Cedarman Blog

You’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating the garden in your yard, and you are immensely proud of your work. You simply adore strolling through it, admiring what you’ve done, but at the same time, you feel you’ve missed a step somewhere along the way and need just a small touch to complete the look. Your garden seems full and robust, so you can’t imagine what you would add there. Perhaps you should concentrate on the path through the garden and consider adding a garden arbor to accent the garden path and create a doorway into your fanciful garden. A beautiful arbor can complete any design if added in the right context. Often, a very simple structure can be used to accent the garden path and carry some of the creeping vines and plants in your garden as decoration. In fact, an overly intricate garden arbor may draw too much attention away from the natural beauty of the environment, so the idea here is to keep it simple. On of the most basic materials for a great looking arbor is cedar. Cedar arbors will last years with little to no maintenance, even without being treated, since cedar protects itself with natural oil production. Especially if you have other cedar outdoor furniture, an arbor in the same wood will be perfectly complimentary, bringing together the whole design with a common theme. Picture yourself strolling up the walk, checking the mail in your new cedar mailbox, passing under your cedar arbor,and settling either on your wood garden bench or your cedar rocking chair on the porch. Can you project a more welcoming image when you return home from work every day? You can also choose to stain or paint a cedar arbor, should you have a color theme in your garden décor. Be sure to wind your climbing plants through the basketweave or straight pillar designs of your garden arbor, bringing wandering vines into submission and controlling the direction of growth while also bringing a sense of jungle-like wild growth to the garden path. Be sure that the arbor you choose for your pathway is the right size. If it’s too large, it will be overbearing and take away from the beauty of the garden, while being too small will make it seem out of place and add inconvenience to your life when you try to walk under and through it. If you choose wisely, however, a garden arbor can be an excellent asset in bringing out the beauty of your walkway.

Every day, you look out over your garden from your vantage point on the porch and smile, happy with what you see. The brilliant colors and the pleasant aromas enhance a sense of euphoria for you, and you would love nothing more than to surround yourself with the beauty everywhere you went. If you look around you, though, as you swing on the porch, it seems fairly bland, and you wonder why you haven’t brought the design up to your level. You can easily and elegantly do so with an attached trellis for your garden swing, turning this mechanism into yet another part of your incredible garden. While window boxes and deck rail planters can do wonders for bringing the garden closer to you, these can’t really put flowers at your feet, whereas a trellis that actually attaches to the porch swing from which you often enjoy the beauty you’ve created can bring the floral and creeping plants right to your nose. A garden swing with an attached trellis can help you create a drapery of ivy behind or beside you and allows you to get creative in constructing your own private curtained sanctuary, where you can sit in private and simply look out over the arrangements you’ve put together. The trellis can make a great addition to your porch, allowing you to build sort of a theme, perhaps even creating a small forest or jungle type of environment that ca make your porch swing a real wonder of nature to enjoy on a cool, breezy afternoon. You can work miracles with a trellis, training your creeping and climbing vegetation to grow exactly the way you want it to. You never have to worry about the vines crawling all over you as you relax in your favorite observation spot. In fact, you can go so far as to add true vegetation to the attached trellis, letting cherry tomato and other vegetable plants wander up so that, as you sit and look out over the beauty of your natural garden, you can simply reach down and pick a healthy snack to eat. You’ll love the convenience and the charm that an arbor swing with an attached trellis really adds to your outdoor furniture. Next time you go to the home and garden store, ask about attached trellises and look into your options. You’ll love the feel and look of your garden swing once you’ve surrounded it with the same beauty that flows through your lawn and garden.

Last season, you planted a number of beautiful flowers and tasty vegetables throughout your garden and expected a lovely turnout. However, as time wore on, you began to notice signs of trouble – bite marks on the leaves, blooms severed on the stems, and veggies with nibble marks. It seemed that rodents and rabbits were eating your garden to bits, and eventually, everything was destroyed. All you could do was sit back and watch the atrocities. However, this year, you are determined not to let the same thing happen again. This year, you can use raised planting beds to keep ground critters out of your precious garden plants. Rabbits and mice are the worst culprits when it comes to ruining your garden, and these are ground critters that rarely do any real climbing. That means that, by planting your vegetables and flowers on the ground, you are catering to their needs. By lifting up your precious plants with raised planting beds, you are removing the plants from their reach so your plants can grow beautifully undisturbed. A raised plant bed can also add a sense of style and design to your lawn and garden, creating organized patterns into which your garden is divided and sewn. You’ll find that using these tools to help you save your plants from natural herbivorous predators will also make your garden more exciting and intriguing to view from your vantage point on the porch, where you can sit and swing, enjoying the great outdoors. A wooden raised planting bed may be the best option as well, since cedar is naturally weather resistant and will last you decades with little or no maintenance whatsoever. If you’ve never used raised plant beds before, you’ll fall in love with the ease with which they can be used and the element of design and beauty they add to your space. You can space them out in geometric patterns, using them to separate species of plants and grow various colors in concentrated areas throughout your garden, creating an eclectic design of beauty and fun with a lot of practicality. Rather than let your plants be eaten away by hungry little creatures or hate the little critters that wander into your yard when you aren’t looking to steal your blooms, protect your flowers with raised planting beds that can add elegance, organization, and safety to your precious garden.