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Plants Suitable for Your Garden
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Plant Quotes
"If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people."
"The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love."
"It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees."
"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered."
"I plant a lot of trees. I am a great believer in planting things for future generations. I loathe the now culture where you just live for today."
"Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant."
"A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows."
"If a tree dies, plant another in its place."
"If you want to be happy for a year, plant a garden; if you want to be happy for life, plant a tree."
"The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit."
"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now."
"Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later."
"You have to get up and plant the seed and see if it grows, but you can't just wait around, you have to water it and take care of it."
"I love being in my garden. I don't plant a lot of exotic flora, but I do spend a lot of time outside doing manual labour."
"Like a plant that starts up in showers and sunshine and does not know which has best helped it to grow, it is difficult to say whether the hard things or the pleasant things did me the most good."
Garden Plants
Buy for Local Conditions
As a general rule, you need to select plants that will do best in the conditions that exist in your garden, for example:
- The kind of soil you have _ clay, sand, loam, alkaline, acid
- The prevailing climate, which must also take account of extremes of weather that you experience _ hot, dry, cold, wet
- The uses of your garden _ show garden, play ground, garden parties
In practice, local nurseries and garden centres are likely to stock plants that are suitable for your area and staff are usually only too pleased to offer advice for more specific requirements such as shady corners or boggy areas of your garden.
Of course, you can often compensate for adverse conditions but this invariably means additional work or cost.
You also need to take account of your own preferences, such as mini-work gardening, routinely pottering about or serious amateur or professional gardener.
Do a Little Planning
Whilst you can randomly introduce individual plants from time to time that happen to catch your eye at the garden centre, you will create a much more satisfying result by doing some initial planning. Some of the more obvious criteria to consider are:
- Colour and texture
- Height and spread
- Expected time to mature
- Time of flowering and for how long
Sources for Plants
If you plan to buy most of your plants from a garden centre, it is worth checking out those that are conveniently close to establish the quality of the plants they stock.
It is also worth asking for a guarantee with plants, since nursery-people who have confidence in the quality of their work will be glad to replace anything that dies early or fails to grow in the location they have recommended.
Don't forget about other sources of plants. You can often persuade neighbours to part with a cutting or some seeds from their gardens. Such sharing helps to build good friendships.
However, never ever take cuttings without permission. Apart from being unethical, it can also cause a great deal of bad feeling.
Further Reading
Secrets of Garden Plants
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Hedge Laying Laying a Hedge to eliminate ugly gaps and improve security |
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Mistletoe The Christmas decoration that is a poisonous parasite |
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Planting Plans Devised by top garden designers for the Chelsea Flower Show. |
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Planting Design Ideas Three-dimensional planting design layouts (Requires free registration) |
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Plant Finder Detailed information on thousands of plants |
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Plants for Shady Areas Selection of plants that thrive in shady corners of the garden |
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Bulbs Tips for planting bulbs |
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Fruit and Vegetables Realize the pleasure of eating your own home-grown food |
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Garden Screens Use plants to create screens in your garden |
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Buying Plants Value for money plant buying |