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23 August 2006 
 Groundwork
 "The landscape quick read"
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Greetings!

Spring is just around the corner. Buds are bursting, spring bulbs are flowering and there’s a buoyant mood in the air. Our team has been flat out communicating with the landscape industry, preparing new resource pages on the website and keeping on top of our rapid growth. To top it all off, I have committed to an Exhibition Garden at this year's Ellerslie International Flower Show in November. My garden will showcase some of the diverse range of pioneering products from New Zealand businesses featured on landscapedesign.co.nz.

 Budgeting, borrowing and setting goals from sorted
 Get sorted on money matters for your landscaping project

Sorted logo Landscaping can cost a whole lot of money, so we thought some resources from sorted.org.nz might help you to stay on top of your finances. sorted.org.nz is the online arm of the Retirement Commission.

While landscaping can improve the resale value of your property and give you a lot of pleasure, don't offset this by making poor financial decisions and spending beyond your means. This can affect not only you but the contractors, designers and suppliers of your project if you simply cannot pay for the work. It happens all the time. People get carried away with the romance of their project and lose sight of the money. Life is just too short to be stressed unnecessarily about MONEY. So if you are about to embark on a project and are on a limited budget, get sorted online.

Get sorted here 


 Landscapedesign.co.nz Exhibition Garden
 Ellerslie International Flower Show, 14-19th November 2006

Ellerslie logo Come to the Ellerslie Flower Show in November! I will be presenting a garden which will explore the coming of age of New Zealand outdoor living. The design will challenge preconceived ideas about the use of materials. In earlier issues I have expressed my passion for the ability of Kiwis to innovative, and I believe that a creative economy that fosters and protects New Zealanders' homegrown ideas and designs is essential for our country's progress. Accordingly, we will have a Kiwi Tub operating in the garden. Steve August, the Kiwi Tub's inventor, has just had several copper boiler units polished and he tells me they look amazing. So if you’re coming to the show, bring your rubber duckie!

 


 Spray-on lawns, Spray-on natives
 

hydroseeding It wasn't so long ago that we were fascinated with instant roll-out lawn, but in recent years hydroseeding has emerged as another effective way to create the perfect lawn. Hydroseeding works by spraying seed on to prepared topsoil. The seed mixture contains fertilizer, fiber and a tackifying agent. Once sprayed the mixture forms a crust that reduces dust and creates the perfect growing medium for rapid seed germination. As with all new lawns the sown area must be kept moist at all times. Some hydroseeding companies use this method to spray native seeds in erosion control and reforestation applications. Toi toi, native grasses, flax and hebes have all been successfully sown. The germination period is longer and local knowledge is required. If you have a large bare bank, then hydroseeding is certainly worth looking into.

Click here to find Hydroseeding companies in our directory 


 Landscapedesign.co.nz update
 We're going from strength to strength

Gold_logo_text More people are visiting the site than ever. Our traffic has grown 250% since January and continues to grow, with 95% of our visitors from New Zealand. The beauty is that our visitors are finding what they are looking for. The marketing department loves this sort of information and it really seems to blow their hair back. We've also been getting great feedback from advertisers who have made sales through the site. This makes us all feel really good and confirms that the site is providing a valuable service for people.

www.landscapedesign.co.nz 


 Community Forum
 Join our online community for free

forum The new forum we added last week has had some great traffic already. So if you have any questions, comments or just want to say hi please feel free to join in with the discussions. To join simply click on register at the top of the forum, and you will receive a confirmation email. Click on the confirmation link and you can join in. This is a totally free service and everyone is welcome, but watch out - it can be addictive!

There have been several discussions about contracts between client and professional. This type of discussion helps the landscapedesign.co.nz team learn what resources people need. Shortly we will have a generic downloadable contract for people to use.


To contribute to the forum, you'll first need to register as a member. This only takes a minute. It's just a security precaution so the forum doesn't get flooded with ads for weight loss pills, herbal remedies for you-know-what, and get-rich-quick schemes!

Click here to go to our community forum 


If you have a great story or something of interest we can feature on our site please email us to let us know. The feedback from advertisers and the NZ public is fantastic and we appreciate hearing your stories of being brought together by the website. That's what community is all about!

Kind regards from Tim Durrant & the Landscapedesign.co.nz Team

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