adding colors to your landscape

Work Around The Base

Tips to Prepare Your Landscape for Spring

Even though the weather may be warm in South Florida, many plantings take a break before
bursting forth for the spring season. You can help give your landscape a boost and prepare for
spring with a few simple actions. If you’re unable to perform the tasks or don’t feel comfortable
doing so, call a professional.
Irrigation
If you have an irrigation system, now is the time to have it inspected to ensure its in proper
working order, with no broken pipes or sprinkler heads. Part of the inspection should include
the timer to make sure the setting is accurate in terms of run times and duration. If you don’t
have an irrigation system, consider installing one if possible.
Mulch
Apply mulch to the appropriate areas in the landscape. It will help retain moisture, aid in
minimizing weed growth, help cool the soil, and enrich the soil as it breaks down.
Trim and Prune
Now is the time to have hedges, bushes and trees trimmed and pruned to remove diseased,
damaged or weak limbs. Doing so will promote growth, minimize the potential for broken
limbs, and improve the appearance of the entire landscape. Trimming and pruning also aids in
maintaining the shape and controlling growth of plantings. Have any diseased trees or plantings
removed.
Lawns
De-thatching and aerating a lawn isn’t something that must be done every year, but spring is the
proper time to do so if needed. It helps prevent disease, aids in creating strong root growth,
and allows nutrients to enter the soil for use by the grass. Lawns should be fertilized the second
week after new growth appears, generally in February or March.
Weeding
Physically remove any weeds that may have taken root. It’s best to pull them up by hand. Doing
so also has the benefits of getting you some fresh air and exercise.

 

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Plant Flowers That Bloom Year-Round

South Florida is an ideal location for flowers that bloom year-round, providing vibrant color and
interest when other areas won’t support blossoms. There are a number of flowering plants and
shrubs that gardeners can grow for enticing color and beauty year-round.
Bougainvillea
Available in red, yellow, orange, purple, pink and white, it’s offered as a fast-growing vine and
low-growing shrub that will bloom off and on throughout the year.
Dwarf Morning Glory
When grown in South Florida, the non-vining plant can bloom year-round with brilliant blue
blossoms. It’s drought tolerant, deer resistant, attracts butterflies and hummingbirds, and
works great in rock gardens.
Gaillardia
Also known as blanket flower, it resembles a daisy. The brilliant red and yellow blossoms are a
cheerful addition to the landscape. Flowers are profuse and long-lasting. It can be a skin irritant
to some people.
Firespike
The plant has tubular, unconventional looking blooms, purple stems, and dark green foliage
with leaves that can attain 8 inches in length. Blossoms attract multiple butterfly species and
hummingbirds. It can grow several feet tall.
Gerbera Daisy
Bright, cheerful and welcoming, the flowers are available in red, yellow, orange, purple, pink,
white, and bi-colors. The centers can be light brown or yellowish to black. They’re a staple in
the cut flower industry and can last up to 10 days.
Hibiscus
Available in single and double blossoms, each flower blooms for a single day, but the shrub is a
profuse bloom producer. Colors run the gamut and includes red, yellow, pink, and multicolor,
with contrasting centers. They’re also offered in white and purple, but are less common.
Ixora

Also known as West Indian Jasmine, it’s noted for its ability to bloom year-round. Its flower
clusters can last 6 to 8 weeks. The shrub’s blossoms are available in red, yellow, orange, pink
and white.
Petunias
Highly diverse, the flowers are available in single and double blooms, in erect and cascading
varieties, and in an almost unlimited range of single and bi-color blossoms.

 

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What is an English Landscape?

More popularly known as an English garden, its characterized by structured informality that gives it a wild appearance to the untrained eye. It provides a stark contrast to the strictly planted and regimented style typical of most gardens in the U.S.

The style was highly popular in England from the mid-18th century to early 19th century and can still be seen in the English countryside. It was designed as an idealized version of nature and pioneered by William Kent and Charles Bridgemen as a protest against rigid architectural style gardens.

Elements encompassed lakes or ponds, gently rolling lawns, tree groves, bridges, and even decorative Gothic type ruins were used to create a pastoral landscape in large tracts of land. In later years, it was revised to include graveled walkways, shrubs and flowers.

In rural areas, English gardens were practiced on a smaller scale that primarily focused on the plants without the rolling lawns, lakes, bridges and other decorative touches. Also known as cottage gardens, they relied more heavily on plants with fragrant blossoms, along with medicinals, herbs and vegetables. The English garden was also invested with political meaning – as in disrupting the established norms. Shrubs were often used as natural borders.

An English garden is full of contrasting colors, textures, shapes and sizes that provide relief from the formal, regimented styles of strict lines to create a softer look. The gardens were installed with mindfulness for complimentary plantings, successive bloom times, and natural harmony.

English and American gardeners have a distinctly different view of gardening. For those that prefer straight lines, minimal maintenance, want to impress the neighbors, or just want an appealing view from the outside, an English garden won’t satisfy. Those that enjoy a little wildness in their garden can create an English garden landscape that’s practical, whimsical and low maintenance with the correct mix of plants.

RCH Landscaping is a full-service landscape company based in Boca Raton, Florida. We design, install and maintain Commercial and Residential landscapes all around Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and The Palm Beach areas. Our team of highly skilled landscape technicians has an undisputed track record of creating and maintaining beautiful commercial and residential landscapes all over South Florida.

Contact RCH Landscaping Today for a Free Estimate

561-779-9760

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vine

Pros and Cons of Adding Vines Near Your House

Flowering vines add beauty and visual interest to homes, can create eco-friendly privacy, and provide nectar for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. There are dozens of species from which to choose, have a myriad of bloom colors, and some are extremely fragrant. However, not all vines are suitable for planting near a home. Many shouldn’t be planted within 10 feet of a home or other structures and are best positioned to climb a fence or arbor.

Pros

Vines add beauty, character and distinction to homes. Depending on the species, vines can provide privacy, shade, or even edible fruits. They offer living camouflage for unsightly objects such as retaining walls and can transform a flat wall into a three-dimensional visage. Some species of vines, such as clematis, remain diminutive in height, create an oasis of fragrance, and are attractive to pollinators.

Honeysuckle is a popular choice for homeowners, partly due to its sweet scent. It grows fairly slow in comparison to other vines and is easy to keep within bounds. Jasmine is also easy to control and can grow from 10 to 15 feet in height.

Cons

Some vines can attain 20 ft. or more in height without extensive trimming to control their growth habits. There are a number of vines that are aggressive growers, always reaching ever upward. They won’t be happy until they’ve covered the entire house. Some vines will destroy brickwork, take down siding, damage shingles, and pull gutters down, depending on how they anchor themselves for climbing.

Wisteria is an example. Beautiful and sweet-smelling, it’s a rampant grower. It has the power to grow through walls and into homes and can even take down trees. English ivy is a popular vining choice, but the plants also harbor mosquitoes that can spread disease. An additional concern for aggressive vines is that they have no qualms about growing along electric lines and over the delivery systems of other essential services.

RCH Landscaping is a full-service landscape company based in Boca Raton, Florida. We design, install and maintain Commercial and Residential landscapes all around Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and The Palm Beach areas. Our team of highly skilled landscape technicians has an undisputed track record of creating and maintaining beautiful commercial and residential landscapes all over South Florida.

Contact RCH Landscaping Today for a Free Estimate

561-779-9760

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poinsettia

Best Place to Plant Poinsettias in Florida

The beauty of poinsettias is present during the Christmas season and in South Florida, it’s possible to plant the potted flowers in the outdoor garden. They can be a little tricky to grow, but with the right care, they can live to bloom on through many seasons.

Planting Poinsettias

One of the primary requirements for poinsettias to thrive and bloom is dark nights. They need total darkness during the autumn months. Even a little artificial light reaching them at night can delay bloom time or prevent the plant from flowering at all.

Keep holiday poinsettias in a bright, sunny location until time to plant in the spring and keep them watered. Optimal growth occurs when a poinsettia is planted in moist, fertile, well-drained soil.

Lighting

Gardeners will need to choose a place in the garden where the plant will receive full sun for most of the day, though slightly filtered shade during the hottest part of the day is acceptable. Individuals will need to pinch back the poinsettia several times throughout the summer to nurture a robust plant with numerous flower heads. Stop pinching about mid-Aug.

It’s important to keep in mind that poinsettias are large plants and will need sufficient room to grow and spread. In their native environment, poinsettias can grow into large bushes/scraggly trees, and attain heights and widths of 10 to 15 ft. Pinching back helps limit growth.

Native to Southern Mexico, the flowers have played a role in religious ceremonies for centuries. The first clippings arrived in the U.S. in 1828 thanks to Dr. Joel Poinsett, the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, who sent them to his home in South Carolina. His breeding program resulted in plants with a longer bloom time.

A Mexican legend about the plant says a little girl had nothing but weeds to bring Jesus on Christmas day. When she walked into a church, the plant burst into the beautiful red plant associated with Christmas. The plant is known in Mexico as Flores de Noche Buena, meaning flowers of the holy night.

RCH Landscaping is a full-service landscape company based in Boca Raton, Florida. We design, install and maintain Commercial and Residential landscapes all around Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and The Palm Beach areas. Our team of highly skilled landscape technicians has an undisputed track record of creating and maintaining beautiful commercial and residential landscapes all over South Florida.

Contact RCH Landscaping Today for a Free Estimate

561-779-9760

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Designing your Summer Landscape

Now is the time to begin planning your summer landscape that will turn heads – and it does require planning. It’s important to understand what you want to accomplish. Some want a place to entertain, while others are just seeking a place to relax from a hard day. Still others are contemplating changes to make their property more attractive to buyers.

Whether you’re going to install new plantings or create an entirely new area, begin with what you like about your current landscape, plan around it, and try to envision what it would look like with the proposed alterations. You may discover that you’re already half way to realizing your dreamscape. If you lack inspiration, ideas are as close as an Internet search.

There are so many things that you can do with a modern landscape and it pays to plan early since landscapers are typically booked months in advance. A landscape professional can also help you with ideas and show you options that you may not know even exist. Planning early also gives you additional time to research options and their cost.

One of the reasons for early planning is that landscapes are dynamic creations with a life of their own. Color themes change, plants die back and new blossoms take their place. Trees may suffer damage from storms and need to be removed. You’ll also need to consider the size of trees and bushes when they’re mature, and how long the landscape renovation project will take to complete.

Hard features in your landscape run the gamut from swimming pools, fountains and fish ponds to patios, decks and outdoor kitchens. You can even host movie nights outdoors with modern systems encompassing video, Internet and streaming services through wireless connections. Installing those types of additions will require more time and be more expensive.

It doesn’t matter whether you just want to make a few changes to accommodate specific needs or want an entire redesign, start thinking about the changes you want to make to the landscape before summer arrives. You may find that with the options and opportunities available, you may arrive at a completely different plan than what you first envisioned.

RCH Landscaping is a full-service landscape company based in Boca Raton, Florida. We design, install and maintain Commercial and Residential landscapes all around Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and The Palm Beach areas. Our team of highly skilled landscape technicians has an undisputed track record of creating and maintaining beautiful commercial and residential landscapes all over South Florida.

Contact RCH Landscaping Today for a Free Estimate

561-779-9760

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Pros and Cons of Adding a Bougainvillea

A bougainvillea is among one of the most popular vines and you may want to add it to your landscape. Beautiful blossoms are just one of the most attractive features of the vine. There are many reasons to plant one in your own yard, but there are also some drawbacks about which you may not be aware. The following are some of the pros and cons of adding a bougainvillea vine to your landscape.

Pros

The vines have become popular for planting around homes and along fences as a security feature and intruder deterrent due to their very sharp thorns.

They’re fast growing.

A bougainvillea will produce a profusion of showy blooms over the course of three to five weeks, depending on the health of the vine.

It’s drought resistant and adapts to a wide variety of soil conditions.

Bougainvillea can be grown in containers on the patio, which will assist in keeping it under control, but it will still require a trellis or other type of support. It’s never a good idea to cultivate them indoors due to the thorns.

Cons

Bougainvillea’s sharp thorns are able to piece clothing and deliver a nasty wound to bare skin. They’re not recommended in homes with children, the elderly, or pets.

The vine’s sap is toxic and if ingested in sufficient amounts, people and pets can become very ill.

If pricked by one of the thorns, you may develop an allergic response similar to that of poison ivy or poison oak. It may produce symptoms that include blisters, swelling, pain, or itching and stinging.

It blooms best when water stressed. That can be a problem for homes with automatic irrigation systems. That can be remedied by planting it in specific locations or adjusting the irrigation system to deliver less moisture to the area where the vine is planted.

Bougainvillea has the potential to become invasive due to its fast growing nature and adaptability if it’s not managed and maintained properly.

It needs to be planted a minimum of four feet from walkways and similar locations to prevent injuries to people and pets. To ensure it doesn’t disturb other landscape plants, it should be grown at least six to nine feet from any other plant.

The vine will require support. Make sure arbors and trellises are strong enough to support it.

Bougainvillea requires regular pruning to promote a proper form and prevent it from running rampant.

RCH Landscaping is a full service landscape company based in Boca Raton, Florida. We design, install, and maintain Commercial and Residential landscapes all around Boca Raton, Delray Beach and The Palm Beach areas. Our team of highly skilled landscape technicians have an undisputed track record of creating and maintaining beautiful commercial and residential landscapes all over South Florida.

Contact RCH Landscaping Today for a Free Estimate

561-779-9760

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Using Color to Design Your Landscape

Professional landscapers and designers utilize a color wheel when creating projects for their clients and you can do the same. It’s important to note that professionals also consider other principles encompassing scale, texture, form, proportion, and line in their creations. They visualize how the plants will appear during their yearly transitional phases for a complete sense of unity.

Interplay of Color

No landscape is a solid shade of color. The foliage of each tree, bush, vine, and flower has its own hue of green. It’s important to consider how each shade of green will appear next to each other to create contrast and unity.

The Color Wheel

The wheel is divided into four different color categories. They are the primary colors of red, yellow and blue; secondary colors of green, purple and orange; tertiary colors that are a blend of the first two categories; and neutral colors of white, gray and silver. Some categories of colors only appear at certain times of the year, depending upon the planting.

Warm and Cool Colors

Colors can be categorized into warm vs. cool colors. They can be used to influence the mood of a landscape. Blue, green, and purple are cool colors that are calming and relaxing. Warm colors are red, yellow and orange that are exciting, refreshing, and rejuvenating in nature. All the colors can be used in specific ways. Warm and cool color combinations can make a small yard appear larger, while combinations of warm colors will have the opposite effect.

Contrast or Unity

A single color group can be used throughout an area for unity. Colors that are directly across from each other on the color wheel can create a unique form of unity of complementary pairing. Harshly contrasting colors can be jarring, but planting a transitional color between the two can help bridge the gap and make it less so.

Neutrals

Whites, creams, and grays are the neutrals and can be used in various ways. They can create a softening effect for warm colors or be utilized exclusively as part of a monochromatic color scheme. Gardens of white and cream are often called moon gardens and designed for nighttime viewing as they appear ethereal by moonlight.

RCH Landscaping is a full service landscape company based in Boca Raton, Florida. We design, install, and maintain Commercial and Residential landscapes all around Boca Raton, Delray Beach and The Palm Beach areas. Our team of highly skilled landscape technicians have an undisputed track record of creating and maintaining beautiful commercial and residential landscapes all over South Florida.

Contact RCH Landscaping Today for a Free Estimate

561-779-9760

Read more
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