Establishing your own flower garden from scratch can be both exciting and fulfilling. Before diving in, however, be sure to carefully plan what types of flowers and maintenance routine will best fit into your plan.
Before choosing flowers to cultivate, take into account your USDA hardiness zone and first frost dates.
Choose the Right Location
Location is of vital importance in creating the perfect flower garden. Different blooms require specific environments in which to flourish; failing to select an ideal site could result in non-thriveing perennial flowers who require full sun dying off quickly or annuals like impatiens needing bright spots in which they can flourish. Before beginning planting your chosen flowers, run a soil test in advance to make sure it can support them all!
Start small and plan carefully before diving in – one of the biggest mistakes novice gardeners make is taking on too much by way of size or scope of a flower bed project. To avoid time and money waste, start small.
An ideal flower garden design features layers of heights and colors to keep the garden visually interesting throughout its season. Look for an assortment of shrubs, annuals, perennials and biennials for balance and structure in your landscape; layer planting is great way to draw eyes around the landscape while concealing weeds while also giving the garden an organic meadow feel.
Soil Preparation
Step two of starting a flower garden is to prepare the soil. Remove grass and weeds from where you intend to plant, add compost to enrich it further and create a path if possible so that moving around later won’t be as difficult.
Once you’ve selected the flowers you plan to grow, note their bloom times and any special care needs they require for optimal success. When possible, select flowers native to your region as this will attract pollinators species like bees that help support local ecosystems.
As part of your efforts to plant in the appropriate locations, observe how much sun each location receives over an entire day and note whether they get full sunlight (6 or more hours), partial shade (3 to 6 hours), or full shade (less than three hours). Color combinations should also be taken into account when planning your garden; using the color wheel as a useful tool can help select combinations that complement one another well.
Planting
Establishing a flower garden is an exciting moment that every gardener looks forward to, yet there are several considerations before diving in and digging around in the soil.
Consider taking note of how much sunlight the site receives throughout the day before selecting any spot for planting flowers there. Amount of sun plays an essential part in what types of blooms will thrive there.
Once you’ve determined a site for your garden, select plants to fill it. Decide whether a focal flower like roses or dahlias, or filler flowers such as zinnias, marigolds and nasturtiums is what you prefer and select accordingly. Perennial gardens should include perennial bloomers that bloom throughout the season while annuals make great fillers; annuals also provide shelter and food sources for birds! When selecting native blooms make sure something blooms between Spring and Fall to support pollinators populations while evergreens may provide shelter and food resources.
Maintenance
After selecting the ideal location and planting the appropriate flowers, it’s also crucial to keep in mind ongoing garden maintenance requirements. A flower garden needs regular weeding, watering and fertilization – as well as pruning or deadheading (removing spent blooms from its landscape) in order to look its best.
Novice gardeners may find it beneficial to choose plants with low maintenance needs, such as perennials and annuals that grow quickly while producing an abundance of blooms. Consider adding flowering shrubs for structure and four-season interest; roses, heucherellas and coral bells are popular choices.
An effective flower garden relies on healthy soil health, and one key way of improving it is disease prevention. Stop leaf spot and other fungal infections with Daconil Fungicide Ready-to-Use or Daconil Concentrate from taking hold with preemptive applications of these fungicides.