March 2014 | Expert building

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Using the free software to organize your landscape

Computers are really changing our world. Who would have seen, we would like to work a day with the help of computer programs in our landscape?

Freeware is software that is copyrighted, but is provided by the owners for an unlimited number of times and at no cost to selected users. If you receive a fee for the use of software or even an obligation to promote or provide confidential information, it is not carefully freeware.There are a large number of freeware scenery.

Landscaping Freeware is specifically designed for homeowners in the formulation and the design view of the landscape. The best programs to bring the magic of computer graphics for your home where you can generate a 3D image of your home and yard. After the image has been created, can be varied by terms such as plants, trees, gardens, and even the stones and statues are displayed in the drawing. The terms can be moved without ifBut, until you are satisfied with the plan.
The programs allow the draft seen by all parties to move forward with his head. Some of the freeware have features landscaped aging. This beautiful piece of art exhibitions take the landscape changing as the years and the trees and plants grow to maturity. Unlikely that issues related to aging programs and modified to eliminate them, originate.

If the product has tampered with yourcontent of the heart and you think you can get exactly the look in your imagination you can print out detailed plans to be submitted to the contractors to submit proposals. The program also prints a list of materials that the number and type of plants needed for design. The landscape plans and freeware programs that can be produced by them are important, even if you have a service-planning stage. The first step in the landscape are the servicesRegular program with the objectives. The Plan of freeware, this means perfect and visually so that the planner to launch a delicious place for tips and ideas for alternatives.

Landscaping should not be confused with freeware or shareware bought the original programs. These are just the cost or conditions. should there is nothing wrong with them, but costs the buyer to understand and be aware that the property would also be available for free download.Landscaping Freeware is an example of how information technology can be used for some parts of our life, part of the human sense of growth from the mists of time. And that is inherent cavemen set the mouths of their caves, but lacked any case see no ifs, ands or buts, their ideas before the work was completed without any ifs or buts. This freeware has intrinsic landscape for us.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Upcoming Features

This Weekend

Nerium oleander

Next Major Feature: Grapes in the Landscape

Many Additional Feature articles plus Model Home Series coming up!

PREVIEW Groundbreaker Brilliant Planting Design

I am dedicating a handful of upcoming blogs to highlighting some of the world’s most outstanding planting designers in a series entitled Groundbreakers. I want to focus on great planting design, not because I think it should be a separate discipline from landscape architecture or garden design, but because so little critical attention is given to this aspect of environmental design. Planting design is a subject that unites the separate but related fields of landscape architecture and garden design, a fertile ground for conceptual exploration.

I have chosen these designers because their work elevates design beyond the conceptual confines of traditional vs. modern and geometry vs. naturalism. For centuries, design style has swung between these two pendulums, fed by an impulse that is often more reactionary than critical. The designers featured in Groundbreakers pay homage to the past while freshly expressing a modern consciousness.

A critical discourse about what constitutes great planting design is needed more than ever. For too long, great planting design has been relegated to oversized coffee table books and interior design magazines. It is time to get beyond the domination of the glossy photo. Whether you are a professional designer, or an amateur gardener, we need to better understand why we arrange plants in the ways we do. These designers challenge our assumptions about how, what, and why we plant.

Ive selected five designers whose work are stylistically different, yet each reveals an inspiring direction for the future of design. Be sure to stop by in the next few weeks!

Siberian Salt Tree

Halimodendron halodendron

The only species of the genus Halimodendron that is a part of the larger Legume family
that is an attractive deciduous shrub reaching up to 9 feet that is native from southern Europe to central Asia often on salt plains. Generally moderate growing, it can reach its full size of 9 x 9 feet in 6 years on ideal sites. It even thrives in Albertas harsh climate where it grows with vigor.
The foliage is pinnate and silvery in spring. The leaflets are up to 1.5 inches in length. The foliage turns yellow in autumn.
Masses of pea like pale purple flowers up to 1.5 inches in length appear in racemes in late spring. They are followed by seed pods up to an inch in length.
Hardy zones 2 to 8 in sun on just about any well drained soil; this shrub is very salt and drought tolerant and is excellent for use on the seashores.
Propagation can be from seed, cutting and layering.

* photo taken on August 3 2010 @ University of Guelph Arboretum, Ontario

Purpureum
Intense pink flowers with white and purple flushing

Thursday, March 6, 2014

How to Prune a Spruce

Picea Pruning

These are 2 Spruces that anchor a lot in Ellicott City, Maryland that are extremely large for their kind in Maryland. In fact that Norway Spruce may be either the largest or very close to, in the state of Maryland. The only larger Spruce Ive ever seen in Maryland is in fact an Oriental Spruce and not a Norway. Blue Spruces tend to prefer cooler climates so the one in the photo is also an exceptional tree for the Baltimore area. So on this landscape renovation project I worked with the home owner to preserve and show off these trees that they are very happy to have on their lot. With little care other than a yearly cleaning out of old shaded out stems and a weekly or biweekly deep watering during drought, these Spruces will likely last decades and even centuries to come. The natural needle mulch was left in place. It keeps the soil cool and moist and adds to the health of these trees. Studies show that trees with no turf on their roots often grow double or more the rate of trees that do.
I always enjoy preserving unique and historic plants on projects I work on. These Spruces required alot of climbing and alot of time as I selectively thinned out the canopies to enhance their natural effect. This has been one of my favorite projects this year. Hope you enjoy these photos.

Before

After

* photos taken on Dec 8 2011 in Ellicott City, MD

Who Wants My Back Garden

Food gardening by individuals and communities in South Africa is quite commonplace. Driving through many built up areas - often near areas of umjondolos (the zulu word for informal housing), you will often see gardens of maize, pumpkin, tomatoes etc. being well looked after - and all this, mostly on the verge of highways and busy roads.

But despite the fact that food gardening in SA is thriving, its also quite looked down on - as being backward or rural - definitely not something to be aspiring to!

So its interesting to see that there is a move in the UK and USA to make use of unused land for food gardening. Allotment food growing in the UK is so popular that there are waiting lists to get to garden in the small spaces allocated. Just look out the window on any train ride around London, and youll see a green streak of community and food gardens going by.

But this latest push to get people gardening, and growing their own food, is aimed at matching up people with space for gardening, and those who want to garden. On Landshare, a UK based website, you can register as a grower, a land-owner, land-spotter or a facilitator.

The idea is simple - if you have a backyard (or any area for that matter) that would be suitable for growing - you can register it on their site. Anyone who is keen to get growing themselves can register on the site themselves, and look for an area close to them where they can get their hands dirty.

Ive been wondering, how we in South Africa can learn from this latest agrarian advance? There are a lot more things to consider in our environment. The most obvious being security. Quite honestly, Im surprised that roadside farming can thrive in a society where petty crime is flourishing - I wonder how often people help themselves to the fruit or vegetables of someone elses labours?
Sharing Backyards - a North American Site has a helpful list of things to consider - from time, to water use, to privacy and security concerns. But I think if its carefully organised, its a concept that could be adapted really well to a South African situation. So who out there wants to organise it?

Another thought that comes to mind - which is possibly far more Utopian. Wouldnt it be amazing, to truly share backyards? Although not suited to everyone, and every situation, wouldnt our neighbourhoods be better off, if we took down the fences that separate us, and linked our gardens. This would encourage birds and other wildlife back into our gardens, and who knows, maybe we would see real community growing alongside our vegetables?

Boutonnieres in the City’s Lapel

Found this article on small public gardens in Manhattan in the NYTimes.

It feature Jefferson Market Park. Of note.... Amanda from "Sex and the City" was married here. But more important to me is that the gardens were created by a hero of mine... Lynden Miller.

Weekend In New York|Small Gardens: Boutonnieres in the Citys Lapel

Audacious New Rock Garden at Doddington

The scale of Doddington’s new Rock garden is not immediately apparent. As you enter the gates from the formal sunken garden where picnics are held on midsummer’s evenings it looks as though you might be treated to a small rockery with alpines, which might be upstaged by the glorious views across the parkland. Look left though and a series of ponds, mature Cordylines, a quarry face cascade and a picturesque sunken path a la Aysgarth make you realise you are in an authentic Edwardian restoration

Amicia and Richard Oldfield are developing the garden with the passion of the designer-owner. As well as the snowdrop and bluebell walks, acid-loam woodland (unusual on the chalk downs) and famous billowing yew hedges there is talk of a future stumpery and arboretum.

The folly has been described as a ‘bit of Hampton Court’, and the intimate room at the top of a muralled spiral staircase would be the perfect spot for a romantic tryst.

The Oldfields are not confined to recreating the past however, as shown by the bold and effective mirrored millennium sundial. Amicias style is full of whimsy - watch the website to see if a castellated yew becomes a future reality.

Garden opens for the 2009 season on Easter Sunday

http://www.doddingtonplacegardens.co.uk

Model Homes Columbia15 to 18

Model Homes - Columbia15 * installed perennials on slope include emerging Astra Pink Platycodon ( Balloon Flower - just emerging ), Pink Ice Helleboris and Pink flowering Creeping Phlox. The Azaleas are the repeat blooming Sangria Encore hybrids.