Gardening & Landscaping
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Gardening Beginner - Need Help!
We've bought our first house and have a HUGE - and very bare - yard. We have high aspirations for landscaping and a vegetable garden, but no experience. Any tips on good website (or book) to get started? I need gardening for a 3-year-old: what's a perennial? What am I supposed to do to the dirt before I just stick a plant on it? how do I know what plants to plant next to each other? TIA!
Re: Gardening Beginner - Need Help!
for veggie gardening, I recommend checking out the book called Square Foot Gardening.
If you're new to gardening, you may want to consider having a landscape designer do a planting plan for your yard. they could help you select good plants for your site and let you know what you might need to amend your soil with, how to care for the plants, etc. In my area, you can get a basic consultation for about $75 so it doesn't have to be very expensive.
Agreed.
I bought a book called "Learn to Garden" by Fiona Wild. It's very good in explaining basic terminilogy, how things work and some basic instructions. It has a calendar that tells you types of things to do at different times of year and also planting and bloom times for a lot of common plants.
But I have yet to find anything for a beginner that was useful on landscape design. Definitely do NOT buy the Better Homes & Gardens software. It's useless. I thought I could put in some information and it would give me a garden design. No. It's basically a grid sheet that allows you to put things that you already know you want in place to see how they would look, but provides no guidance. (Or if it did, I couldn't figure out how to find it.)
One suggestion if you have an area that you know you want to put a flower bed in is to look at or buy a pre-planned garden. BHG does sell some of those, but I thought Bluestone Perennials was a better value. (Everything comes bare root or really small so don't be shocked if you order it.) Even without buying though, it can be helpful to look at their plans to get an idea of what might look nice together. I especially found it helpful when trying to plan a shade garden.
http://tinyurl.com/2g3j8sx