Ornamental trees are specially selected varieties of trees that are selected to provide the landscape with impressive and fascinating hues of reds, oranges, blues and greens, along with unique shapes and sizes that fit the desired look of the garden. And one of the popular choices for ornamental trees that you can plan in your own yard are Japanese maple trees.

The Japanese maple is an amazing tree of beauty and grace and due to their startling colors, wonderful leaf shapes and relative ease to grow they’ve become one of the most sought after ornamental tree by both professional and amateur landscapers. And as you’d expect there are a huge number of different varieties of the Japanese maple tree, giving it a great versatility in how it can be used to create spectacular landscapes.

Unlike many other commonly available types of ornamental trees, it is possible for a home gardener to grow Japanese maples from seed relatively quickly and easily. The two most commonly available types of Japanese maple (but certainly not the only ones) are the red variety and the green variety. These are two distinct varieties of maple, so don’t plant the seeds of a green Japanese maple and hope to get red leaves! Green maples have green leaves that last from spring to late autumn, while the startling color on the red maple trees unfortunately fades during the course of the year. However the vividness of the red leaves returns during the next springtime.

The laceleaf weeping variety is another unique type of Japanese maple tree. In appearance it looks like a combination between a red maple and a weeping willow. The laceleaf weeping variety grow to a relatively short height but can give your home and garden an absolutely stunning look. As you’d expect from the name the foliage on the laceleaf weeping Japanese maple is soft and thin, which gives it the lacy appearance from it’s name.

While most vegetable gardens produce their main crops in spring and summer, there are a huge number of vegetables you can grow in the cooler months as well. Chris Smith has written an interesting article on the topic over on SeatlePI. An excerpt from his article:

Success has not come at a cost of backbreaking labor or expensive gizmos. It’s essentially a matter of planting the right crops at the right times and lucking out on the weather.

A lot more gardeners could and should be enjoying their hobby year-round.

Be sure to take a look.

Having a water feature in your own garden can give a huge sense of well-being, but the thought of creating it can be overwhelming. The obvious solution is to hire a contractor to handle putting the water feature together, but you can save yourself a large amount of money if you do the job yourself.

The first thing you need to consider when you decide to have a pond or waterfall in your outdoor garden is how large the project will be. As a general (and fairly obvious when you think about it) rule, the larger the area you are putting the water feature in, the larger the water garden can be. You may even have the space to put in a large pond that could hold several fish - a fantastic refuge for you to retreat to at the end of a long day at work, where you can listen to the sound of falling water and watch fish lazily swimming around.

If you are putting together a large pond, you will need to select a garden fountain pump that will be able to move the large volume of water required to suit the feature. A good rule of thumb for the pump is that it should be able to move approximately half of the volume of water in the pond in an hour. So if you have a water feature that holds 500 gallons of water, you should select a pump that can move at least 250 gallons an hour. Depending on the type of water feature and fountain you have, you may need a more powerful pump to move the water up several feet to the top of your fountain or waterfall.

Another important consideration is the energy rating and reliability of the pump. The pump will be running continuously for many months - you don’t want one that will constantly break (since you’ll have to get someone in to repair or replace the pump), and you don’t want one that will cost a lot to run. Many of the cheap pumps you can buy may save you a few dollars at the start, but they’ll cost you many times the saving in higher power bills over the years. Many landscapers recommend magnetic drive pond pumps as they are energy efficient, compact and quite durable.

One final tip when installing the garden fountain pump - since it is usually installed behind a rock or feature wall, it is important to make sure that the pump and everything else is working before you put the outer facade in place. Correcting any problems in the setup is much easier to do before the final touches are made to the water garden!

While the installation process may take a little time to master, before too long you’ll be able to sit back and enjoy the results of your labor with your own personal fountain.

Companion planting in your vegetable garden is a great way to increase the size of the crop you will have when it comes time to harvest. The right combination of vegetables planted together improves growth, reduces disease, encourages beneficial insects to thrive in the garden, and discourages pests.

But companion planting vegetables does have it’s drawbacks, as some vegetables are much more fussy than others about who they are planted next to. This simple guide will help you with a few of the more common combinations you should keep in mind when companion planting vegetables.

Asparagus get on well with most vegetables, but their ideal companions are tomato, parsley and basil.

Bush beans like potatoes, cucumber, corn, strawberries and celery, but hate onions. On the other hand, pole beans are a little more selective – they only like corn and radishes, and hate beets as well as onions.

The cabbage family (broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and kale to name a few) like many companions - beet, celery, cucumber, lettuce, onion, potatoes and spinach. But they have a few hates as well - dill, strawberries, pole beans and tomatoes.

Carrots get on well with a wide variety of vegetables - peas, lettuce, rosemary, onions, sage and tomatoes. Just keep them away from dill.

Celery is also a very accepting vegetable, liking onions, the cabbage family, tomatoes and bush beans. Like asparagus, they don’t hate any vegetables.

Keep your corn away from tomatoes, but to keep it happy plant it near potatoes, beans, peas, pumpkins, cucumber and squash.

Cucumber doesn’t like being near aromatic herbs or potatoes, but plant it near beans, corn or peas and it will be happy.

Lettuce is an accepting plant, not hating any vegetables but appreciating being planted next to carrots, strawberries and cucumbers.

Onions generally like being planted next to beets, carrots, lettuce and the cabbage family, but keep them away from beans and peas if you want good results.

Peas like being planted next to carrots, turnips, cucumbers, corn and beans, but be sure to not plant them near onions or potatoes.

Speaking of potatoes, you should plant them near beans, corn and members of the cabbage family for best results, and make sure they are away from pumpkins, squash, tomatoes and cucumbers.

Finally the humble tomato - one of the more popular summer vegetables for the gardener to grow. For the best results plant them near onions, asparagus, carrots, parsley or cucumbers, but keep them well away from potatoes or members of the cabbage family.

This isn’t a fully comprehensive list – obviously there are many more types of vegetables available for you to plant in your vegetable garden. But this list of the more common vegetables should be a good start.

So give companion planting in your vegetable garden a try. You’ll find you’ll have happier, healthier plants in your vegetable garden, which in turn will give you tastier vegetables to feed you and your family. And if you want to learn more about companion planting, be sure to have a look at the Companion Planting Guide to learn the full inside story.

If you want an impressive flowering tree to add that perfect touch to your landscaping job around the home, you certainly can’t go past the crabapple tree. No matter where in America you live, crab apple trees give a unique and beautiful look at almost any time of the year.

Like most flowering trees you can buy, spring to early summer is undoubtedly the time when the flowering crabapple tree looks it’s best. The trees multicolored buds begin to open, revealing a multitude of brilliantly colored flowers that last for many weeks. As the fall months arrive, the flowers of the crab apple tree begin to disappear and the fruits begin to form. These fruits come in as wide a variety of colors as the flowers before them. Usually the colors of the fruit on the crabapple trees mimic and contrast perfectly the changing colors of the leaves for autumn.

Most crab apple trees begin to bloom between late April and mid May. It’s at this time that they begin to produce their characteristic flowers with as few as five petals, or as many as fifteen or twenty petals. Generally speaking, the more petals to the flower the flowering crabapple tree has, the longer the tree will keep that flower. But the longer flower does have a downside for the gardener. Crab apple trees that keep their flowers for a long time produce far less fruit during the autumn months.

Rather interestingly, the crabapple tree is actually part of the rose family of plants. If you examine the flowers closely, this relationship becomes much more obvious through the similarities of the flowers. But as its name suggests, the crabapple tree is still closely related to the standard apple tree. The major defining difference between the two is in the size of the fruit.  Crabapples are less than two inches in diameter, while regular apples can be any size larger than two inches in diameter.