Gardens are beautiful and improve house and neighborhood values. The homeowner has to determine what they want their garden to reflect and what they want in their gardens. Some homeowners want flowers, others want vegetable and flower gardens. Landscapers know how to design great gardens and what plants to use to create them. If can't afford landscape services, consider getting help at home improvement stores, Home depot has an online garden newsletter and free membership garden club service.
Search engines will provide gardening information and site links by key search words; examples for good keywords are gardening tips, garden clubs, garden websites, historical gardens. These are some keyword examples to place on a google search, and there will be many links to different sites.
Some basic tips that I learned how to save on creating a garden
I am from New York City, so I came from a concrete jungle that had no real growing spaces for plants other than an apartment. As I moved to Ocala, here the open space has caused my family and I to really experiment with gardening. At first I didn't know how to set up the spaces, so I decided I wanted both vegetable and flower garden. I separated vegetable and flowers into different types of zones and areas where they would grow.
I decided to grow my tomatos mainly in large containers rather than in the ground, there are too many worms, ants and other insects. The other larger vegetables I started in containers than planted in the ground, such as cabbage, eggplants, watermelon and lettuce. I have been successful in growing these items by replacing these picked veggies with new seeds from the picked produce.
I read an interesting article on benefits of growing own food read here
Health Benefits of Growing Your Own Foods
I purchase perennials these are flowers that are more expensive because they tend to come back after they die in the winter and are resilient to climate and insects. By cutting down these flowers, they tend to come back year after year, such as roses.
If you purchase annuals they are cheaper and last during the hot weather, but they can survive the winter, if placed in a green house or cold frame in the ground. I have these in containers and I bring these annuals into the sunroom during the winter and cold weather.
Purchase plants that are out of season at nursies or that need some help, sometimes dying plants are cut 50% or more. Palms that are expensive can be bought in this method, cut down the palm leaves to the base and it will grow again. As it grows then replant in the ground. Use palm fertilizer or miracle grow and it really works, I had to cut down the palm leaves on a small palm plant a few years ago because it had discolorization on leaves. Now it is growing and is beautiful in my front yard, just by adding palm fertilizer and miracle grow.
Unrelated to post but had to add artsy horse photo in front of Munroe Regional Hospital on 17th street. These horses are located in downtown area and in the town square. Beautiful.
This is my palm tree that I had to cut down the leaves due to disease and discolorization. I cut down to base it took a few months for leaves to grow again but now healthy.
I use recycled coffee grounds and eggshells into the ground around the vegetables. I use miracle grow on many plants and vegetables, and purchase black gold compost manure from Walmart to enrich the soil in planting beds.
If there is no space to grow any more vegetables consider swapping with a neighbor that may be growing vegetables that you don't have in your garden. Exchange seeds or plants with them to grow in containers; you would be surprised how successful it is to grow vegtables in containers. Use insectcides to keep insects and disease of tomato plants every two weeks, and spray pest control spray around the flower beds about every two weeks. This is important to keep those pests out of the containers and flower beds, if they begin to infect your plants then the tomatos come out diseased. Make sure the plants get watered during hot climate about twice a day during cooler climate water once a day. Tomatos need lots of water and sun to flourish.
Planters can be expensive so make a planter out of out aluminum wash tubs, buckets, small coffee cans, old mop buckets, scrap wood. These items can be found at any Thrift store or outlet store.
If you want to save money on perennials, separate the single plants purchased into two different containers to double the amount of plants. Purchase plants that are drought resistent such as cactus or succulents, and herbs that grow exponenetially.
Depending upon the garden the homeowner wants any can be achieved by using inexpensive creative ways to grow the graden you want.
