As with any blank canvas, a new flower garden provides you with the chance to craft beautiful scenes using flowers and foliage of various kinds. Select the ideal combinations and use them wisely so your garden remains visually engaging.
Begin by clearing away any existing grass from where your garden will go. An easy way to do this is burying it under multiple layers of newspaper, where it will decompose into compost that adds essential nutrients back into the soil underneath.
Location
Gardeners know the key to gardening success lies in planning ahead. Before sowing any seedlings, it is vitally important that beds are created. This means identifying an area within your yard where soil preparation will take place before claiming that spot and prepping it for planting.
Choose a location with full sun. If your yard is shaded by trees or bushes, creating an alternative garden could help meet flower growth requirements of at least six hours of direct sunlight per day.
Carefully consider the site you have chosen and remove anything that doesn’t match up, like plants with colors not compatible with your palette or those with unruly foliage. Create a more balanced garden by grouping flowers in clusters or drifts rather than rows; additionally, ensure it is close to an accessible water source, such as via garden hose or irrigation system if applicable.
Soil
Your soil selection for a flower bed should be both well-draining and compatible with the needs of the flowers you intend to cultivate, such as loamy soil for certain varieties or sandy or clay-based options for others. When making this selection, add compost or organic materials as appropriate to improve its quality.
Make sure your garden site receives enough sunlight for the flowers you plan on growing, such as showy blooms that need six hours a day of exposure in order to reach their full potential.
Understanding your USDA growing zone is also key for successful flower gardening, ensuring you don’t plant plants that won’t survive in your area. Familiarizing yourself with its first and last frost dates helps create a planting schedule. Finally, adding texture to the garden by selecting various foliage shapes and colors. For instance, adding in sword-like gladiolus plants for texture while including variegated iris for additional pops of color is one way of adding interest and variety in a garden design.
Sunlight
Beautiful flower gardens can exist even in partial shade conditions, though some flowers, shrubs and vegetables require at least 6 hours of direct sunlight per day in order to thrive. Experienced garden designers take this into consideration by including year-round interest plants with staggered bloom times in their designs; foliage also helps fill in spaces when other blooms wilt away.
Select flowers that complement each other in color family or across the color wheel, for instance purple and yellow can make an eye-catching combination when displayed together.
Before planting your new flower garden, clear away all grass and weeds that exist in the area and mix bokashi compost into the soil. Water your newly prepared bed early morning or in the evening to avoid scorching sunlight – this will allow your plants to flourish more readily while encouraging strong stem formation.
Water
Flowers provide many advantages to your garden. Not only can they bring beauty and increase soil health benefits, they can also attract pollinators for plant reproduction. Furthermore, flowers help improve air quality in your yard by absorbing carbon dioxide and emitting oxygen back out into the atmosphere.
At its core, successful flower garden design relies on thorough soil preparation and choosing plants suitable for the site. Beyond these essentials, its style is entirely up to you – formal beds of ordered varieties might appeal while more naturalistic curved paths and irregular clusters of blooms might fit more comfortably with your aesthetic.
Flowers do best when grown in soil that drains well. Avoid areas where water collects after heavy rainstorms or during spring thaw, and terracing or drainage systems may be needed to protect it from erosion.