One’s home is certainly their castle, but rather than surrounding it with a moat and dark statues, try using any one of these five yard landscaping ideas to add warmth, color, and texture to your home. Whether gardening for aesthetics or relaxation or even for exercise, there are a number of beautiful and wonderful ways to make your home inviting and appealing. From adding height with planters and baskets to adding annuals and perennials for year-round blooms, each of these yard landscaping lessons will help your yard at River Landing become more attractive and functional, and a allow for a great lesson in outdoor living.
Greet Your Guests With Joy
Flowers always make a home seem more welcoming. Colorful blooms provide a joyful welcome. Add assorted annuals and perennials to your entryway for year-round visuals. Petunia, Snapdragon, Lily-of-the-Nile, and knockout roses are great additions to your entry.
Plant Vines
Another way to make the most of your yard landscape is by planting rambling vines. This lesson isn’t referring to English ivy or Kudzu, but rather more stately or romantic, deep green tendrils winding around fences and columns. Most preferred is a flowering vine species such as Clematis. It offers blossoms of blue, purple, red, pink, or white. Clematis looks especially regal on a trellis or growing up from a container.
Clematis Planting Guide
When to Plant: Fall and spring are good times, because the weather is cooler and thereby causes less stress to the plant.
How to Grow: Plant clematis in fertile, loose, well-drained soil with lots of organic matter. It likes cool roots, so plant where the leaves get sun but roots are shaded.
How to Fertilize: Feed monthly in spring and summer with an organic fertilizer labeled for roses or tomatoes.
When to Prune: Some types bloom on new growth and some on old growth. When you buy, ask at the nursery what type you have and when you should prune.
Where to Buy: Local garden centers such as Johnson Nursery Corporation – a River Landing Allied Partner – have several options in spring.
No-Fuss Lillies
Crinums laugh at drought, don’t need fertilizer, and welcome hot, humid summers with lily-like flowers that perfume the air. Their heartiness make them seemingly perfect for Eastern North Carolina! They are rough-and-tumble, resilient. Because they grow into huge bulbs over time, they’re practically indestructible. If you need a low-maintenance, high-impact flower, a low-fuss lily like Crinums will be your go-to plant.
Grow Blooming Shrubs
Who can forget the ever-changing blooms of hydrangeas — turning blue in acidic soil, pink in soil with more lime, and reminiscent of those science class projects using litmus paper? There are of course white hydrangeas, with blooms resembling large snowballs, and purple hydrangeas, oozing with summertime passion. They’re not only easy to grow, but are also quite hardy and resistant to most pests and diseases, making it even easier to care for hydrangeas.
Adding A Water Feature
The simplest water feature you can add to your landscape is a recirculating fountain. With their water efficiency, gentle gurgles, and unassuming appearance, these elements allow a normal flower garden to be elevated to a garden sanctuary. Available styles range from the ever-popular bubbling vase to a core-drilled boulder to a more formal fountain. In all of these water features, water is pumped from a basin at the bottom and carried to the top. Economical and attractive, recirculating fountains are popular additions to River Landing homes.
