Beautiful Ginny!

Well done on colors!

I too favor perennials because they live year after year and get more beautiful. Often you can divide them to fill in other locations.

I am actually partial to cascading trees.
Weeping look is serenity to me. 🌺🌺


And I love the white Birch bark in any landscape. (Weeping birch)

SpringGreenThumb said:Beautiful Ginny!

Well done on colors!

I too favor perennials because they live year after year and get more beautiful. Often you can divide them to fill in other locations.

I am actually partial to cascading trees.
Weeping look is serenity to me. 🌺🌺


And I love the white Birch bark in any landscape. (Weeping birch)

Love love love the Birch bark trees - this picture looks so peaceful!

Wow Ginny! Your yard looks great! Thank you so much for sharing your photos!
Seeing everyone's beautiful gardens in this thread is making me impatient to go and start digging and growing!! I wish I could skip all this prep work and just start planting already.

That's the way gardening should be...

To feel excited and happy and to create your own dreamland paradise. 🌺🌺🌺

Dawn - WARNING WARNING! In case you haven't figured out from the rest of us yet, this site can become VERY addictive - enter at your own risk

Love your landscaping, Ginny! Those are great examples for Dawn.

Betsy, those trees are beau-ti-ful!!

blue23rose said:Love your landscaping, Ginny! Those are great examples for Dawn.

Betsy, those trees are beau-ti-ful!!

Love your trees Betsy. I have very few trees which is why I do not get Cardinals and other birds at my feeders. The woods are too far away. Although this past winter was the first time that I had some Blue Jays and Cardinals visit the deck feeders. I feed suet, song bird feed, sunflower seeds, ears of corn, and have a heated bird bath on the deck.

I live in the mountains so I get Golden Eagles, Hawks, coyotes, raccoons, deer, most of the land is raw forest but I'm working on it. A few places were landscaped when I moved in but had gone wild so I've been cleaning it up.

Someday... Someday... It's a lot of work!

But I. Love it!

I love a natural setting as well. So peaceful.

Bonehead said:I love a natural setting as well. So peaceful.

I agree. Except poison oak. That's not so peaceful to experience. Lol

Thanks again to everyone for the advice and sharing your beautiful pics! We are going to start on the beds this weekend (I win!!).
A lot of you have mentioned planting bulbs this time of year. Is it best to purchase them from a local nursery instead of a Home Depot or Walmart? I know there are also a lot of online options. Are these better? Cheaper? I'm sure shopping around will teach me oodles, but wondering if there are any places I should steer clear of.

I'm a big fan of shopping locally and supporting small businesses and would encourage you to bypass all the big boxes - yeah, they are cheaper, but who knows where they got their plants or what has been sprayed on them (let alone how they treat their employees). I just don't go there. A smaller local nursery is such a more pleasant experience, and you will get much more informed advice for your particular region. I also don't do much in the way of mail-order plants, although I know a lot of folks rely on that. I live in an area with plenty of nurseries so it's just never felt right to me, plus I like the instant gratification of walking through a local nursery, buying some plants, and getting them in the ground that same day. Have fun!

Hi, Dawn! Local nurseries are good and usually you're more likely to get some advice if you go during days and hours they aren't crowded. Also, try to find out about any local plant swaps that there might be...good place to meet other gardeners and learn also. Don't worry if you don't have any plants to bring...it's okay! Find a local gardening organization if you can and go to meetings...experienced gardeners will usually help newer gardeners.

I have found this place to be the best price...

Wholesale growers. Many garden centers buy from them.

NETHERLAND BULB

https://www.netherlandbulb.com...

I generally never ask advise from a garden center employee. They really don't know as much as they pretend.

If I ever have a question. Talk to a grower not a middle man. 😊

Costco is inexpensive.
I don't have a problem with big box as long as the plants are in good condition.

Often I will ask a garden center representative a question I already know the answer to just to test their knowledge.
75% of the garden center staff will give me incorrect information.

Last Spring I saw an employee selling an elderly woman an ornamental non fruiting peach tree and promising her it would grow fruit. I had to intervene.

Just last week I visited a local garden center.... I took this picture of the beautiful giant weeping sequoia they had growing on their front lawn.





So I walked inside and asked the assistant manager if they had any of those Weeping Giant Sequoias in stock.

The assistant manager responded "No. we don't sell those trees."

"Why not?" I asked.

He replied. "They just cannot survive in Utah. You cannot grow them here."



btw... I have 3 Giant Sequoias growing on my property that I planted ... I wanted a weeping one also. **** You can grow them in Utah. The garden center was growing one in their front yard. That's how oblivious garden center staff can be.

SpringGreenThumb said:Lol.

I like to use GIMP a free photoshop app you can down load online and use to photo shop your ideas in first. It will save you thousands of dollars over the years.

Take a picture of the area and then find images of plants you like and photo shop them into the garden picture.

You will be amazed because by the time you are finished you will want something different than you thought you did to begin with.

The great thing about Photoshop is that you can move your plants around before you buy them.

😊😊😊

The biggest mistake new gardeners make is they run out an impulse buy everything cute at the nursery and most of it really does perish.

With photoshop you can even put a mature landscape in to see what kind of tree you really want.

Photoshop bolders,, pergola, flagstone pathways....

And when you finally have that look that takes your breathe away... You will know exactly what you are going to buy. 😊

You I'll know that perfect colored bolder when you see it... and you will know if the red or yellow tulips will look the best clumped around it before you spend any money.

Good Luck Dear! 🌺🌺🌺

So I downloaded GIMP and realized quite quickly I have no clue where to even start! I do not know how to photoshop anything and can't even figure out how to get the image of the area of my yard where I want to create a new garden (I've downloaded the image to my computer) imported into the GIMP program. So is there a GIMP for dummies or something easier for TOTAL BEGINNERS to use where you can actually see the plants you want to add to the area? I'm not computer illiterate when it comes to my work programs, but I am totally out of my realm when it comes to anything requiring paint, pictures, photoshop, etc. Any wonderful advice?

You could always go old school and sketch it out by hand. With the bed I created this year, I just grabbed pencil and paper. Normally though, I don't bother with sketches, etc. I have a picture in my mind of what I want something to look like and make it happen. (Within reason.)

I tried using Photoshop to do a layout a couple of times. It's just not the right tool. However, I do use it to change image sizes, color density, etc. I know there are landscaping programs ot there, but I have no idea what they cost.

I was in a rush once and hit an HD far from where I lived. I thought the fastest way to find the roses would be to ask a clerk. I got to the word "roses" and his brow furrowed. I kid you not. He was saying unhelpful things like "Unnnh" and staring around blankly when I happened to turn around. The roses were right in his field of vision, and the word "ROSE" was printed prominently many many times. I turned back around and he was still floundering for a way to answer and had gotten as far as 'he could ask someone'. Never mind!

Go not to big box stores for gardening advice, for they will be both stupid AND uninformed.

Also, it is usually big-box-store policy to sell anything that the bar code reader can scan. They would sell cacti in Alaska.

I think the tradeoff is:

Big Box: cheap, and good luck getting something suited to your climate.
It will probably be a bland no-name cultivar. If it IS a desirable variety, it might be as expensive as a nursery. The name posted may be the wrong name. They may charge you the fancy-variety-price for a common variety bulb. Often the name will only be something very generic (what we call "NO ID"), and it STILL might be wrong.

reputable local nursery: more expensive, maybe much more.
Better and more unusual varieties.
Much more likely to be suited to your climate.
The labels will be accurate.
The advice is more likely to be good.

One thing I find: the most expensive nurseries may not have the best advice or most honest labels. There seems to be a "sweet spot" in pricing, where reputable nurseries tend to have reasonable but fair prices (more than HD because the bulbs, plants and seeds are better). Rip-off nurseries tend to charge all the traffic will bear, plus a little for the snooty factor.

BTW, that has a downside: by far the best nursery near me went out of business.

I would trust Lowe's garden center, or even Fred Meyers, more than HD.

BTW: I hope we aren't overwhelming you even more! Maybe better advice would have been: "pick up some bulbs anywhere, lighten your soil with compost, and stick 'em in the ground. Next year is plenty soon to get fancy-shamncy."

RickM said:You could always go old school and sketch it out by hand. With the bed I created this year, I just grabbed pencil and paper. Normally though, I don't bother with sketches, etc. I have a picture in my mind of what I want something to look like and make it happen. (Within reason.)

I tried using Photoshop to do a layout a couple of times. It's just not the right tool. However, I do use it to change image sizes, color density, etc. I know there are landscaping programs ot there, but I have no idea what they cost.

That's the way I've always done it in the past (normally in my brain and maybe a sketch on paper) but thought it might be worth a try since I was looking at trying some new perennials. You would think my brain could wrap itself around this