If your garden is looking a little neglected and or has become the place you step out into only to hang the washing out you might be interested in these our top three ways to transform your garden. You don’t need to be particularly green fingered to put these tips into practice, neither do you need to be a member of the Ground Force team when it comes to garden DIY.
Read on and find out how you can make your garden into a place where you enjoy spending your time.
Improve the look of your lawn
Keeping a nice looking lawn is well within the capability of even the least green fingered gardener. Our first recommendation is that you mow your lawn at least every 10 days during summer. After mowing make sure you rake out any left over grass clippings. Even if your mower collects the grass cuttings for you, there will be plenty of clippings still left behind.
In very dry periods, give the grass a light sprinkling of water in the early evening. Don’t do this in the full heat of the day – grass can get scorched by sunlight on water drops just like any other plant.
Give the edges of your lawn a trim using a half-moon edging spade or a set of edging shears. It’s remarkable how much of a difference this can make to the appearance of your lawn.
Feed your grass with a readily available lawn feed (like miracle-gro water soluble lawn food) will help if your lawn is not quite as green as you’d like. Always make sure you read the instructions carefully on the amount of lawn food you use – ironically you can do damage to the lawn if you apply too much.
Make a patio area
Patio areas are great spaces for you to sit and enjoy your garden. The more time you spend sitting in your garden, the more you’re likely to be inspired to try new things in the garden and to keep it tidy.
In recent years there’s been a trend for fitting decking to patio areas. We have nothing against decking in particular but it does take regular maintenance to keep it looking good and prevent it from rotting and it does need more skills to lay than traditional patio paving.
Patio paving doesn’t have to be just traditional ‘grey square slabs’. There’s a wide choice of attractive garden paving slabs available – see the products page at RF Landscape Products for some great examples.
The key to great paving is in the preparation. Measure your area carefully and work out how much paving you need. Spend plenty of time levelling the area before you start laying the slabs – this will really show in the finished result.
Light it up
Garden lighting has come a really long way in recent years. Early solar lights didn’t really produce much light and didn’t stay illuminated for long. Newer solar lights, by contrast come in lots of decorative styles, are much brighter and stay lit much longer.
Putting strings of solar lights around the top of your garden fence, up the sides of garden steps and around other garden features make a great entertaining light show for when you are sat out on the patio on a summer’s evening. Solar garden lights are available in most high street DIY and hardware stores, though you’ll find a greater choice online at The Solar Centre and other solar light specialists.
We hope that you’ve found some inspiration in our blog to get out and start turning your garden into a place that you love and enjoy all year round.
Have some great garden tips of your own? Why not leave us a comment on this blog post.
