As with real estate, location is also essential in flower garden design. Mismatched plants look disorganized and disjointed.
Expert flower garden designers use repetition to craft cohesive and well-planned designs for formal gardens, while grouping flowers in odd numbers is more pleasing to the eye.
Determine Your Garden’s Location
Flower gardens come in all shapes and sizes, from expansive rectangles to petite corner beds. To ensure that your garden remains organized, draw a rough sketch of its area before starting digging; this will allow you to better visualize where plants should go in terms of walkways or fences.
When selecting plants for your garden, selecting flowers with staggered bloom times will keep it interesting throughout the growing season and make maintenance simpler. This also makes your space easier to manage!
Your flower bed’s amount of sun exposure also plays a key role in its overall aesthetic. Aim to find a spot with at least six hours of direct sunlight per day – this will provide your plants with enough energy to flourish! Color can also play a crucial role; experiment with using small and large flowers, solid and variegated foliage, short stems, round petals and spear-shaped petals all to create visually stimulating displays!
Determine Your Focal Point
Focal points in gardens serve to draw attention and direct it around. From statues, fountains and birdbaths to decorative trellises with colorful blooms or seating areas – focal points should not only draw the eye but also fit seamlessly with your flower garden’s style and theme.
Once you know the size and sunlight levels of your space, begin considering what will become its focal point. Take your time when shopping – garage sales, thrift stores and florists may provide inspiration!
When selecting plants, take their height and structure into account when making your selections. Try placing taller plants at the back, medium-height flowers in the center, then ground cover or short flowers near their front to create depth in your bed while providing all flowers with sufficient sunlight. This will create an engaging look while guaranteeing all get plenty of exposure.
Consider the Background and Foreground
Once you’ve determined the size and location of your garden, the next step should be planning the layout. Here comes where math and common sense come into play – accurate measurements combined with thoughtful layout will ensure that your flower garden appears balanced and harmonious throughout its season of existence.
Experienced flower garden designers rely on a mixture of shrubs and perennials to add year-round color, along with some easy-to-grow annuals to bloom in fall. This staggered approach ensures consistency across your garden’s look while reducing risk that late summer or early fall finds itself without flowers.
Culver’s Root (pictured here) can serve as an ideal foundation plant in more formal gardens as an effective backdrop for taller seasonal theme and structural plants, while strategically chosen shade or shrub species (like Sasanqua Camellias or Flowering Crabapples ) can act as focal points.
Think About Texture and Size
Texture should also be taken into account when designing your flower garden, as an overly uniform collection of coarse- or fine-textured plants can make your space appear flat; using both types will add visual interest.
Your garden layout can also be affected by the growth habit of the plants you choose, such as whether they have a mounded or spreading form. Mounded plants add structure and depth to flower beds while spreading ground covers provide visual contrast.
Once you know the size and quantity of plants that will make up your flower garden, you can begin the planning stage. Start by clearly outlining its edges using borders or garden edging so grass and weeds don’t invade, and create your planting map by placing taller plants towards the back and gradually decreasing in height to medium levels before finishing with ground cover plants in front.