Clearing landscape for cottage

The branches of the 90-foot ash tree bobbed and weaved in the heavy wind while eight arborticulture students rigged up a pulley system lashing the big tree to a smaller tree across the yard of Woodbine Cottage.

Wearing orange hard hats, safety goggles and vests Hillside Landscaping , the students were preparing to cut down the tree at the president’s home next to South Dakota State University’s campus. Their teacher, John Ball, professor of forestry, wasn’t worried about the high winds.

Indeed, the wind was blowing in the direction he wanted the 12-ton tree to fall; ropes strung across the yard would help as well.

Students and faculty are refurbishing the landscaping on campus and at Woodbine Cottage, the home of SDSU President David Chicoine and his wife, Marcia. Work at the cottage will continue in phases through fall and next year. It is part of ongoing work on campus, which will include taking down several old trees, redesigning green spaces and adding more native plant and tree varieties.

Earlier this year, the class removed eight trees from the president’s property. Four of them had decay and could have survived longer, but it was prudent to remove them while the ground was being torn up and before the installation of the irrigation system, Ball says. The others were volunteer trees that were not part of any landscaping plan.

“The first step was the removal of volunteer trees and shrubs in the yard. Some have gotten fairly large. Trees have been planted by other trees, the wind and squirrels,” Ball says.

The trees will be replaced with a master landscaping plan that includes trees, shrubs, perennials, native plants and cultivars of plants developed on campus for growing locally.

The yard will become a showcase of South Dakota plants, including some introduced by SDSU’s researchers, such as the Rushmore arborvitae - Hillside Landscaping a small tree-like shrub; purple leaf sand cherry; homestead buckeye; and the nugget ninebark, a shrub with white spring flowers and a yellow-lime green leaf. Some of those plants are being used for the first time in a public area.

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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Four win Southside Beautification Awards

The City of Southside received 33 nominations for its annual Southside Beautification Awards, and judges seemed to have a tough time weeding out the four winners.

The awards were given to the winners of each of the four categories: business, church, neighborhood entrance and residential.

Sandra Patterson, a contest judge, said the winners were chosen based on several criteria and were given a score of one to 10 in each, with 10 being excellent.

“We had a three-panel group and we judged them on criteria like landscape design, symmetry of blooming and overall compatible landscaping (in regard to) the structure,” she said.

Patterson said none of the judges are Southside residents but they all are Master Gardeners. With gardening being their areas of expertise, one might assume choosing the best landscape would be a simple task for them. Wrong!

“When we were finished, one of the judges said, ‘That was harder than I thought it would be,’” Patterson said. “And it was!”

She said it took almost eight straight hours to judge all the nominees. Sometimes the homeowners were there, sometimes not, but Patterson said the judges had the opportunity to meet almost all of the nominees.

“Each of these owners is to be commended for their hard work,” she said. “Some of them were new at gardening, but the (nominees) show the quality of the residents of Southside.”

Homeowners, churches, businesses and neighborhoods were judged for the event, and 16 nominations came in for just one category.

“We were three different judges,  Hillside Landscaping  but we all have a trained eye and know what to look for,” Patterson said. “And out of the top four nominees, Hillside Landscaping   they were all six points from one another. It was really close.”

Judy Christian, chairwoman of the committee, reactivated the event four years ago as a way to reward local people for their hard work keeping Southside beautiful as well as to motivate others to take more pride in their surroundings.

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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Lerner’s Reading List For Garden Design 101

When it’s time to rest from weeding and watering, consider some books on landscaping that will educate you about planting techniques, what to install and how to design.

“Bringing Nature Home” by Douglas W.  Hillside Landscaping  Tallamy provides the rationale behind the use of native plants, a concept that has rapidly been gaining momentum in North America and elsewhere. The impact on our environment is huge. Within the food web, according to Tallamy, “count all the terrestrial bird species in North America that rely on insects and other arthropods to feed their young, you would find that figure to be about 96 percent.”

All animals, including humans, depend on insects that have the ability to transfer energy in plants into a form that can be eaten by animals. Insects count on indigenous plants for food and habitat. Without them, the bugs become extinct, and wildlife that depends on them soon follows. Biodiversity is critical if we are to preserve balance in the environment. Hillside Landscaping  This 288-page hardcover offers 308 color photographs. I am not a purist about native plants but have advocated the use of them.

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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Growing wild penstemon species

When I moved to Grass Valley in 1992, I bought a house, which was surrounded by two acres of old overgrown manzanita. A fire trap to be sure. After hiring a brush-clearing firm, Hillside Landscaping I was left with an acre of bare red dirt and a few scattered oaks trees.

I immediately set to work transforming this barren landscape into a garden. I put up a deer fence and built a path system-all the while thinking about what I would plant in my new garden. Because I have a low output well, I was restricted to drought tolerant plants. And because I wanted to create an eco-friendly garden, I chose to plant California native plants.

I decided to experiment with as many different species of penstemon as possible. I had observed several spectacular species in the wild and hoped they would grow well in the garden. My research told me that wild penstemons are tricky to grow and can be short-lived in the garden. Their primary requirement is well draining soil and many of them require minimal irrigation. For those gardeners with poorly drained clay soil, one solution is to import a good sandy loam from a soil vendor and mound it up on top of the existing soil. Both Eaton’s penstemon (P. eatonii) and P. pseudospectabils have thrived in my garden on mounded sandy loam soil. They receive morning sun and are shaded by tall pines in the afternoon. Both these plants form sprawling clumps and have semi-upright stems with tubular flowers that attract hummingbirds. Eaton’s penstemon has red flowers and P. pseudospectabils has outrageous red/pink/pruple flowers that defy description. Both are native to mountainous areas of the southwestern states, but can flourish here in the foothills.

The trick when watering penstemons is to give them enough to keep them looking fresh through the summer, but not too much, otherwise you can kill them with kindness. Many of the penstemon species that inhabit dry desert and mountain habitat in the Southwest, can survive the summer without irrigation once they are established in the garden. But after a long dry summer without water they will look pretty ratty. A more practical solution is create a semi-dry border by combining penstemon species with wild buckwheats, monkey flowers, California poppies, salvias and other drought-tolerant native plants and drip irrigating once every ten days in the summer, beginning in May. This will keep your plants looking fresh and extend their bloom well into the summer. In the Sierra foothills of Nevada and Placer Counties, azure penstemon (P. azureus) and foothill penstemon (P. heterophyllus) are native wildflowers. A hybrid of these two species called Penstemon ‘Margarita BOP’ is one of the easiest penstemons for garden culture. This hybrid was discovered next to the back porch at Las Pilitas nursery in Santa Margarita, Calif-thus its name Penstemon ‘Margarita BOP.’ It forms an evergreen, 3-ft wide sprawling mound covered with masses of tubular blue and purple flowers. Dave Roberts, President of EcoLandscape California, a non-profit ecological landscaping organization, grows P. ‘Margarita BOP’ in his Sacramento garden. He grows it in sandy soil and waters it once a week during the summer, beginning in May, which keeps the plant blooming and looking fresh through the summer.

Several penstemon species have persisted and thrived in my garden without any special improvement of soil drainage. They are all planted in full sun on a west-facing slope. Beginning in May, they are drip irrigated once every two weeks through their first summer after being planted in the garden. During subsequent years, I water them sparingly through July and then cease watering for the rest of the summer.

My hand’s down favorite has been Penstemon incertus. I grew it from seed that I purchased from the Theodore Payne Foundation in southern California.

The plant is clump-forming with multiple 2-foot tall stems, grey green foliage and beautiful blue/purple tubular flowers. It is easy to propagate from cuttings and seed and is now abundant in my garden. My original plant is still thriving after four years. Royal penstemon (P. spectabilis) has also thrived in my garden without soil improvement. This is a gorgeous three-foot tall clump-forming plant. When in full bloom it is covered with blue, pink and purple flowers and buzzing with visiting honey bees. Grinnell’s beard tongue (P. grennellii) also grows on a hot,Hillside Landscaping rocky slope in my garden. It reaches about two feet in height and has multiple stems with coarsely-toothed shiny green leaves. It has puffy balloon-shaped flowers that are lightly scented and colored pink with delicate mauve tracings. This species is very sensitive to over-watering and should not be irrigated in summer. I recommend planting this plant in a sandy loam of decomposed granite soil if possible.

I have also experimented with several species of keckiella, which are the shrubby cousins of the perennial penstemons. They are sometimes called bush penstemons. My resident hummingbird loves the scarlet-colored tubular flowers heartleaf keckiella (K. cordifolia) in my garden. Bees favor the snapdragon-like flowers of yellow keckiella (K. antirrhinoides) in my garden.

All the penstemon species are very easy to propagate from cuttings or seed. I usually leave the spent blooms on some of the stems so that seed pods can develop. I harvest the seed and sow it in pots in the fall so that it is watered by winter rains. The seedlings germinate en masse in early spring. I transplant these directly into the garden or into 4 inch pots-in which case, I grow them through the summer and then plant them into the garden in fall.

Cuttings are easier. I usually wait until February and then cut year-old stems back to sprouting buds near the base of the stems. Then I cut the pruned off stems into 6-inch long sections, and stick these directly into the ground around the parent plants. With a little extra water, these cuttings root quickly and easily. In this way, as older plants die off, new young ones grow up to replace them.

All of these penstemon and bush penstemon species (plus many other California native trees, shrubs, perennials and grasses) will be available for purchase at the Spring Native Plant Sale and Wildflower Show at the Rocklin campus of Sierra College (Parking Lot S) on Saturday, May 3rd from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm.

Quantities of some of these are limited, so come early for the best selection. There will be a special presentation “Wildflowers of Placer and Nevada Counties - Where to See ‘em and How to Grow ‘em” before the sale at 9 am.

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Sunday, April 27th, 2008

Global Garden Products Market To Surpass Aed 835 Billion By 2010

Homeowners taking an avid interest in designing the outside of their homes and outdoor living in general have boosted the garden products market worldwide and it is projected to register strong growth and surpass AED 835 billion in sales by 2010.

Hillside Landscaping “It is in to be out-doors - whether you are cooking, entertaining, reading, relaxing or even working in the great outdoors and this new trend has ensured higher sales of garden products worldwide,” said Eckhard Pruy, CEO of Epoc Messe Frankfurt GmbH, organizers of Garden and Landscaping Middle East, the region’s largest industry platform for landscaping design, garden equipments and outdoor living products scheduled to take place at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre from May 25 to 27 2008.

Mr. Pruy noted that the garden and landscaping business was driven by emerging trends and the rising popularity of garden outdoor spaces as an extension of modern homes. Growing material comforts, increasing annual household incomes, and changing consumer lifestyles are resulting in increased investments in gardening, and garden landscaping, thereby creating ample opportunities for growth in the industry.

“Higher fuel prices are expected to further drive this trend as more people continue to stay closer to home for their entertainment and relaxation needs,” Mr. Pruy observed.

The trend towards turning the backyard and the garden into livable areas of a home is directly translating into business opportunities in the garden products market.

“Homeowners today are as focused on designing the insides of their homes as they are about decorating the outside of the home,” remarked Gavin A. Morlini, Senior Show Manager of Garden and Landscaping Middle East.

He noted that homeowners are paying more attention to flowers and plants, exterior lighting, cozy couches and containers adding spots of color throughout the yard and an increasing number of people choose easy and simple gardens that are low maintenance and full of color.

Mr. Morlini added:“ Home owners are choosing simple elegance over fussy gardens so less is in fact more and the buzz word is minimalism.“

The surge in garden activities such as lawn parties, backyard camping Hillside Landscaping, barbeque with family and friends, are generating a need for equipping the garden.

The Garden and Landscaping Middle East exhibition enjoys the support of RTA, GardenEx, Society of Engineers, and the Taiwan Importers and Exporters Association. Also participating in this year’s exhibition are country pavilions from China, Germany, India and Taiwan.

Show Profile:
Garden + Landscaping Middle East is the only dedicated international trade event in the region for the landscaping and outdoor living industries. The show offers the perfect regional industry networking event to present the latest trends, products and services available to the sophisticated market of landscaping and outdoor architecture The next Garden+Landscaping Middle East is scheduled to take place from the 25-27 May in 2008, in the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre, United Arab Emirates. Show website: Show website: www.gardeningexpo.com

Company profile:
EPOC Messe Frankfurt GmbH is a subsidiary of Messe Frankfurt, the world’s largest trade fair organiser with its own fairground. It conducts over 150 events worldwide with 15 subsidiaries across Europe, Asia, America, Africa and the Middle East, and brings 800 years of experience to Dubai, the strategic hub for the region.
The successful portfolio of events of EPOC Messe Frankfurt GmbH in Dubai include: Intersec Middle East, Materials Handling+Logistics Middle East, Hardware+Tools Middle East, Garden+Landscaping Middle East, ISH kitchen+bath Middle East, Light Middle East, Beautyworld Middle East, Wellness & Spas Middle East, International/CES Hometech, Automechanika Middle East, Hillside Landscaping and the Middle East Toy Fair.

*RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: The report is collated using data from companies in the major product segments of Garden Plants & Seeds, Lawn & Garden Care, Garden Tools & Implements, Garden Furniture, and Garden Accessories from USA, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and the Rest of World. The data is based on historical annual market analytics and data obtained from key and niche players’ & includes both primary and secondary research comprising select online sources.

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Monday, April 14th, 2008

Lenders Retreat As Housing Market Plummets

As the nation’s housing market swoons, lenders are tightening their grip on their money. Last month Hillside Landscaping, that credit crunch reached Brent Meyers.

To all appearances, he’s an unlikely victim. A well-paid chief executive of a small consulting firm, he owns a substantial investment portfolio and a million-dollar house in Moraga. He pays his bills on time and has no credit card debt. His credit score, he says, is around 800, Hillside Landscaping a rating more or less in the stratosphere.

But in mid-March, Bank of America cut off his home equity credit line of a little more than $180,000, citing a decline in the value of his property. Meyers, 40, is now scrambling to come up with $75,000 to pay for a major landscaping project and is canceling other big spending plans.

“My wife would like a new car, but that’s going to have to wait,” he said. “We’re taking a $75,000 cash-flow hit, and I want to boost savings.”

The credit crunch made big news last month when brokerage giant Bear Stearns Cos. was forced to sell itself on the cheap after it was unable to borrow money to cover losses in its portfolio of mortgage securities. But the chill in the credit markets is not something that’s hitting just big banks and securities firms.

In thousands of ways big and small, across the Bay Area and the nation, lenders are retreating after booking losses in the mortgage market. Households and businesses are suffering the consequences as money becomes tougher to get and more expensive to borrow.

That in turn spells bad news for the economy. Credit is the grease that lubricates the economic engine by giving individuals and businesses the means to spend.

Borrowed money pays for everything from new outfits at the clothing store to house purchases and major home improvement projects. When individuals and entrepreneurs can’t get loans at interest rates they can afford, they spend and hire less. Tight credit ripples through the economy. The result is a slowdown, and, if severe enough, a contraction of economic activity, in other words, a recession.

Households, which gorged themselves on easy credit for most of the past decade, Hillside Landscaping are bearing the brunt of lender caution. In a wide variety of consumer loan categories, particularly those backed by real estate, lenders are cutting back on loan amounts, charging higher interest and stiffening qualifications.

Take home equity loans. In the past decade, borrowing against the value of their homes became the money source of choice for homeowners who wanted large sums to pay for such items as home improvements, college tuition or luxury spending.

By 2004, Americans were taking out $180.5 billion in home equity loans, according to the Federal Reserve. Much of that cash was pumped right back into the economy, buying cars and furniture, renovated bathrooms and kitchens, airline tickets and hotel rooms.

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Monday, April 7th, 2008

Creating A Stunning Hillside Landscape

If you are one of those fortunate people who have a house on a hill, you can enhance the beauty of your home by creating a beautiful landscape. Creating a beautiful landscape can be quite challenging, but if you are very creative and you are prepared to focus your energy into making your home look more beautiful, you will be able to make a yard that will be the envy of others. But, before you can hope to create a beautiful landscape, you need to learn the basics about landscaping. Knowing what to do is very important to save time, effort and money.

Getting Started

If you do not have any formal training in gardening and landscaping, it will probably take time for you to be really good at hillside landscaping. Contrary to what you might have seen on TV about gardening and landscaping, these tasks are not easy to perform. Since you live on a hill, the task of landscaping is even made more challenging.

Note that hills are prone to soil erosion and it can hardly hold water. These conditions often make it doubly challenging to grow plants and maintain them later on. However, the good news is that since hills as natural landforms are good showcases for landscapes, your efforts of setting up a beautiful landscape will not go to waste.

How do start your hillside landscape project? The best way to start is to go with the natural terrain of the hill. According to experts, land that is naturally formed should not be disturbed. This means that you don%26rsquo;t want to destroy the natural beauty of your place, do not hack into the hill or level the land when you want to plant something. A hacked up hill is not good to see.

Instead, create mall terraces on the slopes of the hill and cover these terraces with plants. The small terraces should provide enough space for the plants to grow. Yes, creating those plant terraces will take a lot of time, but once you have established your terraces, it will be easier for you to grow and maintain your plants.

If you do not have the energy to create those terraces, you can still create a beautiful landscape by setting up a rock garden on the slope of the hill. Using rocks to hold the soil is very cost efficient. The weight of the rocks are usually enough to hold them in place so you need not spend so much money on strengthening the foundations of your hillside garden.

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Friday, January 11th, 2008

Creating A Stunning Hillside Landscape

If you are one of those fortunate people who have a house on a hill, you can enhance the beauty of your home by creating a beautiful landscape. Creating a beautiful landscape can be quite challenging, but if you are very creative and you are prepared to focus your energy into making your home look more beautiful, you will be able to make a yard that will be the envy of others. But, before you can hope to create a beautiful landscape, you need to learn the basics about landscaping. Knowing what to do is very important to save time, effort and money.

Getting Started

If you do not have any formal training in gardening and landscaping, it will probably take time for you to be really good at hillside landscaping. Contrary to what you might have seen on TV about gardening and landscaping, these tasks are not easy to perform. Since you live on a hill, the task of landscaping is even made more challenging.

Note that hills are prone to soil erosion and it can hardly hold water. These conditions often make it doubly challenging to grow plants and maintain them later on. However, the good news is that since hills as natural landforms are good showcases for landscapes, your efforts of setting up a beautiful landscape will not go to waste.

How do start your hillside landscape project? The best way to start is to go with the natural terrain of the hill. According to experts, land that is naturally formed should not be disturbed. This means that you don’t want to destroy the natural beauty of your place, do not hack into the hill or level the land when you want to plant something. A hacked up hill is not good to see.

Instead, create mall terraces on the slopes of the hill and cover these terraces with plants. The small terraces should provide enough space for the plants to grow. Yes, creating those plant terraces will take a lot of time, but once you have established your terraces, it will be easier for you to grow and maintain your plants.

If you do not have the energy to create those terraces, you can still create a beautiful landscape by setting up a rock garden on the slope of the hill. Using rocks to hold the soil is very cost efficient. The weight of the rocks are usually enough to hold them in place so you need not spend so much money on strengthening the foundations of your hillside garden.

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Friday, January 11th, 2008

Beetlemania Rages In Yukon Forests Hillside Landscaping

Hillside Landscaping unsettled Yukon spring, as we flew down the Alsek Valley in Kluane National Park toward the Lowell Glacier, a magnificent river of ice that winds out of the St Hillside Landscaping. Elias Mountain Range. (more…)

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Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

Students Could Steer Course For Lake Atalantas Future Hillside Landscaping

Parks Director Rick Stocker said Hillside Landscaping. He met with leaders of the University of Arkansas department of landscape architecture to see if the university’s students could generate ideas for the lake as a class project Hillside Landscaping. (more…)

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Tuesday, December 4th, 2007