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Backyard Bliss
Six ideas to make your backyard a personal oasis this summer
Succulents
They are all over Instagram and deservedly so because they are gorgeous greens and require little maintenance. Did you know succulents store sap/juice in their leaves? The best part is if you have a pot of them on your patio table you can bring them indoors for the winter and keep the green growing.
Look for perfectly balanced baskets/pots with a variety of shapes and shades of green or create your own from the wide variety available at the Fulton’s Home Hardware greenhouse.
Herb gardens
Think of this as your spice rack in the dirt! Nothing is better than stepping outside with your scissors to snip off fresh rosemary, thyme, parsley, cilantro and basil to enhance your dinner prep. You can buy larger baskets fully loaded (and ready to snip) or start your own from smaller seedlings. (In our short growing season, however, planting seeds was something to do back in April.)
Traeger grills
Smoke it if you’ve got it! Wood pellet smokers are the new BBQ. In fact so many people (including the Home Hardware staff – just ask Tom, Colleen, Beth, Josh and Deb) say once you’ve started smoking your meat you never go back. Home Hardware has everything to get you started with this cooking phenomenon, from pellets to rubs, spices, injectors, grill accessories and smokers from $699 to $2,999. The best-kept secret about grilling on a smoker? Your meat never burns!
Composite decks
Forget the hassle of sanding and staining and then repeating the process every few years. Today’s composite decking is so good looking and durable the initial cost is more than recovered in years of maintenance-free enjoyment. The range of colours is even better now and installation is easy enough for a backyard handyman. Home Hardware can supply every line of composite– ask for assistance with your deck design; they are always happy to help.
Plants with purpose
If it attracts bees, people are asking for it, says Colleen Fulton, and she recommends the following flowers for bee-utiful gardens: violets, sunflowers, echinacea and black-eyed Susans.
And now for something completely different
That’s exactly what a lot of gardeners are looking for this year – and the garden centre crew is happy to oblige, sourcing fibre-optic grasses and other interesting shapes, shades and varieties of flowers, grasses and shrubs. Customer requests are kept on file and Home Hardware will order in whenever they can.
