by Raymond Alexander Kukkee

Created on: July 28, 2008   Last Updated: May 14, 2011

Landscape Inexpensively for Peace of Mind

To hire a professional landscaper may be the dream of many people, but financial reality has a tendency to temper wishes and initiate a search for less expensive ideas. Anyone can create a landscape using a custom landscaper and unlimited budget, but creativity, imagination, and common sense can go a long way toward successfully landscaping the projects of ordinary homeowners on a limited budget .

Here are some thoughts on inexpensive landscaping ideas that may contribute to the success and curb appeal of even the smallest landscape developed with minimal cost.

Trees

Trees are relatively inexpensive, yet they offer a wonderful diversity in colour, beauty, and stature. They may start out small and take a while to become mature and majestic, but center-piece trees can make a huge contribution to the focal success of your landscaping plan.

Think smaller, spring-flowering trees to take an eye-catching advantage of the season. Available flowering trees include cherry trees, lilacs that may be white, pink or purple, and flowering crab apple trees that come in both white and pink blooms. Some flowering crab apples have highly coloured leaves. Further south, try catalpa, citrus, and magnolia trees.

Excellent trees for autumn colours include white paper birch, sugar maple, red maple, red oak, beech, poplars, and silver maples. For all trees, keep in mind geographical location required for hardiness.

There are unique trees with elegant, distinguished characteristics, such as the common Weeping Willow, and for more temperate areas, exotic flowering specimens such as the Waterer Laburnum, (Laburnum x watereri), also called "the golden chain" tree, which develops cascades of flowers perhaps unequaled only by the beauty of flowers displayed by showy, elegant shrubs such as the Snowball bush and Wisteria .

For cooler areas, Forsythia, Potentilla, Caragana and old heritage rose bushes should also be considered, with trellises established for climbing roses, if you wish to create an elegant old-world look and focal point.

Bushes may not only hide ugly fences, they can reshape your yard completely. Use ball Cedar and Boxwood for accent topiary, specially shaped bushes, and hedges for accent, delineation, and backdrop for flower beds.

Flowers and Ground Cover Selection:

Get perennials ! Perennial flowers and ground-cover plants spread by themselves and create a mini-environment that requires minimal maintenance. Peonies, Day lilies, creeping

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