Your local garden center can help you select a nice mixture of perennials and many will help design the bed for free if you buy the plant material from them. It can make it easy for you to do with a professional look and you can be proud of your work and impress your guests and neighbors!

This is a nice perennial garden which can help you add color to your yard from spring through fall. You must mix the plants which bloom at different times of the year and there are many that produce flowers continuously throughout the growing season. Many you want to cut down in the winter for a fresh plant to grow again the following season.  

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I like how this small area has been transformed to show a lot of plant material with the use of hardscaping such as the terracing of stone walls and stairs.

These bordered beds are a nice touch and a good way to create good growing conditions. You can fill the bed with good topsoil mixed with peat moss in which the plants will flourish. It also will have good drainage also. You don't want to fill it up to the top. You want to leave about 3 or 4 inches to allow for mulch or stone top dress. They are easy to install. You want to clear and level the the track in which they will be laid and tamped with a hand tamper. For a better base you may want to dig down 2 inches and fill it in with gravel screanings or sand and level and tamp. These blocks can be found at Home Depot, Lowes etc..... and they have a lip on the rear bottom which interlocks them and sets each level back about 3/4 of an inch.You may want to put landscape fabric on the back side to let water out and prevent mud to seep out. 

returning to class

I have been away for the summer. I am going to continue my landscaping tips and suggestions. I hope I can help some people with their landscaping aspirations.

selecting your spreader

        A drop spreader which drops your material at the width of the spreader is not the way to go. You want a broadcast spreader which has a hopper to hold materials you want to spread on your lawn with real tires which makes it much easier to push over a lawn. It has a whirlybird spinner under it which spreads about a 10 foot swath which you can overlap your passes without missing a spot. It cuts your walking passes by 80% and works better for coverage.

aerator overseeding option

     Another way you can overseed your lawn if you don't want the extra expense of renting an overseeder is to aerate your lawn in four directions and broadcast seed with a broadcast spreader and follow the rest of my overseeding instructions in a previous post.