Gardening And Landscaping for a Beautiful Backyard

By Harry Bernstein

Many home owners who are lucky enough to own a piece of property with a large front or backyard, also enjoy gardening and landscaping.  If you are one of those people, you also know there is an overwhelming amount of decisions to make to get that perfect look for your open spaces.  This article, and whole website www.HomeLandscapingResource.com for that matter, have been developed to help give you some ideas to achieve your gardening and landscaping goals.

HGTV To The Rescue!

In all seriousness, HGTV is a great place to get gardening and landscaping ideas, with shows like Landscaper’s Challenge. The basic concept of the show is that homeowners who are stumped about what to do with their derelict or non-existent yards get to choose from three landscape design plans by professional landscapers and landscape architects to redo their yards.

There have been some pretty impressive results, including a tropical backyard with a pool like one you’d find in a resort, various Asian-inspired backyards with a really nice Indonesian flair to Mediterranean-inspired gardens. Watching will give you some ideas about what you might like and what might fit into your home.

If the idea of gardening and landscaping on your own scares you off (and there is a lot of work involved if you want major landscaping), then do as the homeowners on Landscaper’s Challenge did. Consider hiring a professional who can come up with a landscape plan and implement it if you have the money and if the size of your yard warrants it.

In sort of a fun fact, given the popularity of the NBC show Heroes, fans might want to keep an eye out for the Landscaper’s Challenge episode featuring the backyard of Erick Avari, who plays the senior Professor Suresh on the series.

Water Gardens – In A Container!

If you’re set on having running water in your backyard, but either don’t have the space for a pond or lack the experience in building water features, consider starting off with a water garden in a container!  It’s fairly simple to do and won’t take up much space at all. You’ll need a good-sized waterproof container, an aquarium pump to aerate the water, soil for some of the plants, and several smaller containers or blocks which you can position some of the plants on.

You can add plants beautiful water plants such as several varieties of water lillies, dwarf papyrus and miniature cattails, and seveeral other water floating plants where space is avainlable. If that project seems to daunting, consider creating a a small babbling brook. You can do a Google or Yahoo search for great ideas on plants for a container water garden and bubblers, and dip your feet into gardening and landscaping around your home.