

Dried, ripe grapes, available in shops in the form of raisins, sultanas and currants are also used as flavouring in cookery. Raisins are the dried fruit of a small dark seeded grape whereas sultanas and currants are seedless. They are added to sweet yeast dough to make buns and fruit breads, and cream-cheese fillings as well as to sweet sauces served with meat.

Vanilla is used solely for flavouring sweet dishes such as puddings, custards and chocolate dishes, cake fillings and ice cream. Vanilla essence, made from extracts of the pod, or vanilla sugar (castor sugar placed in a closed jar together with a vanilla pod thereby absorbing its aroma) are used as flavouring.

In rural areas chopped nettle is fed to goslings, it is also a popular component of shampoos, but people often forget that it is also a tasty and very wholesome vegetable and flavouring. This is due, perhaps, to the fact that nettle is a kind of einderella amongst plants - unattractive, covered with stinging hairs and growing on waste ground and in ditches. However, do not be led astray by this. Though young spring shoots must be picked with gloved hands, when scalded they lose their sting and have a slightly bitter, spinach-like taste. Cooked alone like spinach or used to flavour spinach, nettle gives the dish a lovely green colour because its leaves contain a large amount of chlorophyll (the green pigment). They are also rich in Vitamin C, so important to one's health, particularly after the long winter. Chopped, scalded spring shoots or leaves, may be used to flavour spring vegetable soups and vegetables served with meat. In some regions a baked mixture of eggs, breadcrumbs, chopped ham and chopped nettle is traditionally served at Easter time. Nettle is a perennial and very stubborn weed growing up to 120 cm (4 ft) high, which spreads not only by means of seeds but also by its thick, creeping, branching rhizomes. It is dioecious, which means that the male and female flowers arc borne on separate plants. Only freshly-picked nettle is used in cookery as it is not suitable for drying. For this reason it is a seasoning of early spring, when the fresh young shoots are available. - 15265

About the Author:

You can grow various range of vegetables and herbs can be grown in garden beds.

Tips on Garden Drainage System

By Scott Edward

Before spend money on expensive pipe drainage bear mind that too efficient a system will povcrish your soil as the plant nutrient will be leached out very easily. Try one several natural corrective methods first.

Dig a hole about 1 m (3 ft) square and at least I m (3 ft) deep; it should be sufficiently deep to penetrate the impervious subsoil into something more porous below. Fill the hole first with brick or other large, hard rubble to a depth of about 600 mm (2 ft), then with about 100 mm (4 in) of gravel or ash. Finally fill with excavated topsoil up to ground level.

The water table generally rises and fa following wet and dry periods. If it star, at about 900 mm (3 ft) below ground le-. it can he an asset, since water will - available to the deeper plant roots. Ho ever extreme fluctuations in the water tai are a great danger: if it rises in winter: roots of plants are killed through saturatic and if it falls in the summer the pla suffer from drought. On low-lying grout if there is perpetual standing water (usua in winter), this might mean that the war table has risen above ground level and drainage system will relieve it.

A rubble drain is a short-term drainage run, which may be all that is required on a new site to relieve temporary lying water. Dig a trench 300 mm to 450 mm deep, depending on the depth of cultivated soil (since water collects on the comparatively solid pan of undisturbed ground that lies immediately beneath). Fill the hole at least half full with coarse rubble then with a layer of ash or gravel and finally topsoil.

Lime will make a clay soil more porous by breaking it up into crumb-like particles. A simple container will ensure that your compost is kept in a tidy heap. The open wire structure and the honeycomb pattern of bricks allow air to pass through, which is essential if the bacteria are to do their work of breaking down the waste material. A slatted wooden structure would be equally effective.

If you have space, a double compost bin allows one heap to decompose thoroughly while another is being started. - 15265

About the Author:

Good garden drainage system is important in garden planning to have a thriving garden.

Shrub Flowers Information

By James Masonry

After fertilization the ovary ripens into the fruit, its outer layer forming the wall or pericarp with one or more seeds inside. The seed is the fertilized ripened ovule and consists of the embryo and nutritive tissue enclosed in a hard cover.

They are bisexual, having both stamens and pistil (e.g. rose, bladdernut, cornelian cherry, dogwood), or unisexual, having only the male or female organ or one of the two atrophied (e.g. willow, mistletoe and sea buckthorn).

The nut is a hard-shelled fruit with a woody wall not connected with the seed, e.g. that of the hazel and smoke tree. The legume or pod is a one-celled, flattened, usually elongate fruit, splitting along the margins when ripe, with several seeds inside, e.g. the golden rain, pea tree and common broom.

Monoecious shrubs are ones with both staminate and pistillate flowers on the same individual, e.g. hazel, green alder, etc., whereas dioecious shrubs have staminate and pistillate flowers on different individuals, e.g. mistletoe, sea buckthorn, willow, etc.

Fleshy fruits do not split when ripe but drop from the parent plant in their entirety or else break up into parts with enclosed seeds. One such fruit is the drupe, which has a pericarp consisting of three layers, namely the thin epicarp or outer layer, fleshy mesocarp or middle layer and hard bony endocarp or inner layer that is the stone, usually encasing a single seed. Examples are the blackthorn, English holly, cornelian cherry, dogwood, etc.

A flower is composed of the following parts: calyx - the external, usually green leafy part; corolla - the inner floral envelope consisting of petals, usually brightly coloured stamens - consisting of anthers and filaments; when ripe, the anthers burst and release the microscopic pollen grains that look like yellow powder; pistil - the ovule-bearing organ deriving from the fusion of one or several carpels; it comprises the ovary containing ovules and a style bearing a sticky or hairy stigma to which the pollen grains adhere and grow downward to the ovary. - 15265

About the Author:

In garden planning, flints are often used as a strong decorative surface on a mortared rubble core in the garden.

White Dogwood

By Mark Carlson

The white dogwood is a widespreading, sparsely branched shrub with drooping twigs, growing to a height of 2-3 m. The twigs are bright red, in more heavily shaded locations yellow. The buds resemble those of the red dogwood, but are somewhat larger. The white flowers appear in May and June, the fruits ripen in September. The hard seed is flattened, ovate.

It is a native of western, central and southern Europe, its range extending eastward to Asia Minor and Caucasia in continental Europe. It is found mainly in beech woods, where it grows on stony, calcareous soils or ones rich in humus; in Britain it will grow almost anywhere. Ideal for its growth are the mild winters of the coastal climate and moist air. It tolerates strong shade but bears flowers and fruits only if supplied with adequate light. It is used in parks to form a green carpet in shaded spots where turf will not thrive, and to cover walls and rocks. Propagation is by means of cuttings and seeds.

The cornelian cherry is a shrub or small tree with a thin but widespreading crown growing to a height of 3-7 m. The yellow-brown bark on older shoots breaks up into scales. One-year shoots arc slender, erect, green or tinged with violet. The leaf buds arc lanceolate, opposite, and stand out slightly from the twig. The flower buds are round (the size of a pea) and easily distinguished from the leaf buds. The flowers appear before the leaves in March.

The fruits ripen in September; they are edible but turn sweet only after the first frost. Inside the pulp is a hard, elongate seed which, when sown, does not germinate until the second year.

This is a warmth-loving species growing mostly in southern Europe and Asia Minor. In central Europe it exists as a relic of the warm period following the Ice Age, growing in warm, mainly limestone situations. It occurs on sunny and rocky banks or in oak stands. It thrives quite well in dry locations but requires lighter soil rich in humus.

Propagation is by means of seeds and root cuttings. The leaves turn a bright red in autumn. The wood is hard and reddish. - 15265

About the Author:

In garden planning, where the garden roof is strong enough to support the weight of topsoil and underlying drainage, the sight of a lawn outside the living room in a modern apartment can be very striking.