Flower garden designs vary depending on gardening goals and conditions, with experienced gardeners seeking an array of evergreen shrubs, flowering perennials, and colorful annuals that provide year-round interest due to staggered bloom times.
Focus on plant height when designing your garden as this can have a dramatic impact on its visual appeal. Taller plants should typically be placed towards the back, while shorter varieties should be placed up front.
Location
Step one in creating a flower garden is selecting an appropriate location. This must allow for sufficient sunlight, soil conditions, and water sources for the blooms to thrive.
Flowers thrive best on flat ground; however, steep slopes can also make great sites if properly protected against erosion. Your flower bed should also be easily accessible via garden hose to allow watering without uprooting any of your plants or damaging their stems.
Flower garden designers typically employ groups of three or more of one kind of bloom to achieve a more natural aesthetic and avoid an unruly collection. This strategy works great in all types of gardens. Incorporating hardscape elements like trellises, arbors and birdbaths into your overall layout will serve as focal points that draw the eye while simultaneously serving to delineate private and public areas in your yard.
Design
Flower gardens add color and vibrance to outdoor living spaces, offering beauty as well as delight. The best flower gardens incorporate an exciting variety of flowers, shrubs, perennials, annuals, hardscape elements, staggered bloom times for plants with staggered bloom times to provide something new in every season; perhaps by using shrubs for winter interest; perennials in summer bloom; or annual bloomers as fall color accents. Experienced designers know this.
Before getting started with your flower garden design, it is advisable to draw out a sketch to ensure everything fits within the recommended plant spacing requirements. Once satisfied with your layout design, it’s time to get down to work!
Planting
No matter whether you’re renovating an existing garden or creating an entirely new bed, the process begins by understanding your gardening level, sun/shade conditions of flower beds, and desired landscape goals.
Ascertain the lighting conditions at your planting site and research which flowers thrive best under that lighting scenario. For instance, in full sun areas consider adding drought-tolerant coreopsis or coneflowers as they thrive under hot summer weather conditions. When planting under indirect lighting consider shade-loving hosta or heuchera to add height and color.
Pay close attention to a plant’s bloom times and longevity before choosing colors that suit your aesthetic preferences. Foliage plays an equally vital role in designing, and mixing coarse (heuchera or astilbe) with finer foliage (marigolds or bleeding hearts) adds texture, adding dimension and intrigue to your design.
Care
Flower gardens add beauty, increase curb appeal, and offer a relaxing retreat for homeowners. Unfortunately, many are put off by the amount of work involved in creating beautiful and well-kept gardens, yet with some expert tips and techniques anyone can design beautiful beds of blooms in their own home garden.
Start by determining your growing zone and researching which flowers thrive there. Also keep the first and last frost dates in mind to avoid planting too early or too late.
Before planting flowers in any area, clear away grass and weeds by using an edging to define its boundaries; this also prevents grass or weeds from invading your flower beds.
Create an easier care routine by grouping plants with similar water and sunlight needs together, and by choosing flowers with diverse colors, shapes and textures – such as sword-like gladioli or variegated iris for instance – both offering unique foliage textures while contributing vibrant pops of color!