Flower Box and Hanging Baskets: Make Your Gardening So Easy

Do you remember how fun it was to play in the dirt? Well roll up your sleeves its time to play on the dirt again. Adding an extra room to your home may not be easy but turning your outdoor living area into a place of beauty is easy as a container. Container gardening is one of the easiest way to garden. It offers flexibility and makes good use of limited space. Use containers where ever you have a little bit of sun, even if it is in a patio or in the front steps of the city condo or apartment. Here are the great ways to make use of your outdoor living area.

The first two things that you need are the container and the plant. There are lot of containers that you can choose from that ranges from planters to hanging baskets and choose the right plant for a specific container. For flower box containers, the basic rule of thumb is to choose 3 different plants. Pick one that you like and find two plants that match with each other. Moreover there are three basic types of plants that you need to plant in your Flower Box, the thriller like the eye catching Impatiens in Accent pink, the filler that fills out primarily the entire flower bed like Impatiens in Pink Swirl and the spiller that spills all over the side of the planter like Dichondra Silver Falls. Combining these three plants will give you a spectacular view on your windows and patio.

For Hanging Baskets, put it on a place where sunlight is present and a place where it is easy to water. Make sure that you secure it well, as when they watered they get heavy. Wire is the most popular hanging basket material, it might be cheap but plants will grow over it in time. If you lined it with moss, this will help maintain the moisture. You can grow herbs, tomatoes, ivy and other plants that grow in this container. Putting water retaining gel and slow release fertilizer will give your hanging basket a great start.

Glass Globe Terrariums are the revolutionary type of hanging basket. These modern looking glass globe bubble style hanging terrariums is both Eco-Symbolic and Eco-Friendly. These hanging bubble glass terrariums look amazing in a residential or commercial setting. Succulent plant are the best type to plant inside the terrarium. They need little water like once a month and use warm water because terrariums don't like cold water.

Containers are great way to get an instinct way of garden where ever you live. Do not forget that vegetables and herbs can grow in them too.

Green Living: Why do we need plants?

Have we tried asking ourselves, why do we need plants? Have we tried checking out some useful things plants had given us? We surely know the main reason why plants are important, right? We know that plants provide the air that we breathe, food that we eat and things that we use. There are some insights that I want to share about the reasons why we need plants.

Plants bring natural beauty to our surroundings. They can give wonderful home accents that suit our taste in home decoration. We can have them placed on pots, container gardens, and window boxes that could give color to our homes. It can be directly planted on the ground as well if we have enough space to have a conventional garden. The beauty selection of Kalanchoe, Campanula, Mini Red Roses, Gardenia, Carnations and other flowerings plants would give a clever look to our home garden.

Plants are essential to the balance of nature and in people’s lives. It is believed that plants give calming and soothing effect. Gazing at a beautiful flowering plant on a flower box can lower the blood pressure and reduces muscle tension related to stress. The bloom helps us relax and focus leading to exceptional work productivity, great idea generation and excellent problem solving capabilities. There are also studies about plants help patients rapidly recover from surgery. Some can even get well from worst cases of diseases.

The worth of plants does not stop from what is mentioned above. There are many useful stuff plants can offer. Checking out some other functional things plants can do by reading some great green living books would make us realize that it is important to preserve our environment. Through reading ecological articles, we might be encouraged to go green.

Opening our mind for changes is not a hard thing to do. It would be a hundred percent positive result to go green living for a change. It does not only benefit our environment but it also makes us a better person physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Help me! Let us promote green living by planting plants for our gardens at home. It would be tough yet healthy for us and our environment.

How Can We Make Our Patio Look Good

A Patio is a paved outdoor space used for dining and recreational activities that adjoins the residence. It is usually made of concrete or stone slabs over a base. This base is often a layer of compacted stone chips, a layer of sharp sand, and a layer of cement mortar. Most homeowners use their patios to receive guests and visitors so they make sure that it looks very presentable to anyone. Nowadays, there are a variety of fixtures and decors that would complement the design of your patios. Whether it will be modern or contemporary, classic or old fashion, there are a myriad of things you can add to your patio to deliver an impressive statement of beauty to the eye.

I have some friends who are fond of making their patios stunning by installing some structures that add more style and to make the place attractive to guests. So for those of you who want to make their place look good but don't have the idea how, here are some  great ideas when it comes to decorating your balcony, patios, receiving areas and other places in the house where people gather around.

Hanging Baskets

Hanging Baskets are suspended containers used for growing decorative flowering plants. They are typically used to place flowers and plants on buildings, apartments and houses where garden space is lacking. We can also use them as replacement to potted plants if we do not have any room at home for an indoor garden. We can hang them on trees, free standing home frames, pillars and walls to add something that would make our home stylish and elegant.

Flowerboxes

Flowerboxes are mini gardens that contain decorative flowers. This is one of the best options to include in your patio. The good thing about flower boxes is they can be transferred from one place to another. If we want to make changes at home, we can just move the box freely without any hassle of setting it up again.

Planters

Planters are container gardens. They are bigger than pots and baskets. They can instantly brighten the porch, deck, balcony and patio. There are different types of planters to choose from. We can select from fiber glass, wood, metal, wrought iron to pvc planters. These wide selections of planters are perfect to match the design of our home.

The above mentioned structures can give the illusion of fullness to our patio. They will be an eye comforting addition that would provide us the luxury of using our patio with our leisure activities. So why not try making use of our patio as an ideal place to hang out with family and friends?

How to Clean Flower Window Boxes

It is best to clean the flowerboxes once or twice a month to avoid fungus and bacteria to infest the plants and flowers in them. It is necessary to remove the fast growing fungus as not to infect the plants that may lead to contaminating others. There are some few basic tips on how to clean our window box. However, the process of cleaning will depend on what type of flower window boxes we have. There are some boxes that made from wood, hard plastics, and aluminum. The cleaning guidelines will be for all types of boxes.

1. First we need to prepare the materials that we need for cleaning. We need the plastic scrubber, sponge, cleaning solution (liquid soap).

2. Brush off any dirt or debris that is on the flower box. Use a stiff brush for clay and a plastic scrubber for plastic. It would be best to use brushes first because some fungi are hard to remove. But be careful not to totally damage the container.

3. Wash the container box with the liquid solution with the sponge. Scrubbing more would remove the dirt completely.

4. Disinfect by rinsing with hot and boiling water.

5. Let the box dry completely. Expose it to sunlight if possible. The ultraviolet rays I the best disinfectant.

6. Scrub salt build up off of the boxes by making a baking soda paste with a little water then scrub wooden flower window boxes with a fine steel wool, and hard plastic boxes with a plastic scrubber.

After washing the flowerbox, we can fill it in with our favorite flowering plants. Cleaning Flower boxes are not always part of our daily routine. They can be done weekly or even monthly. It may take time to clean the flower boxes but the contribution to cleanliness is always the key to our healthy lifestyle.

We are definitely going to enjoy the beauty of a clean container box. It would be a great contribution of beauty not only to our home but to the environment as well. We sure need to develop the green living behavior to preserve the Earth.

FlowerBoxes: Decorating and Personalizing

Flower box has a big contribution when we talk about home improvement. It should also be part of our maintenance at home and it should stay beautiful all year round. We can improvise our boxes as not to look outdated. By doing so, I can give some ideas on how we can decorate and personalize our flower boxes at home.

Gather the things that we need - To improvise our flower box, we need to gather the materials and tools necessary to decorate and personalize our boxes.

1. Paint, paint brushes and paint trays are the most important items we need to redesign our window flower boxes. We can choose the paint of choice that matches the theme of our home.

2. Flowering plants have the most important role when decorating our flowerboxes. We can check out our local florist to ask for some suggestions that go with our flower plant boxes. It would be better to ask for the experts suggestions.

3. We also need a hose and a brush to clean the flower box.

The tools mentioned above are the basic things that we need to start our flowerbox reconstruction. We may add other things like flower stencils to create some cool stuff that we can insert to improvise our container box.

Clean the box. Preparation of our boxes would need clearing and removing of some dirt. Use the hose and brush to wash and remove the dirt and wait for it to dry out. It would be better to have a flower box free from flakes or dusts to have a manageable and easy painting work.

Coat it with paint. Paint the flower boxes white. This light color will make the designs on the boxes and the flowers to really stand out. You may need to apply two coats and make sure that you apply the paint in thin, even layers and let it dry in between coats. You may need to allow as long as an hour to let the paint dry.

Set up your colored paints. Adding different colors would give variety to your flowerbox. We can add red, blue, green and yellow to make it more attractive. Pour a little bit of colored paint into each paint tray. Each tray should have its own color and its own sponge.

Add more designs. Personalizing would mean attach some desirable designs to make the window box substantial. Use the stencils, sponges and paints to make flower designs on your flower window boxes. You will hold the stencils in place and gently sponge the different colors onto the stenciled designs. This will enable you to make and replicate pretty flower designs. Do not sponge on a lot of paint at once. If the stencil is small and you are going to use it multiple times, wipe it clean after each use so that the paint does not get muddy and brown.

Protect the boxes. Allow the boxes to dry. This may take as long as 2 hours. If you wish, you can spray them with a sealant to protect your designs from the weather. This will make your boxes long lasting and durable.

All the above mentioned thoughts are only suggestions that would give us some ideas on how we can create a pleasant and personalized window box. It might be a lot of work but it is priceless after everything is done. Why not check out your window boxes and see some revisions that you can do to make it personalized and appealing.