Before planting flowers in your soil, prepare it by clearing away any grass or weeds and adding compost as nourishment for their roots.
Be mindful of your USDA growing zone; flowers that don’t thrive in your region could quickly wither and die out. Consider bloom times too; multiple displays of color look better than single season displays.
Determine the Size of Your Space
Step two of planning a flower garden involves determining its desired space. This step is crucial, as this will determine how many plants can fit into each bed as well as if you need fillers (like baby’s breath or asters) to create balance in your bed.
Knowing the expected height of matured plants is also helpful to ensure they don’t block windows or doors and that you place them strategically within your garden. Following recommended spacing recommendations on packaging ensures your plants have ample room to grow and flourish.
If you are new to gardening, starting small may be beneficial, making the experience simpler to manage and keep up. A well-planned design is integral for success – take time before planting to craft one before beginning!
Determine the Height of Your Plants
Designing an effective flower garden requires exact measurements and taking into account the mature heights of plants. Spending the time to do this will result in an eye-catching garden design.
As a rule, place tallest plants at the back and shorter plants at the front to add visual depth and make the garden appear fuller, even when its flowers are dormant. This also helps when placing containers inside greenhouses with limited sunlight exposure.
To determine how many plants to plant accurately, sketch your layout on paper using scale. This involves assigning each square a size that represents an actual foot of your border area.
Make the bed truly your own by including focal points like decorative pots, birdbaths, or trellises for climbing flowers like clematis. Define its boundaries with edging stones or mulch edging so as to prevent grass and other weeds from growing into it.
Consider the Color Palette
Many gardeners dream of creating an abundance of color from spring through frost in their border. Unfortunately, however, most shrubs, perennials and annuals only bloom at their best during a single season – professional flower garden designers aim to find plants with staggered bloom times that provide year-round interest and balance color with year-long interest.
Use the color wheel to craft an eye-catching color scheme in your garden. Adjacent colors on the wheel, such as pink and purple, look beautiful together; while those opposite each other such as blue and yellow add visual interest. Foliage also adds visual texture when flowers have withered away in your garden.
Another tip for creating an intentional garden design is clustering flowers in odd numbers. This visual design trick helps make the space appear less chaotic and more intentional; Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism has implemented this practice with great effect in their garden; using three flowers from each bed that complement one another in each bed for a natural look that avoids formality or contrivence.
Think About the Texture of Your Plants
Plant texture is also a key element of flower garden design. Finding balance among fine, medium and coarse textures of plants will add visual interest. A garden with only fine-textured plants could look monotonous; on the other hand a planting that is exclusively coarse-textured may become overwhelming.
Plants come in all kinds of shapes and forms, from cushiony mounds to upright plants with variegated leaves that bring additional color even after the flowers have faded. Some gardeners like to combine different forms, while others group similar ones together for easy maintenance.
Once you have an understanding of the basic composition of your flower bed, it is time to create a plan. For this step, a few supplies such as compass, graph paper and sharp pencil will come in handy; most stationery or art supply stores sell these tools.