Beautiful gardens go a long way in enhancing the appearance of your back yard. This is a plus if you are looking to sell, since this increases your house value. A beautiful garden is lovely for relaxing; it does wonders to the soul and has healing properties according to research. However stressful your day was, some time away in the garden is bound to give you that feel-good boost that you so desperately need. It is definitely a worthwhile investment, but if you are new to it you might have no idea where to start. Here are some tips that should make your gardening experience a bit easier: 
Gardening tip # 1: Plan
As is the case with every other project, before starting your garden, you need to plan. You obviously must have a patch of land that you are eyeing as the location of your new garden. The next thing you need to do is plan out how exactly you want your garden to be. A beautiful garden that blocks the entrance to your house is not a very good idea. Get your family’s input. Maybe your kids usually play in that space and would find it terribly unfair to be prohibited from going there. Even worse, you might go ahead and begin your project only to find all your nursery seedlings trampled by the children as they pranced around playing as they always do. Make sure you have reached a compromise before you embark on your garden project. Another important plan you need to make is a financial plan. You will need to spend some money while creating your new garden, from buying seedlings to getting professional help if that is what you opt for. Make sure you make provisions for these expenses in your budget.
Gardening tip # 2: Theme
After you have decided with your family the location of your garden and have made allocations for the expenses, the next thing you need to do is to decide the theme of your garden and essentially the colors. All flowers are beautiful but some would look better in your garden than others. If you have a garden that will be a bit far from the house, then go for bold colors such as orange, red and yellow. Such colors have the effect of making the flowers appear closer than they actually are, bringing that beautiful color in your home. If your garden is small and the flowers need to be planted a bit close to the house, then choose colors in the range of blues and purples. These make the flowers appear further away than they actually are. Choose a theme for your garden at this point too, this will help you now the materials you need to get. Do you want mosaic on the walkways? Alternatively, do you want to form a bird paradise in your back yard? Will you be spending evenings in the garden and thus need beautiful lighting? All these need to be well thought out before you embark on the project. Flower and life sizes can be manipulated to achieve your desired look. Some few large leaves and flowers are striking and if used correctly can add a dash of boldness. Small flowers and leaves can then be used to bring harmony, but make sure not to overdo it with them because they can wind up looking like weeds.
Garden tip # 3: Do-it-yourself or professional
Most of the gardening work that needs to be done is do-it-yourself. If you are not afraid to grab a shovel and get your hands dirty then you can save yourself quite a bit of money that would have been spent on getting professional gardening work done. You should however consider hiring a few hours of a landscape artist’s time so that you can get tips on how to lay out your garden to make it truly magical. Some manual work might require professional help though. Work that requires the use of heavy machinery such as leveling a pesky hill using a bull-dozer or hewing down a diseased tree that is a hazard to your home is an example. Have this all thought out so that you can budget appropriately. The author, Mark Ben, is a home improvement blogger and shares home improvement tips through guest blogging. He suggests pv solar as an efficient way to produce green energy for homes.
