How to Garden

Planning a Low-Maintenance Landscape
Landscapes that require minimum time and money to maintain require thoughtful planning and installation. Invest early in planning and structures, and you'll pay (and work) less later. Choose structures, plants, ground-coverings, and systems that will help to reduce watering, weeding, trimming, painting, and mowing.

Consider your available time. Determine how much time you spend maintaining your yard at different times of the year. Consider mowing, planting, pruning, weeding, watering, raking, snow shoveling, and other seasonal chores. What do you want to change? List your needs. How do you plan to use your yard-for barbecuing, vegetable or flower gardening, kids' play activities, or simply viewing from the windows? Various activities require different ground surfaces, structures, or plantings.

• Assess your landscape. Make a rough map and list of existing features, such as fences, trees and shrubs, buildings, and paved surfaces. Note problem areas, such as poor views, noise, and a lack of privacy, steep slopes, or places where plants grow poorly or water accumulates.
• Choose timesaving systems and surfaces.
• Consider lower-maintenance alternatives to solve landscape problems, such as an automatic irrigation system for watering the lawn and garden; a deck, paved patio, or ground-covering plants instead of a mowed lawn; and a fence or vine-covered trellis instead of a clipped hedge.
• Choose brick or stone instead of wood surfaces to eliminate painting chores.
• Then group shrubs and trees into mulched beds to help reduce mowing, trimming, and watering.
• Mulch gardens to prevent weeds.
• Select low-maintenance plants.
• Choose only plants that fit the space available. We all tend to underestimate how quickly and how large a small nursery plant will become.
• To reduce planting time, plant flowering shrubs or perennial plants that grow back each year instead of annuals that only last one season.
• Pick plants that thrive in your soil, sun, and climate.

Tips
Choose plants with features that look good in more than one season, such as flowers in spring, handsome leaf color in fall, and attractive bark in winter. Reduce or eliminate your lawn. If you have children or enjoy lawn games, about 600 square feet of turf is usually sufficient.

How-To Project: Training a Climbing Rose
Climbing roses produce two kinds of shoots: the main structural canes and the flowering shoots, which grow from the canes. The long structural canes must be tied or woven into a support to keep the flowers off the ground. If possible, install the support before planting your roses. Roses require at least 6 hours of sunlight during the growing season and fertile, well-drained soil.

Choose a support. Roses produce more flowers when the structural canes grow horizontally, such as along a fence, than when grown vertically, as on a rose tower. When selecting a trellis, also consider ease of access for pruning and the trellis' ability to hold the weight of a full grown rose in wet and windy weather. Install the trellis. Be sure the support is firmly anchored in the ground and strong enough for the mature weight of the plants. If growing against a building, position the trellis a few feet from the wall to allow for air circulation and maintenance. Place it at right angles to the prevailing wind or in a sheltered spot in very windy areas.

Plant your roses. Dig a hole twice as wide as the root spread and about 2 feet deep with the center about 18 to 30 inches from the support. If planting a bare-root rose, make a cone of soil in the center of the hole on which to drape the roots. Plant the graft union, the bulge where the top joins the bottom, 2 to 6 inches below the soil line in cold-winter climates, slightly above the soil level in warmer regions. Adjust the soil level under the plant accordingly.

Water deeply, then spread compost or well-rotted manure and a handful of bone meal other phosphorus-rich fertilizer around the plant, and water again. Spread a mulch of wood chips, cocoa bean hulls, or the like around the plant, taking care not to heap the material around the rose's trunk.

Attach the canes. Select the sturdiest structural canes and tie them loosely to the support with strips of stretchy cloth, such as pantyhose. Space the canes evenly and as close to horizontal as possible.
Maintain and enjoy. Allow climbers to grow un-pruned (except to remove dead or broken branches) for two or three years. On established plants, prune dead, damaged, and overcrowded canes to the base. Tie in new canes to replace them. Prune the flowering side shoots to two to three buds above the structural canes during the dormant season.

Planting a Child Friendly Garden
Gardeners love to share their interest in gardening, and sharing with their children can be particularly rewarding. Even 2- and 3-year-olds can help plant their own little patch, and watch as life unfolds around them. Here are some suggestions for making gardening enjoyable -- and safe -- for young children.
Tools and Materials

• Child-sized trowel
• Child-sized cultivator
• Child-sized rake
• Child-sized hoe
• Stake a claim.  Firstly section off a corner of the garden or yard where a child can plant or play as he or she enjoys. It doesn't have to be designed or even particularly attractive, just a place where to explore without risk of damaging your prized plants.

Let the children choose what they'd like to grow. Most often, these will be plants they recognize, such as pumpkins and potatoes. Plants with large seeds, such as beans, sunflowers, and nasturtiums, are easiest for small hands to sow. although radish seeds are small; children delight in the almost instant growth and harvest. Or plant with a theme, perhaps a "pizza" garden containing tomatoes and peppers as well as herbs such as basil and oregano.

Children love hiding places. Consider constructing a tepee from tall poles and twine, to be covered with climbing beans and flowers. (Be sure to leave an opening for a door.) Or create a special room: a circle of tall sunflowers with shorter sunflowers or other flowers between them. Many culinary herbs are attractive and have interesting scents. Chives, sage, mint, and basil are good choices for a child's garden. Edible flowers, such as nasturtiums, pansies, violets, and calendulas, are also good.

Since many other plants -- even something as familiar as rhubarb leaves -- are toxic, teach your child to consult with you before anything into his or her mouth. Only a few are so toxic they should not be used around children and pets. Two extremely toxic plants are castor bean (Ricinus communis) and precatory bean or rosary pea (Abrus). Many other plants are toxic in larger quantities and should be avoided in a child's garden. These include angel's trumpet (Brugmansia), delphinium, foxglove (Digitalis), euonymus, morning glory (Ipomoea), St. Johnswort (Hypericum), lantana, cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima), love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena), and valerian (V. officinalis).

TIP Make gardening fun, not work. Offer encouragement and how-to, but go easy on detailed advice. If a child sees you at work in the garden, he or she will want to imitate what you do — the best way to learn