The trick to keep roses alive but dormant during the winter is to protect the bud graft from freezing or being damaged. You can do this by planting the bud union deeply when you first plant your roses. Then, after the last rose of summer has fallen from your plants, cut the canes back to the ground and remove all fallen leaves that have any trace of black spot or mildew and burn them.

The second is to add protection to a bud union that is above the ground by bringing in soil from another part of the garden and making a pyramid of soil around the plant to cover the canes after cutting the canes back to 12 to 18 inches above the ground. Called “hilling” by most rose gardeners, this system works best when you spray the clipped canes with a lime-sulphur and dormant oil combination before you hill them up to defeat problems with fungi.

Some gardeners swear that using peat moss to form the pyramid around the cut canes keeps the plants dry and warm; others prefer the insulating abilities of Styrofoam containers cut to cover the canes.

Research from Canada suggests that gardeners who use a poly foam blanket to cover their roses see more of their roses to survive even the coldest winters. A poly foam blanket makes your rose garden appear to have been visited by space aliens, especially as you must weight and seal the edges of the blanket with additional soil to keep the blanket firmly in place when winter winds rage. But if that doesn’t bother you, this is a great system to use.

Additional over-wintering techniques involve wrapping the roses with burlap and filling the enclosed space with leaves, or making small enclosures of wire or snow fencing and filling the enclosed space with leaves or other insulating material to keep roses warm.

Whichever technique and whatever materials you use, just remember that the whole point of using it is to protect the bud union from freezing and prevent it from dying on a cold winter night while you’re sleeping in your warm bed.

Cloche: Pronounced Klōsh, this is the French name for a woman’s close fitting hat with its rounded crown. In gardening, a cloche is an arched covering that protects a plant. These portable, mini-greenhouses keep plants relatively warm and protect them from harsh, winter elements. You can make one with some half-inch PVC pipe and plastic. The PVC is arched over a small garden patch and then covered with clear plastic. These “tent” greenhouses need to be opened on sunny days to allow for cooling. Secure the covering, and don’t allow the plastic to touch the plants or the cold will transfer to them.

Raise the Beds: If you use old tires to build your raised beds, the black tires will absorb the sun’s heat, heating up the garden. Clothes can be used to protect against the frost. Raised beds also increase drainage.

Harvest Leaf by Leaf: When you harvest leafy vegetables such as lettuce, chard, spinach and kale, pick only as many leaves as you need for that day. If the daytime temperatures don’t drop below 10 to 15 degrees above freezing, these plants will continue producing new leaves at their centers. You may be able to extend the season all the way into early spring, especially if you cloche or cold frame.

Mulch: This will keep the ground from freezing as quickly. The mulch should be put down when the temperatures have dropped close to freezing.

Root vegetables, such as carrots, beets and radishes, tend to do well after summer harvest is past. Kale and some of the other hardy plants actually taste better after a little frost.

Some vegetables, such as Brussels sprouts, endive, and escarole can be planted in the fall, depending on your growing zone. If you feed your plants, go easy on the nitrogen because this can make leaves soft and more vulnerable to frost. Romaine is a good type of lettuce for winter.

The variety of Swiss chard called “Bright Lights” will add great beauty to your winter, vegetable garden. This variety displays orange, yellow, pink, cream, gold, purple, and red stalks, many in hues seen nowhere else in the vegetable kingdom and that create a stunning effect in the morning or afternoon light.

By extending your vegetable’s growing season you can enjoy the taste and nutritious value of homegrown, vegetables as well as the beauty of a garden that much longer.

Window gardens are a wonderful way to enjoy the beauty of a garden when you have little to no space in your home. Apartment dwellers for instance, who have no patio space, often resort to having indoor gardens only. Window gardens can help them expand their gardens into an outdoor area, while making their apartment all the more attractive in the process.

Window gardens aren’t just for apartment dwellers though. They make a wonderful accent to stand alone homes as well, and they’re quite decorative too so they can dramatically enhance the overall curb appeal of your home.

Window gardens do have practical applications besides space saving. If for instance, you have problems with children or animals destroying your ground-based garden areas, putting in window gardens helps to reduce and eliminate these problems.

Window gardens are also wonderful places to create bird and butterfly gardens, because the raised position makes it much safer for these delicate creatures to feed.

Before starting your window garden, you’ll need to choose which type of container you’ll be using. Begin by measuring the window which will feature your new garden. Once you know the space you have available, then you can visit the store and pick out the window garden container which fits space wise, and which fits the overall look or design you’d like to have.

Window garden containers come in plastic, wood, metal, and various other materials, plus they can have elaborate designs, simple designs, or no designs at all. So if the exterior of your home is designed to look like a Victorian Cottage, you might not want to put an adobe colored plastic window garden container in, because that would not compliment your overall look.

Once you have the container chosen, you’re ready to buy your plants and accessories. Keep in mind the window you’ve chosen for the garden, and know how much sunlight that particular window gets. Then choose plants which will thrive with that amount of sunlight.

A window container garden can be created with just one type of plant if you’d like and even one flower color, too. You could have a window garden filled with pink petunias for instance, or one filled with different types of wildflowers which all produce blue blooms.

Window and container gardens tend to be much more visually interesting though, when you choose a variety of flowers to plant together. Having different bloom colors really spices things up, and choosing plants with different textures adds another dimension of interest too. If you can, try to choose plants and flowers which will bloom at different times as well, so you’ll have continuous flowers throughout a longer period of the year.

Most people start their first wildflower garden by purchasing a seed mixture at the store. These can come in small packets, or larger canisters that you simply shake around the area you want flowers to grow in.

And that’s really all there is to it when you choose to plant your wildflowers this way. Simply select a spot in your yard or garden, or create a garden bed specifically for the wildflowers to grow in, then scatter the seeds. If your seeds are small, you can spread them more uniformly by mixing them into some topsoil or compost first, then spreading that evenly in your garden bed instead.

If you want a more specific look to your wild flower garden though, you may want to select specific seeds to plant, or purchase small seedling plants instead. Creating your wild flower garden this way will allow you to choose the colors, sizes, and textures you want planted in your garden.

If you wanted a wildflower garden which consists of blue and white flowers for instance, you could have one by making sure to select only those seeds or plants which product blue or white flowers.

Some wildflowers grow best in shady areas too, and these are those which grow naturally in woodland areas. So if you decided to put a wildflower garden into the shadiest spot of your yard, you’d want to be sure you’re selecting flowers which actually grow in those conditions naturally.

Shade wildflower gardens might include Wild Geraniums, Wild Columbine, Shooting Star and Bloodroot.

Other wildflowers do best in open fields however, thus those would be the ones to plant in the sunniest areas of your yard and garden.

You can also create wildflower gardens which are designed to attract butterflies, or you can create a wildflower garden which you’ll use for cut flowers to place in vases inside your home. There are also wildflower gardens which can be created for xeriscaping, and those which work wonderfully as rock gardens too.

Trees come in all shapes and sizes. Many trees even produce flowers and these add an extra beauty element to any garden. Some types of flowering trees are wonderfully fragrant too, plus they’ll give you an amazing color show at various times of the year.

There are even trees which look stunning in the winter time too, even without leaves or flowers. Their bark and shape is what makes them stand out so well… some having bark of various colors, and others having unusual striking textures that look wonderful with or without snow cover.

In fact, traditional Japanese gardens are planted with all seasons in mind. When a tree is added to the garden, it is selected based on how it looks for every season of the year. This is because the Japanese feel a garden should be beautiful and enjoyable throughout all seasons.

Having trees around your home is also a natural way to moderate the temperatures both inside and out. When you have flowering trees or even just plain trees with many healthy leaves near your home in the summer, it helps block the sunlight and heat that’s so prevalent in the summer time. This gives you a comfortable place to sit and enjoy the outdoors, yet it also helps you use less energy inside your home too because your air conditioning system does not have to work quite so hard.

In the winter time, those trees which shed their leaves and become bare are actually helping you and your home too. The bareness of them allows the sun to reach you more easily at a time of year when the sun strength is weaker. This helps provide you with extra warmth and sunshine when you’re sitting outside, plus it allows more of the sun to enter your home which in turn helps to warm the house naturally – and save on winter heating bills.

Another wonderful way both trees or bushes can be used is as a wind block. If you live in an area which gets strong winds at different times of the year, you know how problematic this can become at times. By planting a row of trees or large bushes, you can effectively create a natural barrier that helps to break up the wind.

You’re also helping to insulate your home a bit better too, because the wind is not strong enough to try to penetrate inside your home as much as it might without a natural wind block in place.

So if you haven’t yet planted trees in your own garden or landscape, start looking into the many varieties there are to choose from, and see if one or more might fit perfectly with your current designs and needs.

Kitchen Scraps

Anything natural that you use in the kitchen makes for wonderful additions to the compost pile. It’s important that you only toss natural items into the compost pile though. You should never put meat into a compost bin for instance, or things such as milk, plastic, and tinfoil.

The best kitchen scraps to use for your composting are fruit and vegetable matter. When you cut up tomatoes for a salad for instance, save the core for your composting. If you peel potatoes for supper, save those peels too. Apple peels and cores, banana peels, left over fruit or vegetables that have started going bad, heads and cores of lettuce, and so on can all be added to your compost bin.

All of these items can be added as they are if you’d like, but they will take longer to decompose. If you’d like to speed the composting process up, you’ll want to chop your fruit and vegetable waste into smaller chunks, or stick it in a blender or food processor to grind it up even smaller.

Tea and Coffee Grounds
Both used tea bags or loose tea, and used coffee grounds make wonderful additions to the compost pile. These can actually be used as fertilizer for indoor and outdoor plants too actually. Simply pour your left over coffee or tea into the watering can, or spread the used coffee and tea grounds around the base of your plants regularly.

If you want to add these to the compost bin instead though, that’s easily done as well. The bags which tea grounds come in can be tossed into your compost pile as is, and if you use paper coffee ground filters then those can be tossed into the compost pile or bin as well. Keep in mind that white paper coffee filters are bleached though, so you may be more comfortable changing to unbleached ones if you’ll be using your compost for fruit and vegetable plants.

Household Scraps
There are other various everyday household items that also make wonderful additions to the compost pile. These include: newspapers, fireplace ashes, wood chips or sawdust, and grass or leaf clippings.

All standard, unglossy newspaper can be added to your compost pile as is. It helps if you tear the newspaper into smaller pieces or strips though, and of course the smaller you tear it up, the faster it will decompose.

Fireplace ashes are another excellent addition to your compost pile, and these mix in and decompose very quickly. If you don’t have any ashes though, you can simply toss in small wood chips or sawdust instead.

Grass and leaf clippings are also fantastic compost pile additions. Again you can shred them into smaller pieces for quicker composting, or just toss them in as is after trimming the yard, bushes, and trees.

You could for instance, create an Italian herb garden for use in your Italian based meals and sauces. An Italian herb garden could include basil, garlic, onions, sage, chervil, parsley, and other herbs which are commonly used in Italian meals.

Another excellent themed herb garden might not seem like an herb garden at first, but it is: A spicy herb garden, or a Mexican herb garden. This theme would include herbs which tend to be very spicy and hot such as green and red chili peppers such as cayenne, jalapeno peppers, horseradish root, cilantro, coriander, and cumin. This type of herb garden is also sometimes called a chili garden, because it’s often used for making soup and Texas-style chili.

Then there is the herbal tea garden theme, which is another very popular one to grow. An herbal tea garden grows a wide variety of herbs which are often used for making tea. You can grow standard tea itself, along with flavored varieties such as lemon grass or lemon balm, spearmint, peppermint, chamomile, Echinacea, Angelica, Anise, catnip, red clover, lavender, rosemary, thyme, etc. Generally, any herb can actually be used for tea, but not all of them will taste well as a tea of course. So select a few to start with, and grow your tea garden as you desire.

One other type of herb garden you might want to try is a medicinal herb garden. Just about all herbs which are used for foods and teas have medicinal properties of some kind, and many are excellent for a wide variety of purposes. Garlic is a must grow herb for any medicinal herb garden, and you’ll love having Echinacea on hand for the cold and flu season too. Try your hand at a variety though, and again, just expand your themed herb gardens as desired.

1. The art of choosing or designing a specific land area with trees.

This may sound silly or strange but the concept is new and cutting edge. In today’s society, how often have you seen trees marked for destruction? They have the orange or yellow ribbons tied around them to signify whether they stay or go on the construction site. The sad truth is most builders and architects find it far easier to rip out the trees in order to build and replace them with smaller ones or bushes because it is more cost effective. What Treescaping means in terms of new construction is designing the building around the trees or keeping as many trees as possible. In other words, making the building design be eco-friendly rather than an eco-destroyer.

2. The design and selection of trees to create an arbor or sanctuary.

Long driveways liked with beautiful flowering trees or majestic pines is one form of Treescaping. Taking a barren piece of land or backyard space and creating your own forest complete with moss and ferns. Choosing just the right shade trees to enhance your property and help keep the summer utility bills lower. Creating your own backyard orchard with fruit and nut trees so your kids can see where apples, cherries, oranges and pecans come from.

3. Tree experts do treescaping.

Someone who has a vast amount of knowledge about trees and how to care for them so you can make sure your gorgeous timber will live a long healthy life. They know how to prune, trim and repair any variety of tree and at the proper time of year. You should never trim an Oak tree in the spring or summer; late fall is the best time. A tree expert can help you with removal, replacing and selection of the right tree(s) needed for your plans and landscape.

So in a broad sense, treescaping is the art of selecting and maintaining trees for a specific design or area. Whether it is an architect trying to preserve the natural landscape of his building site or an arborist wanting to remove the moss from your oak trees or you wanting to create a lush and densely forested backyard; that’s what treescaping is all about – keeping trees in our lives, forever.

Like bushes and shrubs, trees can be purchased when they’re still quite small. Because of this, it’s very important to know what kind of tree you’ll be buying, how tall it will be once it’s fully matured, and how far it will spread at maturity too.

A tree’s spread is how far in either direction the branches extend at full growth. If a tree has a spread of fifteen feet for instance, this means it will be about fifteen feet at its widest point once it is fully mature. This is an important thing to note about trees before planting them, particularly if you live in a city or urban area.

When trees grow up, if they’ve been placed in the wrong areas they can cause dangers and problems you may not have considered when they were still young and small. The primary problem people run into with planting trees is overhead power lines. If you plant a tree directly beneath a power line, you will find yourself or the power company constantly trimming it to keep it from touching those power lines.

You don’t want to put a tree near a power line if it will eventually be twenty-five feet tall with a spread of fifteen feet for instance. You may however, like to put that one on the west side of your home – at least twenty feet or more away from any utility lines – because it will be an excellent source of shade and energy savings for your home during the hottest months of summer.

There are plenty of smaller, and dwarf trees which can be planted under or near utility lines.

You’ll also want to find out what the tree looks like at different times of the year. Some trees produce beautiful flowers in some seasons for instance, but if your gardens are designed to be red and white, you might not want to have a tree which produces yellow flower blooms.

Trees also come with a wide variety of leaves and barks. Some trees look extremely interesting in the winter time even though they don’t have leaves on the branches, simply because they have an unusual type of bark. Some tree barks will actually change color during the seasons like leaves do too.

So carefully select the types of trees you will plant and the locations they will live in, and you will be pleasantly surprised at how finished they make your lawn and garden look in the end.

Tea gardens can be created in almost any sized container, or they can be planted outside in the ground too. You can simply plant various types of herbal teas into a designated area of your yard, or create a more formal garden bed for your tea garden instead.

Growing different types of tea will give you a lot of pleasure in the actual planting and growing of the garden, plus you’ll be able to enjoy many different types of tea to drink in your home as well. Here are some suggestions of the types of plants to put into your tea garden:

1. Mint. There are a variety of mint tea plants such as spearmint, peppermint, and others – which can be easily planted indoors or out, and they grow quite quickly too. Mint is a strong and fast growing plant actually though, and it can become invasive if you’re not careful.

The best way to grow various types of mint plants is in a container. Whether you want the container inside or out doesn’t matter, it’s simply used to help contain the mint and keep it from invading the other areas of your garden. Containers can be used outside with mint even if you want the mint in a ground based tea garden too. Simply plant your mint seeds or starter seedling plants into any container you’d like – it doesn’t even have to be pretty – then plant that entire container into the ground.

Mint makes a wonderful tea all on its own, or you can use it to flavor lemonade, regular tea, salads and stews instead.

2. Lemon Balm. This is another fast growing herbal tea plant which can be grown inside or out, and in containers or in the ground. This herbal tea plant can get two to four feet tall at full growth, and it likes full to partial sun locations. This plant makes a wonderfully refreshing tea all by itself.

Lemon balm is also excellent to use for keeping various types of bugs and pests out of your garden, and you can rub the crushed leaves onto your skin to keep mosquitos away too.

3. Borage. This herb tastes a bit like cucumbers, and it’s often used in salads or other foods in addition to various types of drinks. This is an annual plant which grows to about three feet in height, and both leaves and flowers are used in teas, drinks, and foods.

4. Chamomile (Roman). This is an apple scented herb which works wonderfully just for walkways and paths, because it makes your entire yard and garden smell delicious. As a tea it also tastes like apple, so it tends to be a tea garden favorite for many gardeners. The flowers of this herb are what’s used for tea.

Chamomile only grows about three to twelve inches tall, and it prefers well drained, moist soil in either sun or partial shade.