Step 1: Consider Plant Heights
Flowers come in all different heights, so when designing your flower garden it’s wise to take this into account when placing plants. Taller ones should go toward the back while shorter ones should adorn its front rows.
Use garden edging to clearly outline your flowerbeds, making maintenance simpler while keeping grass and weeds from overtaking your hard work.
Location
Cultivating a flower garden is an incredibly fulfilling endeavor that can add beauty and splendor to any outdoor space. From creating small plots of blooming perennial flowers to expansive perennial beds, there are a lot of considerations when planning and planting a garden plot or perennial beds.
Step one of growing flowers successfully is selecting an ideal location. Choose a spot with full sun or at least partial shade as different types of blooms require either full sunlight or partial shade in order to thrive.
Once you know where you want your garden bed to go, create a sketch on paper of its design. This will enable you to visualize its layout and make any necessary modifications before breaking ground. A garden hose can even help outline it while walking around it to look at different angles of how you propose organizing the area.
Experienced flower garden designers know to include plants with year-round interest and staggered bloom times for maximum seasonal interest and bloom times in their designs, creating gardens that bloom all year long. This way, your garden will never stop blooming!
Design
Flower gardens should be planned and designed carefully in order to achieve maximum effectiveness. From foundation beds near the house and island beds in the yard to meadow gardens in the back yard, each planting should be considered when creating your landscape and designed specifically to your needs.
One way to create a garden that provides year-round enjoyment is to stagger the bloom times of different plants. That way, beds will have color in spring and summer and then autumn and winter flowers come into their own.
Piet Oudolf, an internationally-acclaimed garden designer, suggests grouping flowers that have similar water and sunlight requirements together in order to simplify watering and shading requirements. This makes watering and shading easier while creating a cohesive look throughout your garden. Think about grouping similar-shaped blooms together too: spires, plumes and bells look lovely next to daisies and buttons!
Planting
As you plan your flower garden, think carefully about its statement. Would you like a bold floral display on the front of your home or an array of vibrant blooms lining a pathway? Once you know which is most fitting, add complementary blooms that enhance its surroundings.
Take into account the lighting conditions at the location you have in mind, since most flowers require ample sunlight in order to flourish. To test these conditions, observe for a few days in order to gauge how much sunlight there is during each day.
Consider planting tall plants at the back and shorter blooms at the front to give a full-looking flower garden, while shorter flowers should be placed closer to the center. This creates an appealing visual balance and ensures all your blooms can be seen clearly. Repetition of key shapes or colors provides visual unity; for instance, when planning monochromatic palette of pinks and purples using three to five similar plants is more pleasing to the eye than an even number of different types.
Maintenance
An organized flower garden not only looks good; its maintenance is straightforward. To achieve success in this venture, accurate measurements and thoughtful layout should be used as starting points.
Select show-stopping flowers as focal points and easy-to-grow annuals and perennials as filler plants, while adding colorful shrubs with colorful bark, twisty shapes or berries for structure and four-season interest; especially useful in frosty climates where these will provide structure as well as visual texture that contrasts nicely with soft flower shapes.
Avoid overlooking lighting conditions when planning your garden area. Full sun is ideal, while many plants thrive even in part-sun environments. Make sure that you know which soil, water and sunlight conditions each plant prefers so you can plan accordingly.