Madison landscape design

Garden Photo Favorites

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One of the most rewarding part of gardening is enjoying plants in their flowering stages. But even the fresh emerging spring growth, developing buds and fall color can provide some beautiful scenes. By including a variety of plants in your garden with varying flowering times, you can enjoy color throughout the entire season. From flowering spring bulbs and ephemerals to mid-summer cone flower to fall aster, there can always be something exciting happening in your garden. Here’s some of our favorite plant photos from this past season at our garden:

Madison landscape photo

Coneflower

 

Sustainable gardening

Wild Geranium

Madison rain harvesting

Rain Garden

flowering groundcover

Waterperry Blue Veronica

Yellow Coneflower

Little Henry Rudbeckia

Redbud tree

Eastern Redbud

Vegetable garden

Garden Sprouts

Madison planting design

Summer Beauty Allium

Planting spring bulbs

Spring allium bulbs

Vegetable garden

Mexican Sunflower

Growing hops

Hops

Madison garden

Mini Garden

Miniature Gardening & Tiny Landcapes

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How to make a mini garden for less than $10:

Who doesn’t love a miniature garden? At Sprout Landscape & Garden, we’re working on a series of mini landscapes for our own yard, including this replica of our blue stone patio with lime green adirondack chairs!

DSC_0483

Stay tuned for more pictures. We’ll be working on a miniature chicken coop and mini retaining walls.DSC_0479

This mini garden is a large garden pot filled with soil. You could fill the bottom with rocks or foam and just top off with potting soil. Then we added some moss, some dried fern fronds and some blue stone gravel from our existing patio. We found some sharp flat rocks and made a little “flagstone” border.

We bought the adirondack chairs on Amazon and painted them lime green to match our real chairs. These were actually meant to be used as a cake topper!

Then we found some plain old twigs to start making a fence.

This whole garden (not including a pot, which we already had) cost less than $10 to make!

Mini gardening is fun for the whole family! It’s a great way to introduce children to gardening.

 

Sprout landscape Madison landscape companies

Sprout Landscape & Garden Celebrating 1st Year in Business!

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Sprout Landscape & Garden Madison, WIThis week, our 2nd season is officially under way!

First of all, we’d like to thank you all for your interest in Sprout Landscape & Garden. We appreciate your support and look forward to another season working with you and your gardens.

In our first year, we had the opportunity to meet many people passionate about gardening. We worked with many new and existing customers on a variety of projects and also met a lot of other great people in the local gardening community. We truly appreciate time spent with other members at Olbrich Botanical Gardens, the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society and the Madison Area Master Gardeners Association.

In 2015, we’re looking forward to continuing to help with your landscape needs, sharing new experiences, spreading new gardening knowledge, and maintaining our involvement in the community. Spring’s right around the corner, so let’s start planning!

An immeasurable amount of credit and thanks to my wife, Candy, who is the genius behind the Sprout Landscape & Garden brand. Her company, iCandy Graphics & Web Design, did an amazing job creating a site for our visitors to not only gain important information about our company, but provide a fun, stylish, and educational atmosphere to inspire gardening ideas.

Stay tuned for more blog posts with such topics as seasonal gardening tips, what’s in bloom, DIY projects, and back yard chicken and petscaping tips. If you have any topics you’d like to know more about, please submit ideas for future blog topics.

New to 2015:

Have an old paver patio that needs some reviving? Sprout is now offering hardscape restoration and sealing services. Hardscapes include features such as walkways, patios, retaining walls and driveways.

Benefits of sealing your new or restored brick paver patio, sidewalk or other hardscapes:

  • Maintain the appearance and integrity throughout the years.
  • Stabilize the sanded joints to prevent sand loss.
  • Inhibit moss and mildew growth.
  • Prevent ant hills and other insect activity.
  • Protects surface from winter salt and stains.
  • New products enable immediate applications.
  • Enhancing options include matte, semi-gloss and “wet-look” finishes.
  • Water-based products will not harm people, pets or plants.

Please explore our website for more information about our full line of landscape company services. Thank you again for your continued support. We look forward to working with you this upcoming season and beyond.

Happy Gardening and best of luck in 2015!

Sprout Landscape Owner Tim Phelps

 

 

 

 

Tim

Raising Baby Chicks

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Madison chicken coop

Chicks Keeping Warm Under Heat Light

Thinking about raising chickens in your back yard? If so, now is a great time to start planning for your new flock. A fun way to begin is by raising your own baby chicks. While incubating fertilized eggs is an option, many folks choose to purchase newly hatched chicks from a local farmer or farm supply store. You can even buy them online and have them shipped! And newly hatched chicks are cheap… often as low as $1.99 each!

Before you get your chicks, make sure to be prepared for their arrival. First, you’ll need a brooder. This is simply a sturdy pen (such as a large box or storage tub) that will house and protect the chicks. A heat lamp should be securely attached to the brooder to maintain proper temperatures. In the first week, chicks will need the temperature at about 90-100 degrees! For the floor, use pine shavings or a similar material to cushion and help absorb moisture. Food and fresh water should be kept in the brooder so the chicks can eat and drink at will. Finally, interact with them as much as possible to get them used to being around people.

You may decide you want to raise 4 hens (the maximum allowed in the city of Madison) or prefer to start with just a couple. Either way, consider purchasing a few more chicks than you plan on raising. A chick may not be fully healthy when it arrives at your home and may not be strong enough to survive. Also, even when purchasing chicks being sold as “female”, there may still be males in the bunch. Since roosters are not allowed in town, you would have to find a new home for any accidental males. Lastly, as the chicks develop, you’ll start to notice character differences. Some will be more aggressive or skittish, while others seem more friendly and calm. A flock that gets along can really make it a more enjoyable experience for you and your visitors.

After they hatch, the new chicks will need about 6 weeks of TLC until they are feathered out and ready for the outdoors. A common time to get baby chicks is early-mid March. After those 6 weeks, they’re ready to head outside to the coop, just in time for spring!

Residential Landscape Design

Madison Parade of Homes 2014

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Do It Yourself Landscape Plan for Homeowners

We are so excited for the opportunity to have created the landscape design for one of the 2014 Madison Parade of Homes entries! This gorgeous new home is located in Bristol Gardens in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. The home was built by Farnsworth Builders.

  • Work on the Parade of Homes begins in winter
  • Making progress in building Madison Parade of Homes 2014 Landscaping
  • Tim of Sprout Landscape & Garden helping move a tree
  • Building the walkway
  • Interesting walkway and garden bed with stones instead of mulch
  • Residential Landscape Design
  • The Madison Parade of Homes house is finished
  • Madison Parade of Homes 2014
  • Sprout Landscape & Gardens showcasing the 2014 Madison Parade of Homes
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DIY landscape plansSprout Landscape & Garden created a do-it-yourself (DIY) landscaping plan for the homeowners who were excited to put some sweat equity into their new home. But there were some things the homeowners needed assistance on, so Sprout provided guidance and additional manpower as needed. At Sprout, we’re here to help, and we can provide as much or as little help as needed!

The focus of this do-it-yourself design was low maintenance plantings and beds. The choice of plants and spacing will allow for maximum future growth and reduce the amount of pruning and maintenance in the future. The beds were lined with weed barrier fabric and covered in a native washed stone for low maintenance.
But keep in mind, there is no such thing as “no-maintenance landscaping!” Every landscape takes some care.

If you have a yard, you will have to give it some care. But knowing the right plants and building materials can drastically reduce the amount of time you spend pruning, weeding, watering and managing your landscape. And of course planting the right plants in the appropriate places will reduce maintenance and increase the likelihood of survival, saving you money and time in the long run.

The other consideration with the plant selection in this Parade of Homes design was to make sure they are wind resistant. In new developments, wind can be a problem. We chose trees such as bur oak and greenspirelinden for their hardy nature. They will withstand much more extreme wind conditions than, for example, a soft wood maple.

Another important feature in this design is that the homeowners wanted plants that would be blooming all season and have a variety of fall colors. For this, we choice trees such as serviceberry for its characteristics. The serviceberry has lovely white flowers in the spring, attractive fruits that birds love to eat, and beautiful fall tones of orange, yellow and red.

See below for the a close-up of what you can expect for a do it yourself landscape design and please contact us today if you are interested in learning more!

diy landscape ideas

 

 

 

Rabbit Damage In The Landscape

Winter Rabbit Damage

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Nothing can be more frustrating than winter damage on plants caused by wildlife. Rabbits, in particular, can cause major damage in the winter, especially to thinner, more tender shrubs. More established plants, such as this Bridal Wreath Spirea and Eastern Redbud, will be able to recover from the winter grazing and naturally heal over their wounds.

Tree Damage from Rabbits

Eastern Redbud

Rabbit Shrub Damage

Bridal Wreath Spirea

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This winter has resulted in a higher amount of rabbit damage than normal. The weather was colder and produced more snow than typical winters, where rabbits and other wildlife had a more difficult time finding food. Because of their desperation, you may see damage to shrubs or other plants you’ve never noticed before. This spring, keep an eye on plants that experienced rabbit damage. You may be surprised to find that many will naturally recover, possibly even thrive from a “natural pruning”, while others may be beyond reasonable repair.

Winter Plant Damage

Ping Pong Buttonbush

When assessing rabbit damage, consider selective pruning as an alternative. Seen on the photo to the left, this young Buttonbush had almost all its stems bit off, leaving only one older stem. For a more attractive, healthy plant, prune the nubs left by the rabbits by pruning the stem down to the next bud, remove odd looking stems (such as the one older stem), then allow spring growth to emerge. Soon, this shrub will pick up where it left off, being a step behind in growth, but still in tact. Flowering may not be present this coming season, because of the extent of damage.

Once the leaves fall next Autumn, plan to protect the plants you discovered can be a favorite of the neighborhood rabbits from future winter damage. Wrapping plants with fine, black netting (also called deer netting-see photo below) is a great way to keep the plant protected from critters, while still allowing the plant to breath and receive sunlight. Make sure and secure the netting around the bottom of the plant to protect the main stem and keep the netting from becoming compromised.

Prevent Rabbit Damage In Your Landscape

Black Netting