How to Get Inspiring Backyard Garden Ideas

victoria garden design ideas

Nothing is more inspiring than some quality time with the family in the back yard. Even if you don’t have a back yard, Victoria BC is full of many fabulous public gardens to spend time in, alone or with friends. For instance, we’re blessed with the elegant Butchart Gardens, one of the best kept paradises in all of Western Canada, where nature meets the order of human creativity to build a heavenly splendor that’s prettiness is impossible to deny. To get inspiring ideas for our own backyard, all we need to do is visit such wonderful places. And while the Butchart Gardens required a purchased ticket to enter, there are also free gardens in town, like the magnificent Beacon Hill Park.

By visiting these places, we can see what professional landscapers have done to create a beautiful landscape specifically designed for a wide public audience. Unlike private gardens which are designed to satisfy the owners of the property, the managers of public gardens must keep everyone in mind, and this allows for a diverse display of different flowers, bushes and trees.

back yard garden
backyard garden design

Public gardens are great, and can supply many ideas to the curious mind. However, that doesn’t mean private gardens aren’t a good source for inspiration as well. You don’t have to trespass on private property to glean ideas from their gardens. Just by walking down some of the older streets in Victoria BC, where there are many splendid restored historical buildings with well-maintained gardens, in areas like Fernwood and Oak Bay for instance, we can see what others have done with their own creative garden ideas. Although we can’t always see their backyard gardens, we can still get inspired by their front yard garden displays.

Perhaps my favorite way to get inspiring backyard garden ideas is by calling landscaping Victoria BC companies and asking them what kind of cool things they recommend. It may be inconsiderate to waste a company’s time if we don’t intend to hire their services, but some landscapers would be happy to oblige if we ask them kindly. When I last spoke with my favorite landscaping company in the area, they recommend rockeries and water features, but these kind of garden ideas can be expensive to install. Some more affordable options, they said, might be some custom paving and terraced garden walls that are easy for any one to install if you buy paving stones from a masonry supplier.

Lastly, if ideas are really hard to come by, try meandering through a store like Canadian Tire and check out their seasonal and garden sections for garden ideas. Sometimes all it takes is some flower seeds and gnomes to make things interesting. Every year we can make our gardens a little different by picking up some things from the store. To get inspired doesn’t have to be complicated.

If you’re still looking for the perfect garden idea for your back yard, I hope our blog post can help, and we hope you come back soon.

Why Does My Kitchen Always Stink?

kitchen odor

If you found this article, you might be wondering why your own kitchen stinks let alone my kitchen. After all, why should you care if my kitchen stinks? Let me tell you that if I explain why my kitchen stinks then you might realize why your kitchen stinks as well.

Before we get started into my personal Canadian-Italian kitchen, I’ll list some common reasons why people find that their kitchen smells mad and has nasty odors.

5 Common Reasons Kitchens Can Stink

  1. There are dead animals behind the walls or in the subfloor (under the floorboards). Although this is not uniquely to kitchens and could be the cause of bad smells anywhere in the home.
  2. There is rotting food somewhere in the cupboards, drawers, fridge or even hiding under the fridge or dishwasher. So check all hiding spots for rotting food, especially if you have kids or pets. I found one time my cat had hid a piece of meat behind the microwave and it took a week to find it.
  3. There could be mold, mildew or fungus growing under the sink, on the ceiling, behind the fridge, and some molds are way stinkier than others. Follow your nose or hire a professional to find the mold if you suspect this might be the problem.
  4. Your spouse or roommate is very bad at cleaning up after themselves and leave crumbs and dirty dishes lying about. Over time, if there is bad air circulation, just the fact of being unclean can make smells linger in the kitchen. One spot I’d check right now is under the garbage bag in your garbage bin. If there are nasty things in there then it’s proof you need better cleaning habits in the kitchen.
  5. This reason only applies if you live in a townhouse or an apartment building, or if you have a condo, or multiple kitchens in your home. In my experience living in apartments, whenever my neighbor beside me, because our kitchens laid thinly wall to wall to each other, cooked something, I could smell it all throughout my apartment for several hours. But this was a very old building, and for you, depending on the design of the apartments, could have a neighbor below or above who doesn’t turn on their oven hood fan when they cook smelly meals. If this is the case, you can kindly ask them to please turn on their oven hood fans when they’re cooking. If they refuse and it’s causing you harm, you might even be able to take legal action.

But Why Does My (The Author’s) Kitchen Stink?

I didn’t fully mean this to be satirical when I thought of it but it might sound that way. The truth is, my kitchen stinks because I cook Italian food everyday and have really bad air circulation. If you came into my house right now you might crinkle up your nose and run away. Unless you like Italian food, of course…

Thanks for reading!