Earthly Garden

If you get a high from seeing your own garden in its full potential, then here are some ideas to help you create a blueprint for beauty in your very own backyard.

• Visualize Your Ideal Garden: To feel at ease in your own garden you want to create a space that speaks deeply to you. This often means recreating landscape feature that surrounded us in our childhood, whether that means familiar plants or stones from a river. Emulate the natural qualities of a familiar place. This helps all of us to reconnect with what’s known to you and make the mind body reconnection that reduces stress.

• Place for Your Own Privacy: Most of us don’t want the neighbors watching us struggle to stay in a yoga pose or even talking to our plants. Ideally you want to have enclosures, place of repose, screened areas. What’s more, it’s very important to include an element of overhead canopy to give a sense of protection. It muse go back to our late ancestors on the savannah taking cover under the tree tops.

• Keep Comfort within Mind: Physical comfort is an all-important consideration, especially if you plan to practice yoga in your garden. If you stick your garden on the northwest side of your house where it is always windy, you won’t want to go out and sit within your garden, be it for yoga or be it just for sitting and reflecting. Place carefully to make sue your garden meets all of your needs. If you enjoy practicing yoga with your children, create a space big enough for everyone. If you do lots of inversions, put your yoga area against the side of the house, so you have a wall to work with. If you use props or decorations during practice, add a storage box bear where you practice.

Planning a new garden area? Here’s what you need to know before you start. Before you dig for that new garden, call 811. The Federal Communications Commission has designated 811 as the new national number to protect gardeners, landscapers, homeowners, and contractors from hitting underground utility lines while working on digging projects-even small projects like panting shrubs. When you call 811, your local utility companies will send professional locators to mark utility lines so you can dig safely. For more information go to their webpage, or contact your local utility company.

1. Winter Groundcovers to Consider:

If you ever wanted a ground cover that could with-stand winter cold here are a few ideas:

Bugleweed (Aluga)
Cotoneaster
Deadnettle (Lamium)
Golden creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’)
Hellebore
Ivy
Juniper
Leadwort
Leucothoe
Micro biota
Mosses
Pachysandra

2. Long-lasting Winter Flowers and Herbs:

Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia)
Coneflower (Echinacea)
Joe-Pye weed (Eupatorium)
Ornamental grasses
Parsley
Phlomis
Rosemary
Sage
Sedum
Sunflower
Thyme
Winter Savory
Yucca

3. A List of Captivating Shrubs to add to any Garden or Flowerbed:

Bloodtwig Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea)
Boxwood (Buxus)
Chokeberry (Aronia)
White false cypress (Chamaecyparis thyoides)
Dwarf spruce (Picea)
European spindle tree (Euonymus europaeus)
Harry Lauder’s walking stick (Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’)
Holly (liex)
Japanese fantail willow (Salix sachalinenis ‘Sekka’)
Mountain lauel (Kalmia)
Ninebark (Physocarpus)
Pieris
Red osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera)
Red twig dogwood (Cornus alba)
Rhododendron, especially ‘PJM’
Rose
‘Tor’ birchleaf spirea (Spiraea betulifolia ‘Tor’)
Viburnum
Winterberry (Ilex Verticillata)

4. Instant Addition to Any Garden:
Instant Garden Accent of Gingerbread/Gate:

Materials:
Gingerbread
Nails
Paint

Tools:
Paintbrush
Hammer

Directions:
Nail a piece of scrolled gingerbread to the top of a simple gate. Paint the fence and decorate to match, and it will look like a custom creation.

There are several things you can do right now to get ready fro the planting season to come next year. You can also move some herbs and flowers indoors so they can last all winter. Even though the sun doesn’t shine as often you can still grow some herbs all year in a sunny window sill and enjoy their additions to any meal throughout the season, until next year when you can place them back outside.