There is no doubt that choosing to do your own landscaping is the best way to go for many people. Not only do you save a lot of money by not hiring professionals to do the work, you also will get to enjoy a lot of time outside. Landscaping is good exercise and a great way to spend an afternoon.

There are several other tools that every landscaper needs, most of them relatively low tech in comparison to those above. A variety of shovels, rakes, and pruning instruments are all essential, as are a good pair of gloves. All of these tools will be dependent on what you have planted in your landscaping, and more complicated designs may even require some basic knowledge of electricity, carpentry, and hydroponics.

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This blog is on cheap landscaping ideas. One of the main hassles of a garden is not planting, but weeding. Weeds grow with remarkable speed and can quickly overtake a garden. Using a poison or herbicide like roundup is not recommended as you might kill your plants. I know that the manufacture’s claim the product breaks down in the soil very quickly but I find with my lawn edges after a second dose of roundup no grass is growing there six months later.
In moving into a new rental property I had a large front garden with a nice quick curb concrete border to highlight the beautiful weeds. So I began to weed, got sick of it and left it for a month. Big mistake, there were now more weeds than ever. I was going to have to have mulch it or spend everyday in the garden. With the landlord not interested in paying for it it was going to have to come out of my own pocket. Now I don’t mine paying for gardening supplies, plants, etc when its my own place, but I’m certainly not keen on giving my landlord a free ride.
So I needed a cheap mulching option, that would look good, work, but not cost too much.
I chose three basic supplies, newspaper -the local rags free and it doesn’t take long to build up a stock pile of papers, sugar cane mulch – its comes in a big bags and is cheap, and finally a few bags of bark – not so cheap, but as you will see its used to give color not as a mulch so only a little bit is required.
Step One:-
Prepare the garden, yes this means a huge effort and weed the whole garden by hand. Rake over the soil so its nice and smooth and then apply the newspaper. The thicker the better.
Min. six sheets thick. Spread it out and then with a hose wet it all down so it soaked. The now heavy paper won’t blow around in the wind and will mold better to the grounds surface.

I have found this to be a very effective mulch. A year later and few weeds can get through. Nut-grass was the only successful one and I pulled those out by hand and even the nut-grass gave up the fight. The beautiful browns and golden color unfortunately fade under the harsh sun, but by that time you should have plenty of flower to make up for it. Best of all – NO WEEDING, yes.

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