Our home gardens are our very own secret paradises, beautiful open spaces over which we have the control to do almost anything we’d like. And yet, many of us are not using our garden spaces as we could be. If you are currently looking out at your unruly mess of a garden space and wondering what to do, look no further; here are some simple, major changes you can make to improve your outdoor space no end.
Create a Patio
Good gardens are made great by the provision of patio space. Your grass may be lush enough to enjoy a fancy picnic on in the summer, but as autumn and winter roll around, you’ll quickly find yourself without a comfortable place to enjoy your garden.
By installing a stone patio or wooden decking, you can create an all-weather platform from which to host and relax; you could also build a low-cost pergola to provide shade in summer, and shelter in the winter. Intrepid landscapers might even consider incorporating a garden bar for the slinging of cocktails!
Manage Your Foliage
All too often, gardens are choked by their foliage. Lovely as it can be to let your trees and hedges loose in your garden spaces, the resulting sprawl can kill off smaller plants and ruin the biodiversity of your garden. A careful, tutored approach can ensure you get a grip on your garden again and don’t eliminate too much shade in the process.
Secateurs and hedge trimmers can together help you regain control of your hedgerows, and can even give you back a little square footage in the process. Using a cordless battery chainsaw, you can get to some hard-to-reach boughs in your garden trees and cut them back down to size.
Mood Lighting
The missing ingredient for many a garden can be found in the form of lighting. For some reason, many households shy away from the idea of placing lights and lanterns outside, whether out of a sense of needing to preserve the natural beauty of the space or out of the logistics of powering them.
However, the right lights can have a transformative effect on an otherwise dull space. Solar lights are eminently available, too, and can be used to great effect in lighting up darker corners of your garden space.
Hardy Plants
One of the more common reasons that household gardens fall by the wayside is the high-maintenance nature of the average flowerbed. Well-meaning homeowners will plant their favourite flowers, before forgetting the various steps required to keep them happy for years to come. The result: tired, dying flowerbeds with very little aesthetic appeal.
This can be turned around with a different approach to your flowerbeds, though. Rather than picking plants that run the risk of damage and death in weird weather, try instead to pick hardy plants such as alpines. They are excellent in dry weather, hot or cold, and simply require a soil with good drainage to ensure they do not get damp.
