Here are some ways that you can make your garden look beautiful again, on the cheap side. These are great ideas especially if your putting your home up for sale.
This is an easy way to update your containers. Just add craft rope with some construction glue around 1/3 or 1/2 from the bottom.
Luke Miller
Grow Self-Seeding Flowers






A gravel path adds so much interest to your garden, and a place to walk through your landscape.
You can add a garden arbor and then cover it with climbing plants for an attractive addition to your garden.
This next one I have mentioned before. It deserves another showing.
Simply start your seed in a salad bar container like the one above. Thoroughly clean the container, punch a few holes in the top. Then fill the bottom with potting soil and plant your seeds. Close the lid and place the container in a sunny spot. It’s like a mini greenhouse, a
lowing the sun to reach the plants while holding in moisture.
You can use the plastic containers from blueberries, raspberries, etc for spreading your grass seed on your lawn.
Building a fire pit is such an update to your landscape.
If you’re stuck with a perfectly flat yard, making a mounded “island” of earth is a great place to isolate and display plantings, yard ornaments, boulders or other eye-catching features. A yard with contours looks more natural than a flat yard. Add lots of soil to make the mound. Finish off with a few inches of landscape bark.
Build yourself a small patio. It provides such a beautiful space in your landscape. I laid these patio pavers above over a weekend. If you would like to learn how to lay a pavers patio, let me know.
Some easy flowers that grow and self-seeding annual plants :
S. Mahanantakul/Shutterstock
Cleome is one of the many self-seeding annual plants that come back year after year without any effort on your part. It grows 4′ tall or better and have large pink, purple, and white flowers. Because of it’s size, makes it a great back of border plant in your flowerbed.
Pic from Shutterstock
Celosia is another rampant self-seeder that makes itself at home in your garden year after year. If so, consider yourself lucky, because the vividly colored blooms on this plant are a pure delight. They feature a variety of colors—from burgundy, red, magenta and pink to cream, orange and yellow. Celosia offers different flower shapes, too. There are plumes, crests and spikes. No wonder this annual is loved by so many gardeners. There’s a size to fit any garden, from 6-inch dwarfs to 3-foot-tall specimens.
You can easily make a raised garden bed like this:
I hope you enjoyed this post, and I hope so much it inspired you to create a beautiful space in your garden.
Love all your suggestions! Great ideas!
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Thank you so much! Hope I inspired you!
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I have place flowers from the dollar store to put in a small doggie cemetary. I sprayed this on them so the sun wouldn’t fade them. its by Krylon.
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Wonderful ideas and some of them are so easy. 🙂 Thanks, Kelley.
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Don’t you just love the easy ones!
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Beautiful ideas!Great flower recommendations.
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Aren’t they gorgeous! Can you grow peonies where you are?
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Yes. I love Peonies and I have a few. They make me happy and they smell amazing!
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Your garden sounds glorious Robin!
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Thank you 🙂
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😘
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love that tip for grass seed spreading
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Isn’t that a great idea!
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That mini greenhouse is genius 🙂
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There is so much you can do, even with a smaller yard.
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Thanks for all the gardening tips! You really have a beautiful backyard!:)
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You are so welcome for the tips, but only one pic is from my yard 😉
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This post makes me want to get busy in my own garden. It needs some updates for sure. Great post, thank you.
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Self seeding annuals can be nice in gardens that are adjacent to wildlands, as long as they annuals are not the sort that will naturalize and become invasive in the wild. We do not have many gardens like that in town, but in suburban and rural areas, there are areas where the landscaped area transitions into the wildlands beyond. Growing the self seeding cosmos within the garden is nice, even if they must be removed when replaced with other annuals, but it is even better if they can self sow and grow just outside of the same area. Hopefully, they will not go too far without water.
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Thank you Tony for your great info! Cosmos are so beautiful!
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Great info? Some might find cosmos to be a weed. I tossed some seed out years ago around the vegetable garden. It was not my idea. They came in one of those Big Box store wildflower mixes, although none of the seed are of native wildflowers. They were outside the fence, but close enough to get water. They were rad! They do not venture into the forest here because summers are too dry. They came back for years, and only wore themselves out as the outer areas got too shady for them. The bright pink was visible from the road above. When I lived in town, alyssum did the same, and filled in nicely where nothing else was growing. They grew in bare patches among the agapanthus, and I just let them go. I am not too good with wildflowers in a refined landscape, so just tried to pretend they weren’t there.
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Where do you live again Tony? I remember my first trip to Oregon. I was mesmerized by all the flowers. I remember seeing a gorgeous flower in my friends yard and asking what the name was. She said it was a weed! I was floored! It was gorgeous!
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Oregon has quite a bit of that. Digitalis (foxglove grows wild on the coast. I still dig it, but those in Oregon do not.
I am in the Santa Cruz Mountains just above Los Gatos in the Santa Clara Valley (near San Jose).
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Oh, that’s right, I’m sorry I forgot. You have so many more choices of gardening than I. The flowers almost looked like primrose. It would take so much effort to grow ‘weeds’ like that here in the So. Ca desert. I was just so amazed they called it weeds!
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No need to be sorry. I happen to enjoy living here. However, the desert fan palm, which happens to be my all time favorite palm, does not do well here at all. I did years ago, before almost all of the area got landscaped and irrigated. They do not like the moisture through the summer, particularly without the warmth. We can not grow Joshua trees either. There are many things in the deserts that can not grow here.
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Oh, but you have so many beautiful gardens. I’m jealous!
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Yes, but we lack the desert. That is part of California that I really miss. There is nothing like it here, or anywhere near here.
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I have been here most of my life. I am in need of a change….more greenery and seasons…I miss seasons.
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Is there not much of a winter there? Some of the coldest weather I ever experienced was in part of the high desert. I have not been to the low desert in winter.
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Surprisingly we’ve had more rain this year. A couple of times now it has been cold and has rained for a couple of days. That’s the coldest it gets here. I would love to experience the beauty of Fall with the leaves turning colors. I also would love some snow…just for a week though. haha too much shoveling walkways, cars, etc. I do love the lower desert though. The weather is terribly hot in the summer, but the rest of the year is so worth it! It’s only a 1 1/2 hrs away from the beaches, In the winter, 45 minutes to the snow, or run up to Tram in minutes.
Are you re thinking asking me about the winter here…haaha thank you Tony!
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No. I do find it interesting because I am not familiar with that part of California. I went to Palm Springs only once, and it was in the middle of hot summer weather. I hear so many bad comments about all sorts of climates, but I have not yet found one that I totally dislike.
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There is no ‘perfect place’…..if there was, everyone would be there…then it wouldn’t be perfect! Home is where the Heart is. You came at the worst time of the year, you need to come in the fall or spring, even the winter is beautiful, especially when raining. We sure appreciate the rain.
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All so pretty!
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thank you honey!
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My pleasure, darling!
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Hi Kelly, thank you for these lovely suggestions. It’s been a while, how are you?
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Well helloo Arlene! I’m doing fine honey, how are you doing? It’s been so hot here…122 degrees. The sun hits your skin and it burns, have to do my outside stuff early in the morning. I’m looking forward to the end of the virus and we can all go on with our normal lives. What do you do to pass the time?
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