Once You Learn These Landscaping Fun Facts, You'll Know Them Forever

Hidden in your lawns, flowerbeds, and gardens are fun facts that you may not have known. With very little context or explanation, here are a few fun facts about landscaping you can't unlearn once you read.

1. About 21 million acres of grass in the United States are in back yards and front lawns. That’s a lot of grass to cut, better call in help if you were doing it all.

2. An hour of weeding burns about 300 calories (equivalent to biking at a steady pace) and an hour of pushing a lawnmower burns about 500 calories (equivalent to playing tennis).

3. The most viewed picture of a landscape in the world is…wait for it… “Bliss,” which is the default Windows® XP background image of a large field. Watch this awesome video of the photography talking about capturing this iconic image.

4. Trees are able to communicate and defend themselves against attacking insects. Scientists have found that trees can flood their leaves with chemicals when insects begin their raid. They can also signal danger to other trees so they can start their own defense. Similarly, the smell of fresh-cut grass is actually a distress signal.

5. The different parts of a tree grow at different times throughout the year. Typically, most of the foliage growth happens in the spring, followed by trunk growth in the summer and root growth in the fall and winter.

Three more just for fun:

6. If a birdhouse is hung on a tree branch, it does not move up the tree as the tree grows.

7. Australia is the landscape capital of the world.

8. Bamboo is the fastest-growing woody plant in the world; it can grow 35 inches in a single day.