No matter your reason for cultivating a flower garden – be it curb appeal or as an source of cut flowers – planning ahead is key to its success. Different species require specific growing conditions for optimal development such as water, sunlight and soil conditions.
Experienced garden designers use plants that provide year-round interest and staggered bloom times. Shrubs provide winter structure, perennials provide summer color, and annuals add fall blooms.
Determine Your Soil Conditions
Soil preparation is one of the cornerstones of successful flower gardening, as is regular watering and weeding to maintain an optimal environment for growing flowers.
Experienced flower garden designers incorporate perennials and annuals into their gardens to provide year-round blooms. Perennials with long bloom times provide structure in spring and summer while annuals add color that remains until autumn arrives.
Plant flowers near water sources to make watering them easy. Also take into consideration how your flower beds will look from indoor and outdoor spaces.
Determine Your Sunlight Requirements
Light is critical in any garden; many flowering plants like tulips and roses need full sunlight in order to thrive.
Plants typically come labeled with their sun exposure needs. If you are having difficulty assessing an area’s lighting levels, look for early warning signs such as burned leaves or limp flowers to gauge how much light is present.
Determine Your Watering Requirements
Outdoor flowers that require regular watering require it throughout their growing season; unless they are naturally drought-tolerant. Overwatering can be just as detrimental; look out for signs such as soggy or brown leaves and stems and no new growth indicating over-watering.
As a general guideline, watering should reach the soil depth of 1 inch. However, this can vary depending on weather conditions such as sunnier days vs windier ones that cause moisture to evaporate more rapidly or cool nights that slow evaporation.
Determine Your Fertilization Requirements
flowering plants require consistent feedings from spring to fall in both gardens and containers to reach their maximum performance potential. Utilizing granular fertilizers at planting time and throughout summer will ensure an even supply of essential nutrients to promote strong, vibrant growth.
Select a complete fertilizer that contains all three essential elements – nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (N-P-K). Fertilizers typically list their percentage of each element; during early spring when nutrients may deplete more quickly, more bloom-promoting phosphorus and potassium may be required than at midsummer.
Select Your Plants
As you begin selecting plants for your flower garden, keep these fundamental principles in mind. A well-designed flower bed should offer color throughout the season even once perennials and bulbs have gone dormant.
Select flowers that best suit your planting conditions and gardening skill level, while taking into account any bonus attributes such as fragrance or pollinator attraction when choosing blooms.
Plan your flower garden design so that taller blooms are located at the back, and shorter blooms in front, except those with delicate sprays such as foxgloves. Also include shrubs in your plans to provide year-round color.
Determine Your Bloom Time
Mixing flowers and shrubs with different bloom times will allow your flower garden to bloom throughout the year without needing to plant and replant every year. This way, it provides a continuous display of color without having to plant new varieties every season.
Perennial plants like peonies and roses feature long blooming seasons that can be enhanced with late season bloomers like dahlias or mums. You can even incorporate easy-to-grow annuals like zinnias or impatiens for summer to fall color!
Determine Your Color Combinations
Experienced flower garden designers use color as a unifying force across a landscape, taking into account bloom times so that when flowers wilt and die off, new splashes of hue emerge to fill in.
Colorful foliage can bring life and brightness to shady areas, while pale pinks, yellows and whites reflect light in sun gardens. Color schemes can be simple or complex: analogous colors (those close together on the color wheel) work especially well when applied in flower beds while complementary hues also can work effectively.
Determine Your Garden’s Style
A well-planned flower garden should start with an eye-catching focal point to draw visitors in and draw their gaze towards it, such as a grouping of plants or an eye-catching piece of garden art.
Experienced garden designers incorporate a mixture of shrubs and perennials with staggered bloom times into their design to provide continuous season-long color. This approach is especially important in gardens featuring annuals as autumn flowers.
When planting, ensure taller plants are situated towards the back while shorter ones in front to create depth and ensure each plant receives enough sunlight. This ensures every seedling receives sufficient light.