Your outdoor living spaces deserve to be enhanced with beauty and color year after year. Start a flower garden from scratch for your window box, porch container or raised bed alongside your home and watch it flourish into something truly beautiful! Here is how you can get started: start one now and watch it bloom.
Before beginning, it is essential to research your climate and environment and become acquainted with spring and fall frost dates in your region. Once this information has been established, identify an ideal site for your flower garden.
Choose a Location
Establishing the ideal spot for a flower garden is vitally important to successful gardening. Different flowers thrive in different climate zones, and soil type plays an integral part in how quickly or slowly plants absorb moisture. Aim for an area that receives full sun.
Flower gardens can add color, fragrance, and pollinators to your landscape; but cultivating one may seem daunting to beginners.
Before getting started, familiarize yourself with the USDA growing zone in your area and research the needs of any flowers you plan on planting. Research their care requirements as well as maintenance requirements–hydrangeas and rhododendrons have similar maintenance needs–so pairing them together makes sense in a garden setting. Knowing your area’s frost dates helps create a planting timeline, while knowing how fast your soil drains could influence how fast water becomes available to flowering plants.
Soil Preparation
When creating a flower garden, soil preparation is crucial to its success. No matter if your garden bed consists of sandy or heavy clay soil, loose, organically rich soil is crucial for healthy blooms.
Start by clearing away any grass from where your flower garden will reside. Dig or spray Roundup herbicide over it if necessary to kill the grass quickly.
Planting cover crops like clover, wheat, red or winter rye, agricultural mustard, fava beans, alfalfa or wooly pod vetch is an effective way to nourish your soil. Cover crops attract nutrients from beneath the soil surface before being returned back into it when turned under in the spring.
As compost decays, it will improve the texture and structure of the soil in your flower garden, keeping it both moist and loose.
Planting
Flower gardens add color, fragrance and beauty to any yard, while also serving as an effective therapy solution. According to studies conducted on gardeners or simply admiring blooming flowers as therapy methods. Gardens help relieve stress while offering peace of mind.
Begin by clearing away grass and weeds from the area you have selected as the site for your flower bed. Be sure to ensure the soil is loose and well-draining for proper drainage; adding organic matter such as compost or manure could also be beneficial.
Once the site is prepared, start planting flowers. Make sure each type is in the appropriate sun/shade zones; additionally, consider mixing perennials and annuals together for longer lasting blooms.
Keeping planting simple is of the utmost importance if you’re new to gardening, so select easy-care flowers like catmint, aster, zinnias or impatiens as the starting points. Or begin with seeds which are inexpensive yet fun to watch grow!
Care
Flower gardens make beautiful additions to any yard, and with some careful planning you can start one yourself. Be mindful of factors like sun exposure and other considerations before planting; some flowers like hydrangeas thrive best with morning sun and afternoon shade exposure while other varieties like sun-loving sunflowers or drought-tolerant succulents prefer full sunlight all day.
Prior to digging, inspect the soil quality and drainage and consider creating a path so it will be easier for you to tend your plants. Be sure to remove grass or weeds and amend the soil with compost before initiating any excavation activities.
Experienced flower garden designers should plan their gardens to suit each season, including shrubs for winter structure and perennials blooming during the summer and annuals adding autumn color that rebloom next spring. You might even choose flowers with staggered bloom times so something will always be blooming – this helps pollinators too! It’s wise to keep a water source close by so you can easily tend to your garden when its thirsty.