Repetition is key when designing an exquisite flower garden, just as location is for real estate purchases. Repetition makes the space seem larger.
Experienced flower garden designers employ multiple plant varieties in order to ensure something blooms all year. By staggering their bloom times, experienced designers can rely on perennials for structure and color in winter, annuals for summer blooms, and fall-blooming fill-in flowers as essential features of their design.
Determine Your Space
Location for a flower garden depends on several factors, including its type, climate and your personal goals. Space may also play an important factor as how many plants you can fit in your garden space.
Establishing your flower garden begins by clearing away grass and weeds in the area where you plan to plant the flowers. Before digging begins, marking its boundaries using garden hose or spray paint may help show how much of the bed will be taken up once plants have taken root.
Experienced flower garden designers select an assortment of blooming flowers with staggered bloom times for year-round interest, along with various greenery to fill out garden beds and provide visual contrast against the flower colors. Focal flowers such as heuchera or tulips should typically be planted nearer to the back or center, while filler blooms such as heuchera can be placed closer to the front for optimal effect.
Determine Your Aesthetics
Your flower garden should be more than a place for planting plants; it should serve as a piece of floral art that draws viewers in rather than repels them. In order to craft such an eye-catching visual work of art, certain concepts should be remembered before beginning digging.
Consider all aspects of the composition of your garden from its overall size and shape down to individual beds’ layouts. One way to get an understanding of this layout is to use a garden hose to outline proposed beds before walking around them to look from various angles before beginning digging.
Your beds can take many forms; whether that be perfectly straight lines or more natural designs with undulating curves and irregular clumps. When planning, don’t forget to include plants that bloom at different times throughout the year so when some blooms fade others are ready to step in as replacements and ensure you add color throughout each season.
Determine Your Sunlight
No matter if your flower garden will take the form of a container on your patio, a bed in your yard, or something entirely different, it is crucial that you understand its sun pattern before planting anything. Mapping can help, but for maximum effectiveness it is best to go outside on a clear day throughout the day and note where the sun hits at 9:00 am, 12:00 pm, 3:00 pm, and 6:00 pm – and note any pattern therein that emerges.
Tracking the sun helps you understand how much light a particular spot receives and which plants thrive there or don’t. Many popular flowers need six hours of direct sunlight daily in order to thrive, so finding their optimal place is essential.
Planning ahead also means considering the bloom times of different flowers you intend to plant – this way you’ll ensure that when showier blooms begin to fade away there will still be bright splashes of color to enjoy in their place!
Determine Your Planting Parameters
Your planting parameters can include color scheme, height, shape and foliage type. Some gardeners like to select one flower color or an arrangement of blues and purples (for instance), while others opt for more varied planting arrangements so their bed has an unplanned look.
If your flower garden is intended to attract pollinators insects, include some flowers with fragrant petals as part of its design. You could also plant shrubs as an added height and structure factor.
Focus on creating an appealing balance of taller and shorter plants in your garden, with taller ones placed at the back for background effects. They should be joined by smaller perennials and annuals that provide color at the front. Experiment with different textures: fine, delicate foliage (such as that found on bleeding heart plants) can contrast nicely against coarse, sturdy gladioli leaves; playing around with shapes can add visual interest as well; world-renowned garden designer Piet Oudolf suggests using combinations such as spires, plumes buttons daisies together or even mixing spires with rounder globe-like flowers for added interest!