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How To Redesign Your Garden To Make It Safe For Your Children

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How To Redesign Your Garden To Make It Safe For Your Children

Having a garden is fantastic, especially when you have children; however, unfortunately many gardens provide a huge number of hazards to children. It is therefore really important to make sure, upon ever redesigning your garden, to keep a number of crucial points in mind, such as:

Checking your garden is escape proof

Accidents do happen and as a parent you will make mistakes. Unfortunately no matter how hard you try it is impossible to keep an eye on children all the time. It is incredibly important your children do not find a way out of the garden when your back is turned. Therefore when you are installing hedges, fencing or gates for the first time, you need to make sure you haven’t left any gaps, all fastenings are secure and that little fingers cannot unlock or untie anything.

Checking your plant types

Unfortunately, many of the prettiest plants people want in their gardens, such as roses, holly and pampas grass often come with sharp leaves and/or thorns. These are obviously dangerous to young children, who don’t know any better than not to touch. However, this is no reason to not put these in your garden. If these plants are essential to your new garden redesign, you just need to be a bit more considerate about where you are planting them.

You will also need to double check the toxicity of your new plants before planting, to make sure they are not poisonous if a child happens to eat them. Aim to keep all of these kinds of plants at a higher level, far away from children’s eyes, faces and fingers. Or you can always section off an area of your garden using handrails, thereby making the plants inaccessible to your children.

Checking your tools are always safely stored away

One of the most important things to remember, when redesigning a garden with kids around, is to ensure everything is always put back in its proper place. Even if you only put something, like a garden fork or a hammer, down for a second in order to go and get a drink, it can be extremely dangerous. A child might easily pick something like this up off the floor and cause damage, to themselves or even to someone else.

Try to avoid using any tools with power leads, when your children are about. Not only might the cords prove to be a tripping hazard for your children but you may also find tools start and stop for no apparent reason…Upon investigation you will probably find a mischievous toddler is at fault and they are playing an ‘innocent’ plug and unplug game, however, it just isn’t worth the risk of something going wrong.

Checking the safety of your water features

Without a doubt water features are one of the most popular aspects to include when redesigning a garden, ranging from large pools and ponds to simple bird bath fountains. However, whilst they can be beautiful, they are also very dangerous to children, for obvious reasons. Try to keep this in mind when installing your water features and include whatever safety measures you can, whether this include cordoning off the feature itself, covering with netting, or just settling for features too small in size to be a threat to your children.

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Laura writes for Seagull Ballustrades. When not writing, she can be often be found trying to keep her children from destroying her garden.






Starting A Career As A Professional Gardener

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A career in professional gardening is one that is very attractive to a lot of people. It offers the perks of being able to work outdoors, get fresh air and be surrounded by beautiful natural plant life. Therefore it suits those who like to keep active, do hands on tasks and be interactive with their work. It is something that you usually have to get into at a young age to turn into a proper career. A lot of gardening jobs in the horticultural sector start with apprenticeships (which are mostly given to younger individuals).

This article will talk about the career path of becoming a professional gardener and what traits/skills are required to succeed.

In the current climate jobs are hard to come by in most sectors. Therefore experience is an increasingly important factor when applying for jobs and even training courses. Experience usually has to be gained by volunteering and giving up your time. Luckily there are a lot of companies and organisations that are willing to take people on for free! Some good places to look are garden centres, park maintenance teams, private estates and local council volunteer schemes. Gaining this valuable experience will allow you to have an edge over competing candidates when applying for paid work.

When gaining work experience you likely won’t be given highly specialised tasks to complete. But what you will get is a taster for the industry and an understanding of the kind of work that you’ll be engaging in. It’s always good to test the waters before going into a career type job; as often it’s hard to turn round and change what industry you work in.

The best way to enter the gardening trade is to gain certain recognised qualifications. This is usually part of the apprenticeship process if you go down that route. Gaining industry accredited horticulture qualifications opens you up to a wide range of opportunities and jobs. Being a qualified gardener allows you to work on projects such as private estates, botanical gardens, display gardens and other prestigious locations.

One thing to note about the gardening trade though, is that it is a year round job; which means working in all weather conditions. You need to be able to hand the cold winter grounds and surrounding environment, as well as the warmer summer temperatures. Although a gardener’s work is most visible during the summer months, the work continues all year round. Work needs to be put in to make sure that everything is set up right for spring. During winter there is a lot of ground treatment work, fertilisation, seed sowing and top dressing. This is done so that when things start growing again they are already set up to go.

Overall being a professional gardener can be a very rewarding job. It is hands on, healthy, in a great environment and you can actively see the fruits of your labour. If you’re an outdoor type who likes hands on work this would be a very enjoyable and satisfying career.

For more information on commercial gardening, groundcare and landscaping work have a look at the advice section on www.sgm-uk.com

This article was written by Peter McAllister, who works for SGM, a supplier to many commercial gardening contractors, companies and individuals.

6 Time Saving Tips For Gardening

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It’s officially that time of the year to start getting busy with planting and preparing your garden for harvest. If you haven’t already started growing your indoor buds, now is the perfect time to check your soil outside and see if the temperature is warm and dry enough to work with. Don’t have a lot of time to start a garden? Don’t sweat it! Here are 6 time saving tips for gardening that’ll get you up and running in no time at all.

Start with a plan

For anyone looking to save time and be efficient, planning ahead is always the best option when doing virtually anything. Specifically with gardening, having a thought out plan can save you time trying to decide where you want each plant to go while you’re working outside. For additional productivity, make a decision regarding what you plan on replacing the short-lived plants with, such as lettuce and spinach.

Keep tools close

Rather than running around when you finally find time to get outside to work on the garden looking for your tools, have a designated area close to the garden where you store them. A lot of gardeners lose time outside when they are disorganized, and this is something you can easily change. Whether you have a bucket full of your commonly used tools or you have a belt with all of them attached, use whatever method that will save you the most time.

Cut off weeds

One of the most annoying parts of preparing a garden for the spring is the process of getting rid of all of the dead plants from the previous year and any weeds that have grown since then. A time saving trick is to chop any low-growing weeds all at once as opposed to plucking each one individually. Use a sharp blade to slice beneath weeds and then turn them over to completely bury the leaves. As the leaves begin to rot, weeds can help to nourish the soil and act as a green manure.

Mulch it up

Spreading mulch is a no-brainer, but most importantly you need to make sure you spread it efficiently and evenly. Using the tined edge of a rake, you can pull and spread the mulch. Then by flipping the rake over, even out the mulch on the bed.

Water water water

Plants need water to grow, and without water, you will be wasting your time trying to grow yourself a garden. With that said, invest in a soaker hose rather than a traditional watering can so that you can water with ease. The great thing about these hoses is that the water can be left on for many hours, giving you the opportunity to work on something else.

Take small steps

No garden is going to grow overnight, and it’s important to keep that mind set as opposed to pushing a garden to grow faster. A huge mistake a lot of us make is that we get impatient with the process and rather than letting your garden take the time it needs, we over-water and spend too much time monitoring the process. Take a step back and let your garden grow and you’ll be pleased with the results by the time summer rolls around!

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Ann Michaels is a freelance writer and gardening advocate. She loves making her garden look as beautiful as possible, which is why she buys religious garden statues to improve the overall look. She loves offering tips and tricks to other gardening advocates and hopes her suggestions help!

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