Inchin Bamboo Garden

Summer time is fast approaching and while many are planning barbecues for warm weather holidays, birthdays and outdoor picnics, many homeowners are looking for new ways to add character and style to their outdoor living environments. While it could be simple to reorganize your outdoor furnishings, or change the colors on your cushions and outdoor pillows, why not up the ante and include a bamboo tiki bar into the mix?

These tiki bars are ideal for outdoor entertaining because it acts as a main location for the food and drinks you serve, outdoor décor and a focal point while engaging your party guest. Many people love the look of this type of bar because it also creates an authentic look to a tropically themed party.

Here are few reasons that bamboo tiki bars are a great addition to your backyard or outdoor living space:

1.    Bamboo is an environmentally sustainable product that you’ll feel good about purchasing. It isn’t just the hippies and tree huggers that are looking out for the well-being of our planet. Americans all over the nation are looking for new ways to shop smarter and use products that use a smaller carbon footprint. Bamboo is considered a sustainable resource because it’s the fastest growing plant ever known, sometimes reaching more than 3 feet per day.

2.    The upkeep and maintenance of bamboo is incredibly easy. To keep the original color of your outdoor bar, you simply have to wash it down with soap and water. If …

Add Some Sparkle to Your Backyard With a Bamboo Tiki Bar Read More

The key to enjoying your landscaping all year-round isn’t sexy, exciting nor secretive-it’s planning and design structure. To succeed in having a four-season landscape design, we will need to understand design, color, and form-and how the techniques apply to create your home landscape. How Design, Color, and Form relate to our desired goal of enjoying your gardens year-round will rely on staggering our flowers, shrubs, and trees so we can take advantage of their natural life cycle. The goal is to “stagger” our plants so we will have things flowering in the Spring, Summer and as Fall comes around, we will have colorful leaf changes and moving into Winter, we can rely on the plants shape or Form to create something beautiful to look at while everything has either died or moved into its dormant life stage.

Starting with Spring, we can break the season down into two sections, plants that flower in early and late Spring. That way once your early Spring flowers and blooms start to fall away, your late Spring plants will begin their ascent into full bloom. Because of this staggered approach, we’re going to need to spread these plants throughout the entire design because we don’t want one section to pop off while the rest of your gardens lie dormant. If we don’t look at the bigger picture, we might get lucky and have things look nice naturally, but with proper foresight, we can take advantage of the different life-cycles to enjoy the flowers for …

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Growing herbs, especially basil, in your square foot garden is an excellent way to have a kitchen garden right outside your back door. Herbs mixed with fresh vegetables like peppers, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, leeks, and beets is easy to do with Mel Bartholomew’s method of square foot gardening.

If you haven’t picked-up a copy of Mel’s book entitled All New Square Foot Gardening, you really shouldn’t delay. In it, you will find a wealth of information about growing basil. Along with learning to grow basil, you will find helpful information on growing other herbs like cilantro, mint, and oregano. There are many varieties to choose from.

Basil, particularly ‘Sweet Genovese’, is the best for Italian pesto. But, be sure and experiment with basil flavors like cinnamon, licorice, and lemon which are also good in many dishes. Six plants of “Sweet Genovese’ will yield enough leaves to make pesto all summer long without you being overwhelmed. Of course, it’s easy to freeze any variety of this wonderful herb if the need arises.

Another variety to try, especially if you are fond of Asian cuisine, is ‘Siam Queen’. A spicy Thai basil, with an intense flavor and fragrance all its own, makes it a great choice. Another great choice is ‘Holy Basil’ which was introduced to Europe in the sixteenth century as a culinary and medicinal herb. You will want to experiment and have fun growing all the different varieties of basil in your garden.

Many varieties of basil seeds are available …

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A little known reality of home décor is the fact that some items in your home contain toxic substances that can actually have a negative impact on the health of you and your family. Carpet, upholstery, and even window blinds are just a few of these items, so it’s important to know what you have in your home and whether there is any risk to your health. Fortunately, there are a wide range of environmentally friendly products that do not contain unnecessary chemicals, and non-toxic window blinds are one example. Aluminum blinds, honeycomb cellular shades, and bamboo shades are examples of non-toxic window blinds that are safe and have minimal impact on the indoor air quality of your home.

Of course, homeowners don’t always realize that they need to consider safety when purchasing new blinds, and oftentimes, their main concerns are style and affordability. Still, even non-toxic window blinds are constructed from a variety of materials making them an excellent choice regardless of your style preferences or budget. Let’s discuss some of the most popular varieties of non-toxic window blinds.

Aluminum Blinds

Aluminum window blinds are a hugely popular choice for homeowners because they are affordable, durable, and available in a range of colours and styles. Indeed, aluminum window blinds are the most common non-toxic window blind found in homes today. Because they are long lasting and lightweight, these flexible window coverings stand up well in any condition. They resist corrosion, they are easy to clean, and they provide excellent …

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Well, you’ve finally found the perfect set of wind chimes that you’ve been looking for. You have hung them in the perfect spot in your garden or on your patio and have been enjoying their beautiful sounds. But now you should have some tips on how to care for them.

For most people, spring cleaning is a yearly regimen as they get ready for summer, perhaps the favorite season of all for wind chimes. Windows are opened and fresh air is let in as the cleaning starts indoors. But we also have to remember that there is something important outdoors that needs our attention too. Our beautiful sound makers need to be cared for as well so they can continue to bring us those wonderful relaxing sounds, because even the best made ones will weather over time.

The manner in which you care for your wind chimes will depend on what kind you have. Here are some tips.

If you have bamboo wind chimes, these should be brought indoors if you have a harsh winter or during extreme weather conditions. Cleaning is simple and any build-up of mold or dirt can be easily be removed by wiping with a damp cloth. Once spring arrives, you may want to apply a coat of varnish for further protection. Even though most bamboo wind chimes are threaded on rot-proof nylon lines, it is a very good idea to check those lines from time to time because even these may wear through over time. …

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We all want to be environmentally responsible now and move toward an eco-friendly lifestyle and most of us are willing to compromise to do so. However, there are many areas of our lives where compromise between ecology, comfort and pleasure, just doesn’t work.

One of these areas is fashion. We are all aware of both ethical and environmental concerns in the products that we but yet, many of us know that it is very difficult to feel confident if we don’t feel great in our clothes.

Eco-friendly clothes have been around since the sixties and many of us are put off by the notion of tie-died hemp shirts and other hippyesque eco-friendly clothing.

However, eco-friendly fabrics have moved a long way from hemp and grass skirts. On of the most surprising new eco-friendly fabrics is made from one of the most unlikely of materials – bamboo.

Whilst incredibly woody and strong material (bamboo is widely used for scaffolding in the far-east) it is also extremely versatile and makes the ideal fabric.

Bamboo clothing is also incredibly comfortable and looks and feels just like cotton. However, while cotton is farmed and grows only in certain areas, it is a limited resource. Bamboo though, grows anywhere.

Bamboo, is in actuality a grass and is one of the fastest growing plants on the planet (it grows several inches a day) so is highly sustainable. Furthermore it has some remarkable qualities. It is thermosensitive meaning it can store heat in cold temperatures whilst allows …

Eco-Friendly Clothing – Can Fashion Be Eco-Friendly? Read More