Posts Tagged ‘Landscaping’

Recycled Metal Garden Decor – Eco-Art For Your Garden

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

Passionate gardeners are generally very green people. They enjoy digging in the dirt, recycling and composting, and effectively integrate other people’s discards into their garden decor. When searching for attractive pieces to enhance their back yards, recycled metal garden art is a popular choice.

The eco-artists creating recycled metal garden are very creative and talented. What may be trash to you or me is reborn in the hands of these talented artists. One artist, Andrew Chase, makes amazing mechanical sculptures of giraffes, elephants and robots from recycled automobile and plumbing parts. He gets junk transmission and engine parts from his local auto shop, and by combining these with plumbing fixtures and pipes he is able to create fantastic, moving creatures.

Old, worn out oil drums and tanks are quite commonly used to make metal yard decor. Coloured oil tanks that once supplied fuel to cottagers are reborn into brightly colored critters, including dancing sheep, climbing frogs, lurking alligators or Fido with his bone. For something a little different you can even add a devil or a diva!

In Haiti a thriving crafts community is creating beautiful metal wall sculptures from flattened drums which were used to transport oil or other products. After removing the ends these drums are flattened then carved by hand into exotic artwork. Using only simple tools like chisels and hammers, the artists carve decorative, elaborate designs out of the steel. Steel drum art from Haiti is renowned world-wide and increasing in popularity. Inside the house or in the garden, it makes a striking piece of wall art.Saving cycles from untimely graves a new breed of artists are using discarded bikes parts to create their art. Bike art has grown so popular it is a genre of its own. With gears and wheels, nuts and bolts, spokes and bars, a bike is the perfect raw material for recycled metal art.

Part of the appeal of recycled metal yard art is the weathered and often rusted look of the various pieces. Rather than making a loud statement, rusted metal has a natural, earthy feel to it and blends with the yard.. That is why many gardeners try to get pre-rusted metal art.

The creativity of artists working with recycled metal always amazes me. Add some recycled metal art to your yard and add instant character and charm.

Ann Wallis is a long-time gardener and lover of beautiful things for her garden. All year round she pores through gardening magazines and websites looking for colorful perennials to fill the holes in her garden and fun, whimsical metal garden decor to add life and character to her yard. Ann’s favorite metal creations can be found at http://metal-garden-art.com

How To Go About Landscaping For A Pool

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Many people like the idea of having a pool in their backyard. If you do as well, you must realize that it takes either a lot of work or a lot of money to set up. Then there is the continuous maintenance of the pool and its water. If you are concerned that you will lose all of your garden, there is no need, because you can design your pool so that there is a fair bit of vegetation incorporated into it. In deed, there are many suggestions you can use when landscaping for a pool.

When landscaping for a pool, you need to have a design to work to. You can either have a tailor-made drawing drawn up for your backyard, you could make your own design or you could use one out of a periodical. There is no reason why you can not create your own blueprint. The best way to start would be to get some suggestions from landscaping publications or other household periodicals.

The best way of going about landscaping for a pool is to plot the precise size and shape of your backyard on a sheet of graph paper to scale. Plot in any immovable objects such as downpipes, a shed or septic tank. If that limits the size of your pool too much, you can have these objects moved if necessary. Nothing is impossible, but it does add to the cost. Once you have adequate space, you are ready to start planning.

Copy and adapt from drawings from magazines by all means, but if you feel that you are not up to it, have the drawing made for you. A local architect can do it, or ring up the local technical college and ask one of the lecturers or students to do it for you. It is not as expensive as you might think. If you have the drawing done for you, make sure that you have thought about what you want and make sure that the drawer knows about it.

If you prefer lots of flowers, it is best to have raised flower beds. This will prevent your flowers from spreading too far and will allow you more control. The flowers will have to be quite hardy and resistant to chemicals such as chlorine. The air will be more humid around the pool too.

You will have to have some shaded area for when it is very hot. Trees are a good idea, but they can take a very long time to grow. Palms look fantastic by a pool, but some species can take five years to grow high enough. You could check out the possibilities of planting semi-mature trees or look for faster-growing varieties. In the meanwhile, you could set up a grass-roofed lean-to or some umbrellas.

Lighting is also an important consideration. The pool ought to be floodlit at night to prevent people falling into it at night; but not only for that reason, it looks good as well. Accent lighting on the plants and trees really brings atmosphere to the pool and these lamps can be solar powered so that you can move them around when you want to.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is at present concerned with outdoor accent lighting. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Outdoor Wall Lamps.

Beautiful Landscape Lighting

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Whilst having a great garden is important you should think about ways of allowing the beauty of your garden to show through in various sorts of weather conditions. Some people also want to have the opportunity of having their garden illuminated at night. For these people, looking at various landscape lighting options will permit you the chance of having your garden looking just the way you want it, no matter what the natural lighting conditions are.

In order to provide the right landscape lighting conditions you will need to choose from a variety of lighting fixtures. These fixtures can be in the form of lamps, lanterns, spotlights, halogen lights and even solar lights. The price of these lighting fixtures differs for each style of lighting.

When you are thinking of using landscape lighting you will need to choose where to place the lights to achieve the best lighting effects. You may also want to consider which lights will provide your garden with an all over lighting. You can look in gardening magazines to get an idea of the many different ways that these landscape lighting fixtures can be used.

While it may possible to find ideas for installing landscape lighting in your garden from landscape and gardening magazines, there is another way as well. For this other method, you should look at your garden in the daytime and in the night time. In the morning you will need to look what spots in your garden could be enhanced by the use of landscape lighting. Then, when night falls, you look out at your garden again and see what areas would benefit from the use of lights.

Then, the morning after this nocturnal exercise, you should go out into the garden and mark out roughly where you think there is a need for lighting. Once you have looked at this area properly, try imagining what type of lights would be of use. You can then go to the garden store to look for these lights, once you have decided on the kind of landscape lighting.

After you have bought your perfect lights and you have looked at the instructions on setting them up you will need to commence setting up the landscape lighting in a way that will make sure that your garden looks beautiful. You ought to try subtle and strong lighting in order to decide on the best for your garden; a dimmer can help with these tests.

Once you have finished your tests and have installed your final version, you will see what a difference having the right landscape lighting can make to your garden. From now on, after night falls, you will see the beauty of your garden in a different light.

If you thinking about using lighting for your home or garden, please click the previous link or for more landscaping ideas, please go to Stylish Home Decor


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