Flower gardens add color and beauty to any yard. Depending on your personal tastes, you may prefer planting perennial blooms that require annual replanting or annual renewal.
Before planting, ensure your chosen area receives plenty of direct sunlight throughout the day and start prepping its soil.
Preparation
Floral gardens can add beauty and attract pollinators into your yard, but curating one may seem intimidating to newcomers. Where should it go on your property, what types of flowers to plant, and how can I arrange them to achieve maximum visual impact are all questions newcomers need answers for.
Choose an area in your yard that gets six to eight hours of sun each day and offers good drainage, and select species-appropriate climate zones as criteria for growth.
Concentrate on selecting perennials and shrubs suitable to your zone, while annuals such as petunias and geraniums will thrive under your local conditions. Stay away from plants requiring too much water or fertilizer and consider native flowers instead to attract bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other wildlife into your garden. Choose blooms that look great together throughout the season while using repetition of shapes or colors to bring unity.
Planning
Before visiting a garden center to purchase plants for window boxes, porch containers or flower beds alongside your house, it’s essential that you understand your climate and space conditions, as well as any sunlight requirements of varieties you are interested in growing.
Ideal conditions for gardening require six hours of direct sunlight per day at your garden site; this will maximize flower blooms. However, you can still plant a beautiful garden by selecting shade-loving perennials like coreopsis and coneflower as well as fast blooming annuals like petunias and zinnias as shade plants.
When selecting flowers, explore various color combinations and textures. Tucking groups of fine foliage (like marigolds) between shrubs or coarse-leaved plants adds visual interest; repeating colors, heights and shapes throughout your garden creates cohesion – this is particularly important if creating a formal garden.
Digging
Planning a flower garden requires understanding its maintenance requirements. Flowers that require full sun will quickly wither under shaded conditions while plants that prefer cooler temperatures will quickly wither when exposed to hot soil temperatures. Furthermore, blooming times should also be taken into consideration; staggered perennials that bloom at different seasons provide continuous color while annuals can fill any voids caused by perennials fading over time.
Before planting flowers, create a loamy, well-draining soil. Most blooms thrive best in rich, fertile conditions – so add all-purpose balanced fertilizer and organic material to the top 6-8 inches of your soil before sowing or seeding your seeds.
Avoid working the soil when it is too wet, which can damage its structure and render it less accommodating to roots. A light hose spray should suffice as watering, though pack down soil is best avoided as this will lead to root rot and stunt its development. A fine spray pattern hose attachment will minimize disruption of new buds or leaves that have emerged.
Planting
Before planting, it’s essential to first read and follow the label instructions on seeds or potted plants to establish how deep and far apart to place your flowers. Sow seeds according to package directions; remove potted plants gently from their containers before setting them into garden soil by pressing lightly but without compacting it too tightly around the roots.
Be creative in your flower garden design by mixing annuals and perennials together for four-season interest. Choose low maintenance perennials like geraniums, petunias and pansies that bloom throughout summer when kept trimmed of faded blooms; for added color use annuals like zinnias and marigolds which produce quickly but only last one season before eventually dying back off again – according to Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf this offers unity and cohesion within your space.