Practise commercial gardening, maintain beauty in your garden
Use beautiful flower pots and metal fabrications to neatly display your flowers in the garden. Photo by Godfrey Lugaaju
Over the years, landscaping in Uganda has changed for the best, a lot of great gardening ideas have been imported and enormous creativity from gardeners and landscapers has been realised. One of the current inventions gardening has offered is commercial gardening. Commercial gardening is when a garden owner decides to plant fruits, vegetables, flowers, and citrus as cash crops but still maintain beauty in their compound.
Fruits
Boniface Wanja, a landscaper at Bonre Consultancy Palour, notes that fruit gardens are the most common type used. Fruits such as apples, oranges, passions, paw paws, mangoes, avocado are used to create beauty and earn money. “Trees that grow big and tall like avocados and mangoes can be planted a reasonable distance from the house to avoid damages from broken branches or dangerous creatures like snakes,” he adds.
Herbs
These are herbal gardens, they have been used to create beauty and for healthy purposes in a home. Some herbs such as rosemary, lavender have been greatly used. Most parents prefer these because they are not poisonous and can be planted anywhere in a home. To create beauty, they are planted in vessels or in and organised garden.
Vegetables
Wanja notes that besides fruits, you can decide to add vegetable plants such as eggplants, dodo (amaranthus), tomatoes and others, which he says are very good for the backyard garden.
Ritah Masika, a florist, says you can decide to give your backyard a functional use by putting a vegetable garden, this will give you the beauty, reduce the cost of buying vegetables in a home or even earn you money.
You can plant vegetables such as dodo, cabbages, tomatoes, egg plants, carrots, cucumbers, mushrooms. She adds that they have been mainly put in the backyards as well as planted in pots and vessels.
Flowers
Did you know that people plant flowers for sell but still maintain beauty in their gardens? Masika notes that these are placed in good containers and artfully placed in the garden as the owner awaits buyers.
Beauty
Beauty is the most important things while setting up a fruit garden, Masika a gardener notes that creativity is greatly needed to retain that goal.
A number of things can be used to get the garden stunning. Wanja says that to cool the garden, you can randomly add flowers to maintain that compound look rule, using lawn could help bring extra beauty and uniqueness.
Use containers
There are a number of beautifully colurerd and designed vessels that can be used to plant simple trees like apples, small mangoes, among others.
Alternatively, Wanja adds that one can have them planted directly in the soil and surround them with a few flowers most likely rose flowers.
Hanging plants
There are also pretty vessels for hanging plants that one can use to hang plants like tomatoes, egg plants, around the fence, and verandah at home.
Robert Kyagulanyi, a florist along Bombo road notes that herbs and simple fruits like passions can also be put in vessels.
Fence
He adds that for the fence not being left redundant, creeping plants like passions, or creeping beans can be incorporated there. This will leave the wall covered and looking good.
Uniqueness
The uniqueness about these gardens is that they will give you money, food and beauty at the same time. They are rare and portray elegancy in a home.
Light
Like any other garden, commercial gardens need light to look glamorous at night, the lights may not really be effective during day but they will bring out the beauty at night, the light can be brought in by use of bulbs. You can consider using bulbs of different colours.
“The light will help scare away animals at night for example snakes, lizards and the like that may eat the fruits or vegetables at night” Wanja says
The bulbs can be placed in the trees from down to up so that the all the whole tree is given light; you can also opt for lamps that you can place in the pathways.
Maintenance
Commercial gardening needs a lot of attention as they are prone to weeds and insects. You need to do regular supervision to make sure they are in order. The trees also shade a lot of leaves therefore sweeping is needed. Boniface Wanja, a landscaper, says you need to be conscious since fruits like passions bring in insects.
To get best results, you need to make sure your soil is good and if it is not, consider adding manure.
