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gardening

How To Start A Butterfly Garden

  Starting a butterfly garden is one of the coolest things you can do to enhance your home. Being outdoors is great for both your mental and physical health so why not make it extra fun by making your environment more beautiful? By creating a garden that will invite butterflies you're not only helping them but you're making your own life more fun and colorful as well.    Butterflies not only bring beautiful colors and excitement to our lives, but they also help pollinate flowers and crops, play an important role in the food chain, and can be indicators of environmental quality. There are a number of different flowers and shrubs that can be used for a butterfly garden. But if you want to attract the highest number and variety, plants that support all stages of the butterfly life cycle need to be provided.    There are about 775 butterfly species in the United States and Canada and they all follow the same life cycle. This cycle starts with an egg (which is laid in the spring, summer, or fall)…
Score: 1.62

How To Grow Lavender In Any Climate

Lavender is one of the most beautiful flowers you can grow. It's native to the Mediterranean area and has a long history that goes all the way back to the Old World. It has a sweet fragrance and it's a very popular perennial herb that's used in a variety of ways for gardening and landscaping. It's also used in alternative medicine as well.    It's usually grouped into four different subgeneras, each with a large number of hybrids that have been created for different conditions all over the world. These include Lavandula angustifolia (or "true lavender"), Lavandula dentata (Spanish hybrids), Lavandula stoechas (French hybrids), and Lavandula multifida (Egyptian or fernleaf). Egyptian is a very tough variety and you'll find it doesn't need a lot of care throughout the growing season.    Lavender is low-maintenance, drought-resistant, and because it has very strong oils it's useful in keeping away pests.    How To Pick The Correct Type By Planting Zone    Lavender loves heat, needs lots of space, hates…
Score: 1.38

How a Garden Grows You: The Therapeutic and Meditative Effects of Gardening

      Every neighborhood has at least one.      From one corner of the earth to another this person isn't hard to spot.  They have been exposed to the calming, meditative, mood, and life-altering effects of gardening.  There they are, bathing in the therapeutics offered up by the delightful sights, sounds, and odors found only in a garden.       Growing up there was an old man around the corner who was always in his garden.  He had course white hair, rough, like dried sage, that poked out of his grey golfer's cap.  He carried an orange metal stool that he sat on as he pruned, and plucked, and snipped at the flowers.     He walked with a bend in his back, never leaving that half-seated position, ready to plop back onto the stool and resume his work.  The curvature of his spine was distinct, earned by decades of hard work and bending over the soil. Every once in a while I would see him working happily with his wife, but most of the time it was just him.    Seeing him out there day after day, month…
Score: 1.31

Green Thumb: Tactics to Grow Annual Flowers for the Beginner

 
              What comes to mind when you think of flowers? Wedding ceremonies? Valentine’s Day? The truth is, flowers are plentiful and have many abstract meanings and uses. I will also elaborate methods to plant flowers, introduce types of annuals, and mention which types of flowers I have planted myself.    Pansy Annual Types Flower More Easily                To begin, pansies are a great flower for the beginning gardener. They’re some of the first blooms you can plant to celebrate the start of the season, as their tolerance to frost is high. Many varieties are blotched, white or blue. Often emitting a fragrance, these special flowers make me smile. My mom told me to use the digging tool to “plant myself.” (My nickname, being shy, was Pansy).      Filler, Thriller Versus Spiller                    The Thriller plants are often the focal point and omit an eye-catching vertical element to one’s eye. If you’ll be viewing your container from all sides, the thriller goes in the middle. If your view the…
Score: 1.28

The Birds and the Bees: Why Pollinators Are Important and What You Can Do to Protect Them

Without pollinators, the human race and earth’s terrestrial ecosystems could not survive. That may be a heavy note to start on, but it is crucial to know the importance of pollinator species, such as bees, butterflies, and some birds. Everything from agriculture to lovely wildflower meadows depend upon them.     The vast majority of plants cannot reproduce on their own.     More than one-third of the world’s crop production is only possible through pollination. The vegetables, fruits, and nuts we enjoy need bees and other pollinators to carry pollen (the yellow dust you see on bees hairy legs) from the male system (anthers) of the flower to the female system (stigma). This process results in the fertilization of the plant, which is what allows it to produce fruit.      Pollinators are not only important for our food sources, however. They also help maintain the entire ecosystem. “Approximately 80-95% of the plant species found in natural habitats require animal-mediated pollination”. The food…
Score: 1.01