Saturday, May 10, 2008

Websites For Do-It-Yourself Gardeners

Some of the best gardening and landscaping advice is available write at your fingertips - on the web. Dozens of sites boast free plans, plant encyclopedias, gardening tips and articles discussing everything from Chic Chinese Pavilions to creating a French-Country Backyard. I've attempted to wade through this maze of information and have provided a short list of the top four I found most helpful.

Although they're not meant to be a replacement for an experienced landscaper, these sites will definitely inspire and give you a place to start. Happy gardening!

BHG.com

This website by Better Homes and Gardens has everything you ever wanted to know about gardens, planning, maintenance, lawns, plants, and everything green. They probably have one of the largest collections of free plans I've seen yet as well as some nifty tools to help you begin your landscaping journey.

Their handy web tools include:

1. Plant finder - allows you to locate every plant imaginable, includes detailed description, growing info and color photo.

2. Garden plans - virtually hundreds of garden plans for every type of yard, climate, plant type (perennial, annual, container, shade, pond side, color theme, etc.). They also provide ideas for entire landscape themes such as entertaining, low-maintenance, small backyard or small front yard. Sign up for free and you can access detailed planting guides for all the plans.

3. Plan-a-Garden – This gives you an online planning guide where you can chart out your virtual garden, add plants, trees, shrubs, and flowers in relation to structures, decks, or fences on the property. You can even design walkways and add stepping stones, patio tables and benches.

GardenDesigner.com

This is a beautifully designed site providing amazing ideas for all types of garden and patio design. They feature start-to-finish slideshows of various projects, and lots of design and money-saving tips. They offer advice from architects and even discuss home security in the landscape. The only downside is all the Google ads you have to sift through on the pages.

HGTV.com

This site is full of timely articles and gardening tips and most of important of all, lots of big colorful pictures. In their article “Taking up Space” about how to fill large areas, they detail each suggested plant and include large images of each.

The section on landscaping discusses every type of garden, as well as patios, decks and paths.Where Bhg.com is the place to go for plans, this site has a lot of useful advice and "before and after" projects.

GardenGuides.com

This site isn't as pretty as the others, but it has a wealth of gardening and plant information. You can easily look up just about any flower, herb, tree, shrub, vine, etc. and access a lengthy information sheet that outlines characteristics, and all you need to know about planting them and keeping them alive. There are tons of "how to's" as well as garden recipes and a fairly active forum.

Where To Get Free Garden Catalogs From

Through this article we will look at ways in which you can get free garden catalogs and what benefits a person can gain from using them.

The best way of ensuring that you will get all of the free garden catalogs that you want is by making sure that you are on the various companies mailing lists. There are many companies, which not only offer products and plants through these types of catalogs, but they also provide you with useful information as well. The best way of finding a list of companies that supply free garden catalogs is by going online. Many of these sites that are advertising will in most cases send out a free copy of their catalog and all you need to do is request the catalog through their website. When applying for a copy of their free garden catalog there are a number of simple questions that you will need to answer about yourself and also that are related to gardening. The main things that they will ask you for are as follows: -

1. Name

2. Address (this is where they will send the catalog to).

3. Email Address - this is great as they will then be able to send out details to you of any offers that they have and you will be able to see the offers on the day that they are released rather than having to wait for a letter to come in the post to you.

4. Special Garden Interests - What particularly interests you with regards to the type of gardening you do and the type of garden you have. By providing this information they will be able to provide you with details of the equipment and plants etc., which are specifically for your type of garden.

5. What the climate is like where you live.

More and more people today are turning to free garden catalogs and certainly now as we are able to see the items that these catalogs advertise online it is even easier to decide what would be right or wrong for your garden. Plus these companies will often provide you with great offers on hundreds of different plants, flowers, trees as well as equipment and no longer do you need to spend your time driving down to the local garden center. This can all be carried out from the comfort of your own home and everything gets delivered right to your front door within a matter of days of an order being placed.

So why not go to your favorite search engine and type "free gardening catalogs" in the search box today and see which free garden catalogs you can find and you can soon be making big changes to your garden that you never thought were possible.