A garden designer is a professional who caters to the feel and look of a garden, lawn, or yard according to his approach in terms of aesthetics and the specifications of the client. It pays a lot to be knowledgeable enough in designing a landscape especially now that it is becoming more distinguished not just a profession but also as a form of art. If you like the idea of understanding the simple ways on how to become a garden designer, take into consideration the following pointers and head to the wonderful world of garden designing.

Study garden designing
The advent of science and technology in the modern time has been paving various means for one to study anything and everything. When it comes to garden designing, there are several schools and private institutions that help interested individuals on studying garden designing. If you want to be more competitive in this field, earning a degree related to garden designing or garden architecture is a plus.

Practice your communication skills
A landscape designer has to work in close cooperation with other contractors. If the client will be talking about the specifications he would like to see in your output, you have to be wary on the best means of handling a conversation or meeting with your client. You might end up as a very competent garden designer but modifications could come along your way when planning for the landscape.

Build good rapports
Of course, you have the liberty to practice your skills and execute the best treatment for the garden, but without a good relationship with the client, everything will boil down to misunderstanding and poor performance satisfaction. Practice your communication skills in your everyday life so that your client would not feel intimidated opposite a seemingly boastful garden designer. Remember that without a good rapport with your client, the output would not be as great as how it is planned to be.

Knowing how to become a garden designer boils down to three essential requirements: knowledge, skill, and passion. These requirements work altogether on improving the overall appearance of a yard or lawn. Take note of these and you will never fail to create appealing gardens satisfying to the client and you as the creator of the masterpiece.

The exterior design of a house means a lot to homeowners because it mirrors the overall design of the house. Likewise, the color scheme plays an important role in enhancing the beauty of an abode. And since first impressions last, so you better decide carefully on how to choose exterior paint colors for your house to make it look like a nice and comfortable place to live in. Sometimes, exterior colors could be a determining factor when buying or owning a home.

As a color scheme proves to be a cost effective technique in transforming an old looking house to a more sophisticated and modern appearing abode, painting the external sections of your residence should be accompanied by some significant concerns like the following:
• The immediate area – Observe your neighbors’ interior color schemes prior to your choosing of paint colors. You surely don’t want your house to look like hell in the middle of a heavenly universe. Carefully ponder if your chosen colors would clash with those of your neighborhood. You need not copy your neighbors’ color schemes, the important rule is that yours should blend accordingly with their’s.

• Light and gloominess – Inspect if your residence is surrounded by big trees and other plants that may produce shades from time to time depending on the movement of the sun. You may deem it necessary to adjust your preferred colors to a step darker or lighter to achieve the desired color scheme. This is because colors look like a little bit darker in shady areas while becoming washed out in spots directly affected by sunlight during daytime. It’s best to take a small piece of board and paint it with your chosen color/s, then put it outside to observe how it looks like during the different hours of the day.

• The landscape – Imagine what it’s going to look like if you have a garden of red roses and a swimming pool on the side, and you paint your walls with dark fuchsia pink or scarlet. It doesn’t matter if that’s what you really want, but there are varieties of color combinations to choose from, so why settle for the not-so compatible shades that will create a drastic contrast with your landscape?

• Color choices – Picking the right hue combination would be the final stage to consider on how to choose exterior paint colors for your house. Its safe to select two tones from a similar color group, preferably a lighter shade and a darker one. Apply the lighter shade for the most part of the exteriors and the darker shade for the accents, or you can do it the other way around. For a lot more drama, you can pick contrasting shades to highlight windows and doors. You could also associate your paint colors to some elements in your yard like stones, bricks, and roof color. But make sure they all blend well together and don’t hurt the eyes.

If you own a garden, particularly those with fruit trees, a lot of problems may arise. One of these problems are birds. They would just love to pick fruits from your trees and eventually, if there would be a lot of them then all the fruits will just be taken away. There may be some common solutions like scarecrows, wind chimes, reflective tape and plastic animals but what if neither of them worked? What if they just worked for a while then eventually, the birds just keep on coming back all of a sudden?

First things first, I think you should just give this birds and alternative on where you would want to feed them. make them a small house made up of wood and place it near the yard or near your house. Then go to the local pet store to buy some bird seeds and place them inside the small bird houses. Eventually, the birds might get used on eating the seeds. Though it might be an add-up to your budget, at least your all of your fruits won’t be eaten and taken away. And besides, these birds can also be of great help to your farm. They can add up to its pleasing ambience and relaxing atmosphere.

Those bird netting stuffs which can be bought at the local store won’t do as it will only kill the birds and you don’t want that to happen. You just want them to atleast leave your fruits alone. But then, there is this some kind of netting device called the tulle. It is a much different bird netting but the holes are too tiny and it won’t suffocate any birds, just enough to keep them away. It’s also much cheaper and much more affordable than bird netting.

And now with this, you won’t have to worry about birds that eat your fruit. And at the same time, you will be free from guilt and worries as it is guaranteed safe and much more effective.

Orchids are some of the most popular plants that you can see in most gardens and floral settings and arrangements. In fact, they form the largest family of flowering plants in the entire world. Who doesn’t love their very alluring and spectacular flowers? Sure, these cute things may not have the fresh, lovely scent like what other typical flowers have, but they sure have all the looks that they need to keep any garden beautiful. Proper maintenance and care of these plants is your top priority to make sure that these plants never lose their precious sparkle in your garden.

Keep the surrounding temperature at a constant level. Orchids are very sensitive when it comes to sudden temperature spikes. You can find its leaves turning into yellow if you don’t take note of this properly. If this actually happens though, just clip the yellow foliage and start being more careful from now on. Their appetite for nutrition seems to go lower as the atmospheric temperature drops, so that means little or no food for winter, and a little application of new fertilizer during spring. Oh, and by the way, the regular temperature for most orchids is 65-85ºF (18-30ºC).

Providing a proper container is also critical if you want to take care of orchid plants well. Orchids are the type of plants that do not actually grow in soil (it will kill them!), but instead latch themselves onto tree barks and absorb water and nutrients from it. It is best to prepare a mixture of attached tree barks or cork for these plants, as this will serve as the “soil” for the plant to grow. The pot to be used can be of the standard type, as long as it is porous enough and can drain water out well (remember what we said earlier about letting the sit long in the water?). Like any other growing plant, you’ll have to replace the pot with a larger one ever so often, so as not to “constrict” its roots from the pot that it has outgrown.

Rose is one of the most popular flowers in the world. Indeed, I can say it is the most popular type for you can see it everywhere, not only during special occasions but also during ordinary days. I can also say that it’s the most romantic flower, particularly the red ones for they are commonly given during Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, and any other regular day for lovers who just want to make that day extra special. And not only that, it can also be given during mother’s day, birthdays, and special events like beauty pageants, etc. rose bushes can also be seen in one’s neighborhood as they give life and that romantic ambience to one’s backyard.

But then, roses can be very hard to look after depending on the weather, particularly during winter time. This should be taken into consideration if you have plans of raising your own rose garden. Now, here are some tips which may be of great help for taking care of your roses during winter. Roses need to be forced into a dormant state during these months, and this can be done by dead heading, allowing rose hip to develop by cutting any more roses from the plants, and to stop fertilization by the end of October. Now, when all the dead leaves had fallen from you bush during the season’s first hard frost, you may now cover your rose bushes. Dead leaves can attract insects and molds which can put your rose bushes into further harm. You can also remove dead leaves on the bushes itself, and rake the ground around them so remaining debris may be taken away.

If you want to prune some stems to allow a much better coverage, don’t do it thoroughly for it can stimulate plant growth during the winter. You can also tie all the bushes canes together to protect them from breaking when the harsh winds pass by. But then, if you don’t want to prune them, you can build a frame for covering. Just insert metal poles in the ground keep the covering off of the plant. And lastly, before covering your bushes, you must get some good soil to place at the bottom of the plant so it will reduce the damage caused by frozen roots.

Plants are creatures that love the lush warmth of sunlight. It gives them the energy to grow and the key element to complete photosynthesis. That is the main reason why cold climates do not promote plant growth much, although there are many kinds of plants that can withstand cold extremes. If you’re keeping a garden at home, the last thing that you want to happen would be your plants to get frozen. How does one protect garden from frost anyway?

For the next step, make sure that you have watered the entire garden thoroughly before nightfall. This may sound a little weird, because water usually absorbs heat from anything that it clings into. This strategy is usually done to ensure that the plants won’t reach critically low temperatures, by letting the soil release the moisture around it to keep the surrounding temperature at a constant level, or at least slow the entire cooling process. This measure is important to be done especially if a “frost attack” is imminent, if ever you want to ensure that your plants survive the devastating attack.

Temperature is never kept at a constant rate when molecules are constantly moving. Using this knowledge we now know that keeping the air stagnant during these cold seasons brings the plants to a dangerous level near being frozen. Shake the temperature up by providing a way to keep the air moving around. Letting an electric fan sit in front of the plants is a good way to keep air from settling and totally cooling down the soil.

Another better alternative is to use the same temperature keeping analogy to heat up the garden. As we have known, stagnant air directs the temperature into a single direction. If there is still a significant amount of heat left in the garden right before dusk, you may set up a large covering or a tent-like structure to preserve this heat throughout the evening. Make sure to let them breathe in fresh air and sunlight during the next day though.

Potted plants should always be moved indoors before the night sets in. These plants are generally more susceptible to frost due to its smaller contact with the soil (only soil inside the pot), and because the roots are left exposed by the pot. If you can’t bring them all indoors, at least cover the lower and underside of the pots using proper insulating materials to keep them warm.

Most of us just love gardening and taking care of plants. Those people who live in countries who have much cooler climate are just getting ready when springtime comes coz this is when they will start plowing once again. Surely, it’s a really great past time to take care of your own garden. But then, after planning, soil preparation, and tool overhauls, there’s just one thing you must not forget – protecting your garden from animals. Surely, most of us love animals as well, but not on our garden. They may be nice and adorable to look at when they are there but what happens after? So here are some steps on how we should get them away from our gardens.

Then, you may buy some plants which can help keep wild animals away from your garden like wormwood, flowering onions, dusty miller, caper spurge, gopher plant, crown imperial fritillary, lavender, mint, castor bean, and Mexican marigold. These plants can help keep away birds, raccoons, skunks, rabbits, mice, woodchucks, voles, moles, opossums, and gophers.

Shrubs and flowers can help keep your garden away from deer. Example of these are lilac, boxwood, jasmine, sea buck horn, china berry tree, holly, butterfly bush, smoke tree, pepper tree, black locust, wax myrtle, narcissus, jonquil, daffodil, columbine, aloe vera, foxglove, iris, and clematis. Animals like deer are a bit aggressive though. So in case these shrubs didn’t work, try putting on some fence around your garden coz they eat just about everything.

These are just a few tips on protecting your garden from wild animals. Surely, there may be a lot of alternative solutions out there, a lot of plants and shrubs which can help keep them away depending on the country where you live. There are still a lot of plants which can help keep away these wild critters. If all else fails, do not lose hope. You may visit your local garden store for their recommendations.