Planting flowers is an enjoyable and rewarding way to bring color into your landscape. Perennials that bloom year-after-year are particularly straightforward to grow, with many being hardy yet low maintenance options.
Understanding what your garden requires will enable you to determine what plants to grow.
Choose a Site
Flower gardens add vibrant hues and heighten curb appeal in any yard. Plus, a beautiful flower garden makes an impressionful statement about you or as gifts! Gardening takes time and requires planning but with some perseverance you can realize your ideal flower garden!
When selecting a location for your flower garden, ensure it receives ample sunlight. Many types of blooms thrive under direct sun while others require partial to shaded conditions. You should also ensure it’s located away from where people walk or play as this could potentially harm them.
When preparing the soil, remove any grassy layers and loosen it using a shovel. Mix organic material such as compost or manure into the mix for improved soil health and additional nutrition. Also ensure to research how far apart to plant each type of flower; planting too close together could crowbar their blossoms into space and lead to fungal diseases.
Soil Preparation
When starting or moving an existing garden, its soil must first be improved. Add well-rotted manure or compost to the top 6-8 inches of the site and work into it before levelling off your site for planting.
Do not plant your flower garden near a large tree as its roots could compete for nutrients and moisture with your blooms, making it more difficult for you to work around their roots.
Most flower seeds must be started indoors to allow them to be nurtured through spring and transplanted when frost risk has passed. Many seeds will also require regular watering until they have established themselves.
Select Your Plants
Selecting plants is the next step to starting a flower garden, and beginners should begin with easy to germinate seeds like sunflowers, nasturtiums, and cosmos.
When choosing plants for a flower garden, keep their mature overall size and the way they will blend in mind when selecting. Plants should be organized based on bloom times to provide color throughout the seasons – perennials such as peonies and dahlias typically bloom during spring while annuals like zinnias and impatiens typically flower from summer through fall.
Consider each plant’s care requirements when planting them together, including watering and pest control needs. Group flowers with similar maintenance needs together – drought-tolerant species like succulents pair nicely with those requiring moister or evergreen varieties that provide year-round interest for the garden.
Design a Layout
As with any garden design project, creating an accurate flower bed requires precise measurements and an organized layout. To do so, a garden tape measure and drawing supplies such as tracing paper, straight edge ruler, sharp pencils and even a compass (used to draw circles) may come in handy.
Do some initial brainstorming about the type of garden you would like. Will it be cutting gardens, low maintenance color gardens or somewhere that attracts pollinators? Once the answers to these questions have been determined, your flower garden ideas will begin taking form.
Experienced flower garden designers use the principles of repetition, balance and contrast when designing their beds. Repetition involves repeating certain core colors, shapes or plant species throughout a space to add cohesion and anchor its design; balance refers to balancing plant heights sizes and color schemes while contrast refers to juxtaposing plants that offer visual weight differences and texture variations.