 |
Thursday, March 13, 2003
10 quick ways to spiff up your yard
Fifth in a 10-week series of tips from the writers of our Northwest Gardens section.
1. Get a spectacular pot and fill it with spectacular plants. Works every time to dress up a drab corner of the yard. Might I suggest a classic urn with pink-leaved New Zealand flax?
2. Collect watering cans, rakes or old trowels. Group your collection near the front door, hang them on a wall or fence or just display as a group among the plants.
3. Replace the worn path in your lawn with creative or unusual steppingstones.
4. Add window boxes to a fence, the side of a garden shed or a blank wall of your house. Fill with cut holly and other evergreens during the winter months.
5. Use the pruning crumbs from your trees and shrubs to make a scalloped border around your beds. Just bend these flexible branches so that both ends are stuck into the ground. Some buds on your rustic little fence will even bloom.
6. Add a frosting of decorative gravel or polished, recycled glass to a corner or border of a bed. A patch of decorative rock makes a great frame for a piece of garden art.
7. Add a display of bowling balls, croquet balls and pool balls to a low ground cover.
8. Edge a flowerbed with old china plates half buried in the soil.
9. Create beautiful plant marriages by moving your plants around. Play matchmaker with spiky leaf shapes and rounded or mounding plants. Let an upright plant provide a supporting role for a weeper. Compatible couples also can show a contrast in foliage and flower color as well as texture.
10. Paint can transform your garden. Accent the rims of pots, or restore old birdhouses with new paint. Spray metal and wicker lawn furniture with vibrant hues, and don't put away the brushes until you've transformed the front door, barbeque and garden benches with instant color from a can.
-- Marianne Binetti
Adapted from her book "Shortcuts for Accenting Your Garden" (Storey, 202 pages, $11.95).
My web site
My Yahoo!
Google
· The Grounded Gardener: Take a class and load up on ideas
· Just Ask: Take an ax to this sick cherry tree
· Buy some lovely witch hazel -- but sniff first
· Green Gardening: The sweet smell of success: a birthday load of rich compost
· Edibles: Keeping winter squash in the family
· Garden Calendar
more
Reader blog: Pacific Northwest GardensGardening tips & tales
· Depressing Photo of the Moment
· MY PLANTS ARE FROZEN! Understanding Cold Hardiness
· Garden in Peril: Seward Park garden to be removed
Reader blog: Sound GardensRegional gardening
· Hiatus
· Deep thoughts about watering
· Wrong Plant, Wrong Place
101 Elliott Ave. W.
Seattle, WA 98119
(206) 448-8000
Home Delivery: (206) 464-2121 or (800) 542-0820
seattlepi.com serves about 4 million unique visitors
and 45 million page views each month.
Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com
Send investigative tips to iteam@seattlepi.com
©1996-2009 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Terms of Use/Privacy Policy
