Gardening Tip to Make Your Neighbours Look Over the Fence and Be Green with Envy!

This is a collaborative post with Rattan direct. Rattan Direct have a range of garden accessories and furniture, perfect for dressing your garden and accentuating its glorious plants and design.

Maintaining your garden to a high standard so that it gathers admiring glances from all quarters is high on the list of serious gardeners.Take a look at these gardening hacks from Rattan Direct and make your neighbours green with envy at your gardening prowess.

Know your garden, the soil and the climate

Cacti survive in arid desserts for a reason.Which is why having them in a garden in a wet and windy corner of the UK will not see cacti thrive.

Knowing your patch of soil, whether it is acidic or alkaline and how you can change this.As well as making the most of the climate will help in deciding the best plants to buy and plant. As well as the best spaces in your garden for these plants to flourish.

Camellias, for example, prefer a north-facing wall in a court yard and an acid soil.So there is no point planting them in water-logged, alkaline soil with continuous cold draughts irritating their tender stems.

Water

Water is not a sustainable resource – cue downpours that last says, with flooding and horror stories, and yet we are told there is not enough of the wet stuff.

But, one of the key elements that turns drooping pansies into a flowery mass of colour is water. Whilst your neighbour’s lawn and borders become ever more parched during a drought. You can carry on watering your luscious blooms because you have water butts catching rain from all your down pipes.

Remove pesky weeds as soon as they dare pop their heads above the soil

They are a nuisance. They are everywhere. One minute, they are a tiny head just popping above the soil surface. then next it is running rampant across flower beds. Anywhere where they can get enough of a foothold with their shallow roots. Weeds are not a gardener’s friend.

But this is the good news: it takes only a few minutes to whip these pesky weeds out of your soil before they get chance to not only become established, but turn to seed and spread them across your entire garden.

Complimentary accessories

We are used to thinking of our gardens as place to be admired – from the house. We look out, admire the dancing blooms in the summer breeze and yet.We spend little time actually enjoying the fruits of your gardening labours.

This is because we don’t make it comfortable for us to enjoy. And when we do, we move back into the house as soon as daylight fades and the temperature drops.

Make your neighbours green with envy with not only beautiful plants, but fantastic accessories;

• Garden seating – from a practical garden bench to functional outside sofas, there are all kinds of options when it comes to garden furniture that suit all tastes and budgets.
• Rugs, throws and cushions – ramp up the style and add splashes of fantastic colour with rugs, throws and cushions made from special material for the outdoors that don’t fade, shrink or spoil in the occasional rain shower or bright, bleaching sunshine.
• Lighting – solar lighting has come on leaps and bounds since the first dim, last-no-more-than-30-minutes solar powered fairy lights from decades ago. There are all kinds of solar lights that make for a bright, romantic garden when the sun drops.
• Fire pit – want to enjoy the night time garden with its scents and rustling wildlife but don’t like the cold? The fire pit is the perfect addition. Watch the flames dance and out of the corner of your eye, note the admiration in the eyes of your neighbours…
• Water – gentle running water caresses the soul. After a busy day at the office, talk a walk in the garden and sit by your water feature, enjoying its soothing tones. Build a full-scale pond and welcome a whole new raft of wildlife in your garden or have a water feature, with water trickling down playing its soul-soothing tune.

Plant in pots

Planting in pots is the perfect way to add colour, form and texture to a garden, softening corners and adding interest.

Keep garden pots of similar colours and shades to get a coherent colour palette running through the garden. Take time to consider the plants you will use in these pots too. Potted plants will need a little more attention, including a daily water – twice daily if the summer is hot – and bedding plants should be regularly dead headed to keep them putting their energy into flowering and not making seeds.