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No matter where you live, you can select easy care plants for your garden. Even if you think you don't have what it takes to grow a beautiful garden, you'll be surprised how easy care plants thrive with very little attention. In fact, once established, there are selections which almost ensure your success.

In order to qualify as an "easy care" plant, the plant must be one that grows well in the environment you are able to easily offer. This means that a garden which will be in deep shade must utilize only shade-loving plants while plantings in direct sunlight must be able to withstand the intense sunshine and associated heat. Of course, most gardens offer areas of sun, partial shade, and possible some deeper shade, allowing you to choose from a wide spectrum of plants; however, even if this is not the case in your garden, you can still have a great garden that will be the envy of your friends and neighbors. You can avoid the time, effort and expense associated with frequent supplemental watering, by selecting plants which thrive in the local environment rather than specimens which demand only conditions you must artificially provide.

To make your easy care garden be truly impressive, you'll want to determine what areas of the garden will have the most impact and which will have the least impact. The high impact areas are those which are visible from the street, in landscape areas closest to outdoor seating areas and those areas viewed from your home's windows. Your garden may have other high impact areas, but using the guideline of "what is seen most frequently", you can easily identify which areas should be highlighted. The remaining garden area can be considered lower impact.

Let's look at some easy care plants which fit great in each of the high impact areas.

Street-Visible Areas

For street-visible areas, choose plants which create a defined border or specimens placed in groupings. Pampas grass offers feathery pale plumes towering over tall groups of thin, hardy leaves is impressive yet very easy care. Colorful, hardy crotons are foliage plants used to create shrubs and require almost no pruning; they become even more colorful when exposed to full sun. Well-shaped, low-growing evergreen shrubs make great plantings for bordering the street, driveway, porch, front steps, or under front windows. Add impact to trees by planting shade-loving groundcover around the base. Ivy, wild ginger, creeping buttercup or bunchberry, as well as ferns work well for this purpose and help keep weeds from becoming established under your trees; you'll also rarely have to edge around the tree trunk once these plants are established.

Outdoor Seating Areas

You'll want to enjoy your garden from your patio, deck, back porch or other areas where friends and family gather to enjoy the outdoors. Here, you may want to focus on adding color and flowers when choosing easy care plants for your garden. Visible fences can become high impact beauties when flowering climbing vines such as clematis or mandeville are added. Cypress vine can be planted along fences and you'll have plenty of hummingbirds come to visit and dine. If you do not like the idea of climbing vines, then consider creating a border of Ajuna "Caitlin's Giant" with its lush burgundy leaves and eight inch tall blue flower spikes.

Around the outdoor seating, flowering shrubs prove to be easy care choices yet offer color and focus. Spanish bluebells love shade while freesias love sunlight. Crotons provide colorful impact anywhere full sun is available. When shopping for plants for high impact areas, be sure to read the instruction spike inserts in the pot or ask the expert at your garden center for the exact requirements for that species.

Petunias make lovely blooming plants that area truly easy care and offer lots of color. "Supertunia Vista Bubblegum", a heat-hardy yet cold-tolerant hybrid pink variety, works great in containers or ground plantings, growing to heights of 20 inches and creating an easy care choice which requires no deadheading or pruning.

Hydrangeas are great choices for high impact areas viewed from windows. Available in periwinkle blue or pink, the large bunches of small blooms area truly impressive. With only a single fall pruning and spring fertilization, these shrubs will thrive in almost any condition. You can purchase varieties which grow to large heights or dwarf varieties which remain les than three feet tall.

Geraniums, marigolds, zinnias, four o'clocks, touch-me-nots, bachelor buttons, gerber daisies, and an endless variety of other beautiful flowering plants for garden areas near your outdoor family spots provide lots of variety. Hanging baskets of ivy, asparagus fern, and succulents also provide focus for high impact spots near seating.

Window-Viewed Areas: Garden areas which can be seen from windows which are located in areas that are frequently used, such as the living room, family room, kitchen, or dining area, also need to be high impact yet easy care. Choose from the easy care flowers and flowering shrubs for these areas. The taller flowering shrubs can be placed toward the back of these garden areas with shorter flowers planted in front. Then you can enjoy the easy care plants for your garden from indoors as well as outdoor.

 

Ferns are such lush, beautiful plants but many people consider them difficult to grow. Often, the case is that they provide the fern improper lighting conditions, causing the fern to stress and eventually die.

There is at least one fern that will thrive in just about every light condition possible except complete darkness. The key to having happy ferns is to know what each species needs to thrive and providing those conditions in your home or garden.

Landscape Ferns

If you need a fern-like plant for bright, direct sunlight, the asparagus fern is perfect. This plant is really not a true fern but a member of the lily family. It grows well all year long in southern climates. These specimens make great landscape plants and look dramatic spilling over a rock feature or planter box.

In the average home, low to medium light is the norm. Holly ferns will thrive in these conditions. The glamorous birds nest fern is perfect for low to bright light conditions where no direct sunlight contacts the fern. If necessary, add a thin curtain to cut light in harsh lighting situations.

All ferns require good drainage. If the soil is not well-drained, the fern can not thrive. Sandy shoals or humus-rich soil is preferred by almost every species of fern. To place ferns in your landscape, choose elevated beds with well amended soil to provide drainage and aeration. Avoid dense, clay soil unless it is amended extensively to achieve the level of drainage and aeration required. But you must still keep light conditions in mind. Indirect light will help your ferns produce healthy fronds, which are the leaf-like structures of ferns. Direct, harsh, afternoon sun is stressful for most ferns.

Fun Things About Ferns

One of the fun things about [ferns] is that they are so easy to divide. Potted ferns should be removed from their posts when root bound and divided into two specimens, each going into fresh soil in separate pots. Outdoor a xhref=“http://www.technorati.com/tag/ferns” rel=“tag”>ferns can be divided by cutting off some well-established runners or digging a clump of fern from a well-established specimen and transplanting it.

Once you find just the right lighting situation for your fern and have a thriving specimen, do not attempt to relocate it. All too often ferns kept indoors are rearranged into different exposures. For example, if your fern is doing great in a northern exposed window, don’t move it over to an eastern exposure. Work around the plant’s needs and allow it to live where it thrives.

Outdoor Potted Ferns

Of course, if you keep potted ferns outdoors and live in a climate where winters are harsh, you simply must move your potted ferns indoors to allow them to survive the winter. The key to making this transition from outdoors to indoors is to place the plant in lighting conditions as much like those it enjoyed outdoors as possible. When spring arrives, return the plants to the outdoors after the last possibility of frost. If the plant has been in lower light conditions than it experiences outdoors, you can move it slowly, allowing it to adjust to the bright light without stressing too severely.

Adding daylilies to your garden can add color and variety to your garden. You do not have to be an expert gardener to create a beautiful perennial garden of daylilies. These beautiful bloomers are great to planting on slopes, around the foundation of a building, along a driveway or pathway, or just about anywhere. These hardy plants require very little to thrive and bloom again year after year.

Daylilies, in fact, will thrive in most conditions. Because they multiple and spread, daylilies make a perfect choice for erosion-prevention or as coverage for an entire area in a large landscape. Daylilies are among the lowest-maintenance choices for a garden, yet the wide selection of colorful blossoms can fit into any color scheme.

Daylilies can be planted from spring until late into August. They are resistant to drought and disease and thrive even in full shade. Few garden pests bother a daylilies and almost any soil will make a happy home for these tough garden plants. You may find these are the perfect perennial for you!

Planting DayLilies

You may purchase daylilies in pots or as bulb stock. When you plant your daylilies , you must keep in mind that they will multiply and should be not closer than two feet apart to allow plenty of room for yearly additions.

If you purchase daylilies in pots, you should plant them using your normal routine for transplanting to your garden. Simply, prepare the soil by breaking the soil, amend with organic matter, aerate, and transfer the plants into the garden.

If you purchase bulbs with roots, a common method of starting a daylily garden, and you plan to plant them right away, give them a good soak in tepid water. One hour or so is plenty of soaking time. You can add liquid fertilizer to the water if you choose but only a tiny amount. The treatment of soaking helps the bulb recover from having been dug up, packed, shipped, and helps them settle into their new homes more easily.

Plant the bulbs within a few hours of soaking if possible. If your soil has not been prepared in advance, you can ‘heel the bulbs in’ by placing them on their sides in a shallow trench and covering the roots with a light coating of soil. It is wise to prepare the soil and get the bulbs into the ground as soon as possible; avoid leaving them heeled in for longer than a day or two.

Daylilies thrive when placed in full sunlight or partial shade. They can survive in deep shade but will not do nearly as well if they do not get sun at least part of each day.

Daylilies like soil that does not become waterlogged. Loam which has been amended with organic matter is the ideal home for these plants. Good drainage and steady, moderate moisture make them very happy as well.

For each bulb, dig a hole about 18 inches deep and two feet around. Amend the soil with compost, peat moss, dry manure, or other organic material, mixing well. Keep the soil level low enough that you will have room to plant the bulb at the correct height. Soak the soil with water. Then place the bulb, root end down, at a depth so that the crown (top) of the bulb will be level with the surrounding ground. Place the bulb in place and fill around the day-lily with additional amended soil which you removed from the hole initially. Press the soil around the plant or bulb firmly but not so hard that the soil is over-compacted.

The First Two Weeks

For the first two or three weeks, water your daylilies. As they begin to become established, watering should reduce to once per week. After you know for certain the [plants] are established, only water during dry periods.

A good coat of summer mulch can keep down weeds and help hold moisture in the soil. This boost, combined with water support during dry periods, will ensure healthy foliage and repeat flowering.

When daylilies form seed pods full of seeds, a great deal of energy is drained from the plant. To prevent this, simply remove any developing seed pods. Your day-lilies will multiply just fine without allowing seeds to develop because they multiple by creating new bulbs.