Landscape Lighting - Add Security and Accents to Your Home and Landscape
Landscaping lights add a touch of color to your gardens. By using landscape lights in your yard, you not only add security to your home, as well as add beauty and style. You can add lights to any landscape design. Installing solar lights in your front or backyard is an easy chore that almost anyone can do himself or herself.
Landscaping Lights for Added Security
Solar yard lights are a great way to give yourself a little added security for your home. Lights will brighten darker areas in the yard as well as making it easier to see steps or offsets in your landscape.
Accenting The Garden
A great way to enhance your garden area is by installing solar outdoor lights. You can find all kinds of different styles of lights to enhance your landscape design. Lighting fixtures for the yard are usually inexpensive ways to add charm and style to any area. These fixtures make a great feature in rock gardens and flowerbeds.
Different Types of Landscape Lights
Lights for the yard are usually powered by two different sources. One option is line low voltage fixtures that get their power from your homes electrical system. Wires are run underground. These are used more for larger landscaping ideas and are better for someone who has some experience with electrical work.
Outdoor solar lighting fixtures have a solar cell that absorbs energy from the sun and stores it in rechargeable batteries. These types of lights are less expensive; however how long and bright the light shines depends on the amount of sunlight it has stored in it. With a few clicks, these lights are put together and installed.
Great Ways To Use Landscape Lighting to Decorate
Lighting fixtures can be used to decorate any yard. Use them to line a walkway or path to the house. Not only will they add light they will also add charm and style to any home. If you decide to use the electric lights, you can change the light bulbs in them to coordinate with any holiday. Use red and green for Christmas, or pastel colors for the spring and Easter holidays. This is a fun and easy decorating idea.
Yard Lights - Party Lights
Outdoor lights are wonderful for entertaining. When you have lights around your yard, it will make everyone feel welcome and make things a lot easier for evening parties. Using outdoor solar landscape lighting around the yard is also a great way to show off your newly designed landscape.
Lights used for landscaping can light up your yard and features in your landscaped area. Everyone will enjoy the beauty of looking into your backyard and everything all lit up.
Mandevilla Over the Winter - A Houseplant It’s Not!
Mandevilla is a beautiful plant which shares it’s hot pink and red flowers with many of us all through the summer months. Some like to keep it running up a trellis or cover and arbor with it. Whatever and however you want to show off your Mandevilla is fine with me. I just love the color!
The problem comes around every year around and my email begins to get filled with the question of what to to with the Mandavilla throughout the winder months.
Sorry to say you cannot turn your Mandevilla into a houseplant, but I’ve shared these overwintering tips for years and find people who continue to enjoy their Mandevilla year after year by following these guidelines. It starts with fertilizer and expectations! I hope they help you…
Read the Overwintering Mandevilla Tips here
Kalanchoe Gastonis bonnieri
A Kalanchoe donkey ear is a unique shrub plant that is native to Madagascar. This interesting plant is also known as Donkey Ears, Giant Kalanchoe, Good Luck Leaf, Leaf of Life, Life Plant, Miracle Leaf, Palm Beachbells, Sprout Leaf Plant, Sprouting Leaf, Tree of Life.
Because of its unique leaves, big flower stems, and its way of welcoming many hummingbirds, make Kalanchoe donkey ear top the lists of many succulent lovers. Young leaves of Kalanchoe donkey ear are light green or greenish white in color and become bigger with prominent mule spots as the plant grows. The leaves are shaped like a Donkey’s ear, thus it is commonly known as Donkey Ears. Kalanchoe donkey ear can reach a height of about 2 feet tall when it blooms producing showy drooping flowers with red and yellow colors.
With Kalanchoe donkey ear, growing succulents is so easy. Unlike other succulents, Kalanchoe donkey ear grows fast and can tolerate almost any condition. It looks best outdoors; just take it back in during winter and place it in any bright-window indoors. In landscaping, Kalanchoe donkey ear is used as a low-rise specimen plant. Kalanchoe donkey ear plants can also be grown in pots.
Christmas Cactus - Propagation Care and Growing
The most important disease causing problem for Christmas cactus is caused by fungus - Fusarium oxysporum. Stem lesions are water soaked initially, and rapidly enlarge to reddish brown areas which appear sunken or mushy.
The fungus spores love this environment and it is easy to find the dusty yellow-brown covering of spores. Splashing water moves these spores to uninfected areas of the plant or other plants in the propagation area resulting in a rapid spread of disease. Christmas cactus growers monitor and watch for fungus problems as they can spread rapidly through stock bed areas. The key to control of Fusarium fungus disease on christmas cacti must begin clean stock. Keep cutting as dry as possible until the root. 
What About Fungus Gnats?
Fungus gnats can at times also contribute to problems with Zygocactus (Christmas cactus) or Peperomia. This necrosis or rotting at the soil line is illustrated in picture.
Neoregelia ‘Martin’
Neoregelia martin is a new and unique cultivar of Neoregelia. It is an attractive foliage plant that is loved by many because of its green and white leaves that are uniformly-arranged in rosettes.
Each rosette is about 25 inches in width and each long recurved leaf has a greenish-white to bright red color at the center. When in flower, the innermost leaves at the center of the rosette are overlayed with red. Neoregelia martin or simply Martin produces a single flower that can last for a day. The plant however blooms for only about 6 weeks.
Since Martin was introduced to the plant world, it has been compared with the other colorful Neoregelia cultivars. Compared to other Neoregelia cultivars, Martin has notched leaf margins with white spots at the upper surface of each leaf above the sheath and grayish purple surface on the sheath. Because of its shrubby and opening growth habit, Martin is widely grown in containers. Its interesting leaf colors make it great in various interiors. Nowadays, it is used in many landscape designs.
Chinese Evergreen - Versatile Widely Used Houseplant
Question: Can I plant my Chinese evergreen outside in a planter bed where it’s shady. I know it’s sold as an indoor houseplant but I’ve seen some used outside at a mall in Florida when we were there. Lil, Minnesota
Answer: The “Chinese Evergreen” or Aglaonema are cold sensitive and should be grown in protected areas if used in any outdoor landscape (which is very rarely). The primary production of Aglaonema’s as a group is for use indoors as houseplants where they can enjoy the same temperatures you do year-round.
Thousands of Aglaonema’s are grown today for indoor use. They are available in most garden centers, grocery stores and nurseries that carry indoor houseplants. Although some varieties of Aglaonemas may only be found in some of the high-end garden centers and nurseries or by placing a special order with your favorite greenhouse. Some of the newer varieties or extreme slow growers like “Aglaonema costatum” are available in limited numbers and are generally purchased in smaller quantities by interior plantscapers.
Chinese Evergreen - Versatile Recognizable and Widely Used
The Chinese evergreen has become one of the most versatile, recognizable and widely used group of plants for indoor use. “Silver Queen” and “Emerald Beauty” have been one of the cornerstone plants for indoor use by the professional interior plantscaper for decades. With the many new varieties becoming available you can only expect the indoor gems to find more use in the indoor landscape.
I know you’re wondering… Is it possible that you can have the same plant, indoors, for years? It’s possible… by having the right information and applying it… you can enjoy your chinese evergeen for decades. Some of our Plant Care subscribers have been growing the same plant indoors for over 20 years.
Ficus Benjamina Monique ‘Lattice’
This image of a 14 Ficus Benjamina Monique with multiple plants weaved together making the trunk of this ficus tree look like a "lattice". Ficus trees can be used in many, many forms.
Here’s another form called a standard. A “standard” looks like how we would draw a tree when we were in elementary school.
A Quick Guide to Choosing and Planting Bulbs
Bulbs are the fleshy underground protuberances of leaves, stems or roots. Actually, “bulb” is a generic term, and some of these underground protuberances, all of which will grow into full plants, are more correctly called “corms” or “tubers.” Tubers are thickened stem sections, covered with modified buds; corms are also underground stem sections, but without the bud.
Some of the loveliest flowers are bulbs, and gardeners rely on them heavily because they bloom in such profusion with little care or cultivation. They are among the first blooms of early spring, with the diminutive snowdrop, for example, appearing in early March.
Planting Bulbs
Bulbs should be planted from 3 to 6 inches deep, and, as a rule of thumb, the larger the bulb, the deeper it should be planted. (Both tubers and corms are treated similar to bulbs.) Using a spade, a slice is dug in the soil to the required depth, the bulbs placed in the hole and the sod replaced. If the soil is poor, a sprinkling of bone meal is added and mixed with the soil at the bottom of the hole.
Each spring, flowering bulbs should be well-fertilized. (Use manure and chemical fertilizer.) Care must be taken to keep fresh manure away from the roots or the bulb or tuber itself. The fertilizer should be worked well into the soil. The soil itself should be cultivated to a depth of 3 to 4 inches each week. During the blooming season, it is a good idea to cut off most of the buds to get bigger and showier flowers. Watering regularly is essential, and when the soil gets too dry, punching a few holes in it around the plant will help get the much-needed moisture down near the roots.
Bulbs that produce flower in the spring
Among the important spring flowering bulbs are a number of the tulip types, some blossoming as early as April. These early tulips include albion, coleur cardinal and pink beauty. Double and Darwin tulips flower slightly later in the spring than some other varieties. Other spring-flowering bulbs include the varieties of narcissus, grape hyacinth, snowdrop, crocus, winter aconite iris and trumpet jonquil (or daffodils).
Bulbs that produce flower in summer
Summer-flowering bulbs require the same planting procedure as the earlier varieties. Some typical summer-flowering species include:
- Autumn crocus
- Gladiolus
- Cluster amaryllis
- Lilies
- Bearded iris
- Dahlia
- Peonies
- Summer hyacinth
- Calla lily
- Mariposa
Landscaping Lights Uplighting, Downlighting, Moonlighting Illuminate Areas for Safety, Security and Aesthetics
Landscape lighting could be one of the least understood and overlooked areas of a home landscape design.
The popularity of outdoor landscape lighting continues to grow. Very often you see outdoor lights commonly know as Malibu landscape lights installed in the "runway effect" or landscape path lights lining a pool walkway. When the sun goes down the solar powered system lights come on. Usually these outdoor fixtures don’t highlight any particular element in the landscape - they just light up.
Landscape lights provide numerous benefits for modern homeowners including safety, energy efficient and economical.
Low voltage landscape lights can increase security outdoors by discouraging potential intruders, light up paths, pools, drives and entry areas. Your landscape design can take on dramatic new "moon lite" looks and showcase architectural features and plant silhouettes with dramatic lighting techniques. The lighting ideas are endless.
One common idea or technique - uplighting - focuses light and directs attention on an object such as a shrub, tree or landscape additions like an arbor or gazebo. Depending on the size, maturity and location of a plant a bullet or well type outdoor lighting fixture could be specified. It all depends on what needs to be illuminated outdoors.
When lighting a landscape path or walkway to an from a deck or patio where safe night access is required outdoors low voltage light fixtures direct light down and outward. To prevent glare the fixtures are shielded on top.
Downlighting, or moonlighting is a design technique that illuminates general outdoor areas for safety, security and aesthetics. Bullet type fixtures and lamps are selected for the required brightness and amount of illumination. These lamps are usually placed above eye level.
Backlighting, or silhouette lighting, gives that "special effect" by illuminating large outdoor surface areas like walls using a wash light fixture. This causes objects in front of the lighting to appear as silhouettes.
Many other installation techniques, placement and combinations can increase home security, safety, enjoyment and value. The practical and aesthetic effects created by landscape lighting are limited only by the existing architectural features, the landscaping and designer creativity.
With landscape lighting your landscape can be enjoyed not only during the day but extending into the evening hours as well.
Dracaena Marginata - The Color Magenta
The Dracaena marginata has been grown as a house plant for decades. It’s also grown in about every configuration and pot size possible. You can find rooted tips from 3 inch pots all the way up to giant character specimens filling 200 gallon containers. Plus you’ll find bush types and staggered canes primarily in 8 inch and 10 inch pots.
It is a durable choice to select as a house plant for just about any home owner.
Currently I’m playing with some marginata canes and converting them to hydroculture ( growing in expanded clay rock) more on that as the project moves forward. The goal is to “teach” you some other ways to succeed with your houseplants. Watering is probably the Number #1 killer of house plants and we need give you some better alternatives than you currently use - like sub-irrigation and hydroculture. I want to thank Bob at InsideUrbanGreen.org for the push! You can learn a lot at the site - visit it!
Now back to the marginata sometimes called the “red edged dragon tree” not only comes in a variety of pot sizes but other varieties - BiColor, Tricolor, Magenta and a new one called “Dracaena ‘Tarzan’ - we’ll look at ‘Tarzan’ next time.
Magenta gives a much dark purple edge along the edge of the leaf offering a rich look to this indoor standard. Another plus… the care for ‘Magenta’ is the same as a regular marginata.
Here’s to a great looking Dracaena ‘Magenta’ stump!
