If you are feeling the pain of seeing your flower garden looking dull for the winter months, get some camellias and you will have flowers in your garden. Camellias are a delightful winter flowering plant that can add beauty and color to your garden and are easy to grow. And camellias are known to attract hummingbirds to your flower garden.  There are many varieties of camellias so do some research before you buy them. Some varieties are short and can be used as groundcover while others can be classified as trees that can grow up to 15 feet tall. (photo courtesy: wikipedia)

For some types of camellias, the blooms begin early winter and continue until spring. Some bloom from early fall into Christmas so be sure to check your gardening zone as it will tell you whether or not camellias will thrive in your area during the harsh days on winter. One thing is for sure, camellias will add much needed color to your flower garden during the winter and well into the spring season. Use them as hedges or in mixed borders where they can provide fall and winter color to your flower garden. It is recommended that you give camellias a heavy coating of mulch and some acidic soil for the plant to stay healthy.

Camellias are classified as evergreen shrubs or even small trees but there are some that grow short and you can plant them as groundcover or mixed them with other perennials in your flower garden. You can also plant camellias in containers or planters and they look spectacular when they bloom. This is such a beautiful plant bearing thick, glossy like leaves and flowers that come in red, yellow, pink and white. Camellias also bear seeds that are sometimes called the fruit of camellia plants. Follow the instructions that are provided when you buy camellias but as a general rule they don’t tolerate drought conditions so give them lots of water. (photo courtesy: wikipedia)

The leaves of a specific type of camellia are used for tea in China and Japan. The seed or sometimes called the fruit is used to make cooking oil which is widely used for millions of people especially in southern China. Other types of camellias are basically grown as ornamental plants in flower gardens to add beauty and color during the winter season which is the time when most flower gardens need it the most. Again, check the gardening zone for your area as most of the camellias I’ve seen thrive in zones 7-10. The good news is that cultivars are coming up with many new varieties that will tolerate greater cold hardiness.

Here are some other flower gardening sites that I found for you to browse. Thanks for visiting Best Flower Gardening!

Beginners Guide on How to Build and Maintain a Flower Garden
Just add tea and crumpets - Page 2 - latimes.com
Flower Gardening: Understand the Basic Needs of Orchids
Garden flower encyclopedia topics | Reference.com
Plant Flower Gardening: Compare Prices Reviews & Buy ... - Yahoo
Flower Gardening - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Technorati Tags: camellias, container winter plants, Garden, hummingbirds, winter flowers, winter jewel, winter plants

If you’re thinking about starting a garden, the first thing you need to consider is what type of garden you will have. There are many different choices and often it can be hard to pick just one, but hopefully you can narrow it down. And by narrowing it down, you’ll make the gardening experience easier on yourself and the plants. If all your plants are similar, then it shouldn’t be very hard to care for them all. So here are some of the main garden ideas for you to choose from.

If you’re just looking for something to look nice in your yard, you’ll want a flower garden. You can easily design a flower garden with perennials and those gorgeous colorful annuals that show up in the spring. Perennial flowers are flowers which stay healthy year-round and are basically called weeds because of their hardiness, only nice looking. Different areas and climates have different flowers which are considered perennials. If you do a quick internet search for your area, you can probably find a list of flowers that will bring your flower garden to life. Breck’s has a great selection of perennials that are of the best quality so be sure to check them out. Perennials usually only require work in the planting stage – after that, you can relax and enjoy them.

Another choice for your garden is to have a vegetable garden which requires a little more work and research than a flower garden, but can be much more rewarding. No matter what time of the year it is, you can usually find one vegetable that is still prospering. You can design your vegetable garden to give you produce almost every day of the year! When starting a vegetable garden, you should build it with the thought in mind that you will be adding more types of veggies in later. This will help your expandability. Once all your current crops are out of season, you won’t be stuck with almost nowhere to put the new crops. A vegetable garden is ideal for someone who wants some produce, but doesn’t want to devote every waking hour to perfecting their garden.

One of the more difficult types of gardens to manage is a fruit garden. It’s definitely the most high-maintenance because when growing fruits, many more pests will be attracted to their sweetness. You not only have to deal with having just the right dirt and fertilizer, you have to deal with choosing a pesticide that won’t kill whoever eats the fruits and hopefully you will consider getting an echo-friendly pesticide. Your fruit garden will probably not produce year-round. The soil needs to be just right for the plants to grow, and putting in another crop during its off-season could be disastrous to its growth process. If you’re willing to put lots of work into maintaining a garden, then a fruit garden could be a good choice for you.

So now that I’ve outlined some of the main garden types that people choose, I hope you can make a good decision. Basically, the garden type comes down to what kind of product you want, and how much work you want to put into it. If you’re looking for no product with less work, go with a flower garden. If you want lots of delicious product, and you are willing to spend hours in your garden each day, then go for a fruit garden. Just make sure you don’t get into something you can’t handle!

Here are some other flower gardening sites that I found for you to browse. Thanks for visiting Best Flower Gardening!

Jasmine the fragrant harbinger of spring - latimes.com
Will Rogers Gardens - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
GardeningAtHome - Twitter
Himalayan Blue Poppy and Other Blue Flowers for the Garden ...
"Search Results - "" Flower gardening."" | Brown University Library"
Fixing a Failed Vegetable Garden - WSJ.com

Technorati Tags: Fruit Garden, Garden, Gardening, Perennials, Vegetable Garden