At the core of planning a flower garden lies understanding your space – specifically how much sun, shade, and water there is available to work with.
Design with scent and movement in mind, using focal points like trellises or birdbaths as focal points to draw the eye. Incorporate staggered bloom times so when flowers begin to wilt they are immediately replaced by others.
Location
Location is also key when creating a successful flower garden. Consider selecting an area in your yard that receives 6-8 hours of direct sunlight each day, and be close enough for easy watering with your garden hose.
Tip: Consider mixing different heights and textures in your beds. Playing around with texture – by juxtaposing delicate marigold flowers against coarse canna lily leaves for example – adds visual interest while repetition of colors, shapes, or species helps unify the landscape.
Before digging holes for each seed packet and plant, make sure that you understand its optimal spacing requirements to promote healthy development without overcrowding. Doing this will promote optimal growth while preventing crowding issues.
Sunlight
Flowers that receive plenty of sun tend to be healthier and more vigorous, growing larger and producing more blooms than their counterparts that don’t get as much direct light. When selecting your planting spot, be aware of its sunlight conditions as this could have an impactful impact on how your garden develops over time.
Your flower garden design should include walkways and access aisles to make watering, weeding and maintaining it easier for you. Consider adding eye-catching focal points such as trellises, decorative rock walls or birdbaths as eye-catchers in order to add visual interest in the space.
When selecting colors to plant, remember that shades that lie close on the color wheel, such as purple and red, make an attractive combination. Foliage adds structure and four-season interest by offering texture and hue throughout winter and fall.
Soil
Flower gardens can bring many advantages for both humans and the environment. Flowers attract pollinators such as bees and butterflies that support plant reproduction and biodiversity in an ecosystem.
Consider which flowers you wish to grow, their needs and requirements for success. For instance, lush hydrangeas thrive in partially shaded sites while drought-tolerant succulents require full sunlight exposure.
Prepare your planting site by clearing away any existing grass, digging the bed with a shovel or spade and adding compost or organic materials such as mulch to enrich the soil. This step is especially helpful if your previous soil was compacted and dense – it allows roots to spread more freely. It’s best to complete this job before it freezes so you can begin planting your new bed!
Water
Proper planning of a flower garden starts with selecting plants that thrive in your growing zone and selecting those you find pleasing to look at, with any additional design decisions being a matter of taste and skill.
As a beginner, begin small and progress to larger flower beds as your experience builds. It is easier to manage larger beds than small ones and the end product will look much nicer as a result.
When choosing flowers for a landscape, experiment with color and foliage combinations. Grouping shades of the same hue together, such as purple and red hues on a color wheel wheel is pleasing to the eye; similarly combining hues such as purple and red will also be visually interesting. Experimentation with texture and shape offers another avenue of creativity; for instance grouping finely-textured foliage such as marigolds with those having coarse leaves (canna lilies for example) adds visual interest.
Plants
A successful flower garden should feature flowers that attract pollinators, provide food for wildlife, add structure to the landscape and bring four-season color. Design choices depend largely on you – you might prefer formal with straight edges and evenly spaced beds or more organic styles with irregular curves and clusters of plants.
Learn your planting site inside and out. Spend some time every day monitoring its light and shade conditions – specifically whether direct or filtered sunlight falls upon it – observing whether you need direct or filtered lighting in different spots (for instance a south-facing sunny bed is ideal for drought-resistant perennials such as coreopsis or heuchera).
Include plants that bloom at various times throughout the season so that when one plant fades, another one comes alive – keeping your garden at its best for longer.