Read this article to find out everything you will need to know if you wish to have a Butterfly Garden…

You can chase a butterfly all over the field and never catch it. But if you sit quietly in the grass it will come and sit on your shoulder. ~ Anonymous

Butterflies are beautiful creatures that are just a delight to look at be it their vibrant and cheerful colors or the graceful fluttering of wings with which they hover over the flower beds…Ever heard of a butterfly garden? Yes a butterfly garden is an amazing idea that many people have been pursuing as a hobby and contributing to the conservation of many butterfly species. It is a very constructive hobby that not only allows you to enjoy the beauty of Mother Nature but also helps to contribute in the conservation of butterfly species. Here is all the information you will need about having a butterfly garden:

Butterfly gardening works on a simple rule – butterflies feed on nectar and hence providing lots of nectar producing flowers will attract the butterflies to your garden. In addition to this, the butterflies are very specific about the plants on which they lay their eggs, and hence if you wish to multiply the butterfly population, you must provide the butterflies with enough host plants to lay the eggs on. Identifying a butterfly species will help you to find out their host plants and can help you expand your butterfly garden.

If you thought butterfly gardening is a process that involves trapping butterflies in a closed atmosphere then you are wrong. Butterfly gardening is actually a very healthy way to support the propagation of butterflies by making specialized flowerbeds and inviting the butterflies to make it their dwelling. Creating a butterfly garden is known to maximize the butterfly diversity and abundance and helps to conserve rare and endangered species and promotes environmental education.

While setting up a butterfly garden you should plan it in such a way that there are blooms all year round to entice the butterflies throughout the year. For spring flowers you can choose rhododendrons, azaleas and lilacs, while summer blooming plants can include the buddleias and asclepias and when the fall arrives, the butterflies can enjoy the asters and autumn joy sedum. Butterfly Milkweed is also great for attracting butterflies as well as for feeding the caterpillars. In order to identify butterfly species and their compatible flowers and host plants, you can always refer to relevant books or even try and search the web resources to find out more information.

While setting up a butterfly garden you should always remember that since butterflies are cold blooded and hence require warmth which they acquire by basking in the sunlight hence if you are planning to set up a butterfly garden choose an area that has abundant sunlight. Butterflies cannot sustain strong gusts of winds and hence prefer areas that are adequately protected from strong winds, hence pick an area that is not very windy or else add a protective fence, wall, or a hedge, which will ensure your butterfly garden, is safe from the strong winds.

While using any sorts of pesticides or insecticides in your garden remember that these chemicals will affect butterflies too. Make sure you avoid the use of any insecticides in your butterfly garden since it is very crucial for propagation of your butterfly garden. Maintaining a butterfly garden is creating your very own way to get in touch with Mother Nature by means of a mottled flowerbed with mystifying fragrances and brimming cups of nectars waiting to satiate the thirst of the beautiful winged butterflies that often look like colorful innocent angels fluttering their wings and capturing our hearts with their beauty.

By Uttara Manohar
Published: 3/11/2008

Author: Deborah Boland

Interesting and Unusual Ways to Deck and Garden Gazebos that you may never have thought of.
Do you have a beautiful outdoor gazebo in your backyard, but it sits empty because you are not sure what to do with it?

Here’s a look at some of the creative ways homeowners are decorating and enjoying deck and garden gazebos.

•Home Office

With computer notebooks, high speed wireless internet connections and cell phones there’s no need to stay stuck inside doing business. If you work at home, then take your office outdoors and enjoy the warm sun and fresh air while you’re wheeling and dealing.

All you need to add is a desk, chair, some leather stackable filing boxes, and a bulletin board for the ultimate gazebo home office. Accent your space with accessories in warm earth tones-browns, greens, and terra cottas for a connected to nature feel.

Imagine how your clients will love coming to meetings in your wonderful outdoor living space!

•Spa Gazebo

If you want to enjoy a hot dip in the whirlpool rain or shine, or on a chilly fall evening then this is a great solution. Many build deck or garden gazebos to incorporate a spa. If you do this you’ll also have all the privacy you want.

Gazebos can be glassed or screened in and look great accented with baskets of crisply rolled neutral coloured towels in big wicker baskets.

Other Great ideas for Deck and Garden Gazebos? Turn your outdoor gazebo into a:

•Kid’s Playhouse

Do you have children? A gazebo makes a fun kid’s playhouse. Position the gazebo just slightly off to the side of the house so you can keep an eye on the kids. Fill it with big pillows, a small table and chairs and a throw rug.

Keep your color scheme bright and fun in playful shades of red, blue, yellow and green. Then add plenty of toys like Lego, board games, coloring books, and stuffed animals for a playhouse they’ll never want to leave.

An added bonus – a playhouse gazebo will keep kids safely shaded on very sunny days.

•Potting Shed

Transform your garden gazebo into a potting shed by equipping it with a potting bench, seed packs, foliage, interesting containers, and all your favourite garden tools.

Hang some garden gloves, wall planters and a garden apron or hat at various points along the inside of the gazebo. Make a statement by artfully placing a watering can full of flowers just outside the entrance.

Your favourite hobby now has a spectacular new home.

• Exercise Space

You can create the ultimate space for outdoor exercise inside your gazebo.
Remove your shutters to enjoy your backyard view and let the fresh air blow in.

It’s always refreshing to position your gazebo close to water if you can. For example, near a swimming pool, a pretty pond, a rushing waterfall, or a trickling fountain so you can gaze out at the tranquil blue water and soak in its soulful sound.

Some people decorate gazebos with tulle to help give that breezy feel. Others add candles, mats and Asian garden accents if they’re practising Yoga or Tai Chi.

• Dessert Room

If you love to entertain outdoors in the evenings, then you know by dessert time things start to get a little buggy. That’s when it makes perfect sense to move your company into your screened in gazebo for a delicious dessert and a nice cappuccino.

A great way to make your garden gazebo more intimate is to build a cushioned bench that wraps all the way around inside. Top off the space with a nice big table covered in a pretty linen tablecloth and lots of glowing candles. It’s the perfect cozy after dinner spot where you can laugh and enjoy until late into the summer night.

So start thinking today about new and interesting ideas for deck and garden gazebos. Collect images of gazebos from decorating magazines to get ideas. The possibilities for this timeless garden structure are endless. Just use your imagination.

Deborah Boland © 2006 All Rights Reserved

Deborah Boland is the host of the popular HGTV Canada TV series, Backyard Pleasures, and author of the eBook: 7 Easy Steps to Transform Your Ho-Hum Backyard into a Breathtaking Oasis. Sign up for Deborah’s FREE special report: TOP 3 Backyard Design Mistakes and How You Can Avoid Them! For more info on fun backyard designs and creating the backyard of your dreams, Visit www.backyardpleasures.com or read her blog at www.backyardpleasuresblog.com

Article Source: http://www.article99.com

Requisites Of The Home Vegetable Garden

Author: John Ugoshowa

The ideal garden soil is a “rich, sandy loam.” And the fact cannot be overemphasized that such soils usually are made, not found.

In deciding upon the site for the home vegetable garden it is well to dispose once and for all of the old idea that the garden “patch” must be an ugly spot in the home surroundings. If thoughtfully planned, carefully planted and thoroughly cared for, it may be made a beautiful and harmonious feature of the general scheme, lending a touch of comfortable homeliness that no shrubs, borders, or beds can ever produce.

With this fact in mind we will not feel restricted to any part of the premises merely because it is out of sight behind the barn or garage. In the average moderate-sized place there will not be much choice as to land. It will be necessary to take what is to be had and then do the very best that can be done with it. But there will probably be a good deal of choice as to, first, exposure, and second, convenience. Other things being equal, select a spot near at hand, easy of access. It may seem that a difference of only a few hundred yards will mean nothing, but if one is depending largely upon spare moments for working in and for watching the garden and in the growing of many vegetables the latter is almost as important as the former this matter of convenient access will be of much greater importance than is likely to be at first recognized. Not until you have had to make a dozen time-wasting trips for forgotten seeds or tools, or gotten your feet soaking wet by going out through the dew-drenched grass, will you realize fully what this may mean.

Exposure.
———
But the thing of first importance to consider in picking out the spot that is to yield you happiness and delicious vegetables all summer, or even for many years, is the exposure. Pick out the “earliest” spot you can find a plot sloping a little to the south or east, that seems to catch sunshine early and hold it late, and that seems to be out of the direct path of the chilling north and northeast winds. If a building, or even an old fence, protects it from this direction, your garden will be helped along wonderfully, for an early start is a great big factor toward success. If it is not already protected, a board fence, or a hedge of some low-growing shrubs or young evergreens, will add very greatly to its usefulness. The importance of having such a protection or shelter is altogether underestimated by the amateur.

The soil.
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The chances are that you will not find a spot of ideal garden soil ready for use anywhere upon your place. But all except the very worst of soils can be brought up to a very high degree of productiveness especially such small areas as home vegetable gardens require. Large tracts of soil that are almost pure sand, and others so heavy and mucky that for centuries they lay uncultivated, have frequently been brought, in the course of only a few years, to where they yield annually tremendous crops on a commercial basis. So do not be discouraged about your soil. Proper treatment of it is much more important, and a garden- patch of average run-down, or “never-brought-up” soil will produce much more for the energetic and careful gardener than the richest spot will grow under average methods of cultivation.

The ideal garden soil is a “rich, sandy loam.” And the fact cannot be overemphasized that such soils usually are made, not found. Let us analyze that description a bit, for right here we come to the first of the four all-important factors of gardening food. The others are cultivation, moisture and temperature. “Rich” in the gardener’s vocabulary means full of plant food; more than that and this is a point of vital importance it means full of plant food ready to be used at once, all prepared and spread out on the garden table, or rather in it, where growing things can at once make use of it; or what we term, in one word, “available” plant food. Practically no soils in long- inhabited communities remain naturally rich enough to produce big crops. They are made rich, or kept rich, in two ways; first, by cultivation, which helps to change the raw plant food stored in the soil into available forms; and second, by manuring or adding plant food to the soil from outside sources.

“Sandy” in the sense here used, means a soil containing enough particles of sand so that water will pass through it without leaving it pasty and sticky a few days after a rain; “light” enough, as it is called, so that a handful, under ordinary conditions, will crumble and fall apart readily after being pressed in the hand. It is not necessary that the soil be sandy in appearance, but it should be friable.

“Loam: a rich, friable soil,” says Webster. That hardly covers it, but it does describe it. It is soil in which the sand and clay are in proper proportions, so that neither greatly predominate, and usually dark in color, from cultivation and enrichment. Such a soil, even to the untrained eye, just naturally looks as if it would grow things. It is remarkable how quickly the whole physical appearance of a piece of well cultivated ground will change. An instance came under my notice last fall in one of my fields, where a strip containing an acre had been two years in onions, and a little piece jutting off from the middle of this had been prepared for them just one season. The rest had not received any extra manuring or cultivation. When the field was plowed up in the fall, all three sections were as distinctly noticeable as though separated by a fence. And I know that next spring’s crop of rye, before it is plowed under, will show the lines of demarcation just as plainly.

You can find out more about gardening in the gardening section of The Free Ad Forum. http://www.thefreeadforum.com/infowizards/CAT/Gardening_75_1.html

Article Source: http://www.article99.com