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Now it is time to decide which plants to include in your garden. When choosing your plants pay attention to type of climate, amount of sunshine and space requirements for plant. Just because it looks cool or is a vegetable you just love doesn't mean plant will be happy in your garden!
Seed catalogs, online resources and gardening books are a big help when making your plant list. Decide whether you will be growing annuals, perennials, or both. Annuals (plants that live only one season) grow quickly and come in all sorts of colors and shapes. Perennials (plants that live for several years) bloom year-after-year. We enjoy watching them get bigger and better every year! We prefer a combination of both annuals and perennials.
Make your garden interesting by combining different colors, sizes and shapes of flowers and leaves. If you like, you can paste pictures from catalogs or magazines in your Garden Journal.
Will you be planting seeds or established, young plants from nursery? Starting from seed is least expensive. Many varieties can be planted outside as soon as weather is warm. Not all seeds are easy to start. You can purchase small, established plants which are difficult to start from seed.
We save seeds from all of plants in our Garden for Nature. When seeds have developed we collect them in a big old coffee tin. All seeds from all plants mix together. It's special garden mixture that we use next year for our garden.
You don't need to have a big yard or a yard at all to create a garden. Container gardens and window boxes are fun too. And they are a LOT less work!
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