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Backyard Landscape Design - One Person's Story |
By:
Leigh Day |
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We live in the state of Minnesota. The weather and the extremes of each of our seasons seem to be a topic of every conversation that takes place. We love to talk about the weather and severe it can be, or how perfect depending upon the day. Besides being a conversation starter our weather also affects the plant life that we are able to grow.
Our northern climate and shorter growing season needs to be taken into account when planning backyard landscape design. Even within the state there is a great range in temperatures from the southern part of the state that is milder in temperature than the northern part of the state. The growing seasons in the northern areas are about three to five weeks shorter than in the southern part of the state. This was something that our new neighbors did not consider as they began their backyard landscape design.
Our neighbors recently relocated from the southern metro area of the state to north central Minnesota. They bought a home that had been built several years ago, but had never had a backyard landscape design. The previous owner built the house as a lake home that was used only on weekends. He did not want to spend much time doing yard work so he basically planted grass and that was it. The new neighbors plan to have the house as their retirement home so they have time to spend doing yard work. The first thing they did when they moved in the fall of the year was to plant several spring bulbs. They also planted flowering spring bushes. Their plan in the backyard landscape design was to have color in the yard through out the year with various flowering bushes and plants. They had commented on our hard and how they liked what we had done. We told them that for us keeping things as simple as possible was the goal.
In our backyard landscape design we picked low maintenance Hostas in rock gardens. We use pots of bright colored annuals to provide color. I like using the container gardens because they can be changed each year to give the area a different look, and they are easy to maintain. Our backyard landscape design also features a fire ring with benches and a stone pathway to the lake.
The first spring that our neighbors were there they found that the bulbs that they planted were not blooming until late May early June. By then the over plants in their backyard landscape design were crowding out the bulbs. They did not take into consideration that the frost runs much deeper into the ground in our northern climate. The cold soil takes longer to warm enough for the bulbs to sprout and grow. Also many of the flowering bushes could not take the severe winter temperatures. They are going to contact local nurseries to get their plants as they replace the things that did not survive.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article50492.html |
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