Posts made in September 2018

What Is a Cottage Garden?

Garden Landscaping in Sarasota

If you want a colorful, but strictly informal, garden style, a cottage garden may be just right for your landscape. It is the opposite of a structured, more formal type of garden yet it can be designed with all manner of plants. Whatever plantings you choose, keep in mind they are not planted in a straight line if you want to achieve the look of a cottage garden. Cottage gardens flowers may overlap each other or even flow together with no boundaries to keep them apart. More freewheeling than formal, cottage gardens can seem a bit wild, with vines crawling up posts, roses entwined over arbors, and undefined flower beds. A cottage garden can add charm to any style of home or property. Some of the more traditional cottage plants include:

  • Hollyhocks
  • Irises
  • Hydrangeas
  • Pinks
  • Delphiniums

While cottage gardens don’t look as if they’ve been designed, it does take the services of a team that excels at garden landscaping in Sarasota like the ones at Troy’s Tropics. Professional landscapers know how to ensure a cottage garden looks exuberant, free-flowering, and much less restrained than other garden designs. Quite simply, a cottage garden looks simple, charming, and appears to be a natural landscape design that is sure to enhance the appearance of any home.

 

Add Curb Appeal to a Home for Sale

Florida Landscape by Landscape Designer in Sarasota

First impressions matter a great deal particularly when it’s time to sell your home. Adding curb appeal to your home is essential to determining whether or not a potential buyer wants to come inside for a real showing. Because sellers now list their homes online, curb appeal must grab that favorable first impression.  Instead of driving by your home, a potential buyer scrolls through images of the outside of your property before he or she has even stepped inside. So, you risk the chance that buyers will never even drive by if they don’t like what they see online.

The fact is that most potential homebuyers want to tour the inside of a home if it looks inviting on the outside. Unless you are selling your home as a fixer-upper, you want to catch the eye of every homebuyer who see the pictures of your home. While it’s certainly wise to clean the gutters and power wash the exterior, you want to ensure the landscape adds the curb appeal you need to get the buyer to the next level of interest in your home. When you have replaced overgrown or unsightly bushes with colorful shrubs, added mulch, and planted brightly colored flowers, you stand a much better chance of getting your home’s selling price.

Contact Troy’s Tropics, a leading landscape designer in Sarasota, when you are thinking about selling your home and aren’t sure where to start on improving the curb appeal of your property.

 

Native Trees That Can Withstand Florida Storms

Landscaping by Native Plant Nursery in Sarasota

Not many trees are strong enough to sustain hurricane-force winds, but there are some trees that may last through the summer storms in Florida.  A recent study showed that the strongest trees to withstand storms are Florida natives. The natives held up best under high winds and were not as likely to break apart or fall. Also, they tended to be salt-tolerant, drought-tolerant and required little maintenance. The following native trees and palms had the least accounts of losing branches or falling over during the peak storm season in Florida:

  • Live Oak: The live oak shade tree grows up to 60 feet high with a canopy of up to about 40 feet. It provides a lot of shade and grows at a medium rate.
  • Gumbo Limbo: This adaptable shade tree is known for its twisting branches and is also called “the tourist tree” because its peeling red bark resembles a sunburn. It is a fast grower that can reach a height up to 40 feet.
  • Geiger Tree: This small tree provides orange-red flowers to the landscape and blooms all year. It takes its name from a wreck salvager in Key West. It grows up to 25 feet at a slow-to-medium growth rate.
  • Sabal Palm: The sabal palm is the state tree of Florida, and it’s also called the cabbage palm. It grows up to 40 feet high at a slow rate. Mature
  • Silver Palm: This palm tree has silver fronds and produces fruit that attracts It grows up to 10 feet at a slow rate.

Find native trees at Troy’s Tropics, a leading native plant nursery in Sarasota