Gateway Green Home Design

Have you ever fallen victim to the ever popular yet sometimes costly practice of visiting a nursery or garden center, and falling in love with a plant without ever considering how much sun or shade it will get throughout various times of the year?  I thought so.

For anyone with a home facing east or west, it’s very important to consider the trajectory of the daily flight of the sun at different times throughout the year.  Why is that?  For the simple reason that the sun has a predictable tendency to make its daily path across the southerly sky during the winter, as opposed to a more overhead arc during the peak of summer.   How that affects the amount of sunlight your yard gets on each side of your home is something that everyone should be aware of before picking out and spending what could be a costly amount of money on trees, plants, and shrubs, only to see them wither from not enough light, or too much.

It’s not enough to only consider the growing zone you reside in for the purposes of .  Neither is it enough of an excuse to stock up at the local nursery because the spring planting season has arrived.  If you’ve lived in your home long enough, you’ve most likely become greatly accustomed to the amount of sunlight each area of your yard receives.  Well, have heart new homeowners; because keeping a few key things in mind will help keep you from making costly plant purchases as well.

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We have already covered how to create a magnificent floral view from your with a planter box, trellis, and vines.  Here is another very attractive and even simpler way of creating a visually enticing view from inside.

We have all seen or even have in our patios a decorative and very functional pergola patio cover.  Decorative for the numerous designs we can consider, and functional from the much needed shade they provide.  As we will also sometimes see, miniature sized pergolas are often constructed and mounted directly over one or several windows of a home or garage.

With that in mind, why not mount a mini-pergola over your to display hanging baskets on both sides?  With slim top slats spaced enough to provide sunlight, you can still receive filtered light through the top slanted portion of the window.  Note, you never want to mount hanging baskets over the top of the window for one reason.  Every time you water, the dirty runoff will cascade down over your window, keeping it from every truly being clean.

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Indeed, there may come a time when we will drive down the street of any given neighborhood and see mostly vinyl fencing or stucco walls surrounding most homes.  Until that time, homeowners with wood fencing can easily learn to rejuvenate and add years to the life of their own fence by staining, sealing, or painting it.

What ever path you choose to take in reviving the current lifeless state of your wood fence is entirely up to you, but should in fact take in to account a number of different contributing influences around your property.

Here is a 5-step process to help you decide:

-  What do you like?  No, really, what do you prefer?  Be sure to include your spouse for their opinion.  Significant, non-married others I would avoid consulting, since they may give bad advice and leave you to deal with the poorly chosen outcome alone.  Nonetheless, decide on whether you like a transparent sealed appearance which enables the grain of the wood to show through yet still protects the wood from the elements, a painted finish that will completely mask the grain and sometimes emphasize the existence of the fence, or a stained finish that is somewhere in between.  Staining your fence can be accomplished with either a solid stain for some transparency to have the grain show, or a solid stain that masks the grain yet still soaks in to protect it.  You may want to also ask a knowledgeable salesperson at the home improvement store what they know of the different brands of sealer, paint, and stain.

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It never fails.  You take a weekend stroll through your neighborhood, gazing right, and gazing left, and then you come across something that almost makes you stop in your tracks.  It is the over illuminated front yard that qualifies to light the way for an airplane in its landing pattern.  Here is how homeowners can limit their , yet still give it a nighttime impact.

When a homeowner decides to replace or add , they first have to make a choice of going with either the tried and true electrical varieties in low wattage or standard, or the more environmentally friendly solar powered selections.

Whatever the choice, before a homeowner even leaves the driveway to go shopping for lighting, they need to take a critical look at the yard they plan on lighting both during the day and at night.  We will cover the reason why a little later.  For now, let us first consider what our homeowner needs to account for prior to making the lighting purchase.

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