Flower gardens provide color and fragrance to outdoor living spaces. When selecting flowers that thrive in your climate, enjoy year after season of blooms and foliage.
Experienced garden designers often include plants with staggered bloom times to add interest all year-round to their designs. To get the best results from your flower garden, start with healthy soil conditions.
Location
Location for a flower garden depends on its purpose, style and size as well as your home’s architectural design and landscape features. However, sunlight plays an integral part in choosing an optimal spot. Most blooms require direct sunlight; therefore choosing an area where this occurs is crucial to its success.
Avoid areas with poor drainage, where water pools after heavy rains or during the spring thaw. Such soil will suffocate most flowering plants’ roots.
If the area is shaded, consider planting perennial flowers with foliage for year-round color and annuals for seasonal displays. When creating foundation or border flower beds, place taller blooms closer to the house while lower plants should be scattered along their outer edges, according to Benzakein; this will prevent windows or doors being blocked by overgrown plants. Likewise, for island beds it would be advantageous to start by placing tallest plants at its center before gradually decreasing height with shorter flowers on either end bordering it.
Soil
An essential element of flower gardens is selecting soil with optimal conditions. Soil provides nutrients, water and air sources for plant roots to flourish, while different varieties have unique levels of minerals and other essential elements. Becoming familiar with your soil type’s individual requirements will allow you to select suitable blooms.
Once you’ve selected an area for your flower garden, remove any grass or weeds from it before prepping it by adding compost as necessary. Consider also creating a path through your bed so you can navigate more easily around it.
Professional garden designers use repetition of core colors and shapes to provide structure and visual unity in the garden, and Wiley suggests selecting plants with long blooming seasons that thrive under your conditions as well as groups in odd numbers rather than even. When selecting plants for your own garden, Wiley advises selecting those with blooms lasting more than five weeks in succession for best results. Also try selecting odd numbers of groups of three, five, seven or nine plants for increased visual pleasure than even ones.
Planting
Numerous elements contribute to a flower garden’s success, from making sure you use appropriate soil preparation techniques to determining your USDA growing zone. But ultimately it’s up to you as the gardener: formal beds with straight-edged beds and neatly planted clumps or more natural ones with curving curves and irregularly-mounded tufts of flowers can all add interest.
To get the best results from your flowers, it is best to group them based on their sun and water requirements. This helps prevent overwatering or underwatering and ensures optimal conditions for each species.
Colors on opposite ends of the color wheel, like purple and red, often work beautifully together, while foliage provides texture and depth when flowers aren’t blooming.
Be sure to consider how big your plants will grow at maturity before determining how far apart you want to plant them; often this information can be found on each plant label.
Maintenance
Maintenance begins by creating the ideal conditions for flower growth, including proper soil preparation. Organic matter such as compost and kitchen scraps provide slow-release nutrients which promote blooming blooms while simultaneously maintaining healthy soil.
Start by observing the area where you want to plant your flower garden for at least several days to ascertain how much sun it receives; most flower varieties require at least 6 hours of direct sunlight daily.
Locate your plant in an area with good drainage; damp areas expose plants to root rot and other plant diseases that could reduce their health.
Plan to plant both annuals and perennials; both thrive throughout the season with ease of care, blooming throughout the season. As one flower fades away, another one will quickly fill its place, keeping your yard vibrantly colorful all season. Also consider grouping plants with similar water and sun needs together – making caretaking simpler while helping safeguard the health of your garden.