A flower bed is widely considered the most attractive garden component. Flower beds are filled with vibrant annuals that bloom for just one season. If you’ve decided to add a flower bed to your yard but need help figuring out where to start, this guide will walk you through the entire process, from choosing the right spot to adding the perfect finishing touches.
Flower bed: Types
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Borders
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See also: Jade plants benefits and how to take care of them
A border is a row of flowerbeds set out along a wall, fences, hedges, or footpath. Flowers in this type of flower bed are often seen from above. Plants of varying heights are used in flower bed arrangements for borders, with the taller ones in the rear and the medium-height ones in front. In a border-type flower bed, the front is lined with shorter plants, often those that grow to a height of 10 inches (25 cm).
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Islands
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Islands in a flower bed are arrangements that don’t have any kind of backdrop. Shapes might range from round and rectangular to square and oblong. In contrast to borders, island flower beds are visible from every angle. The design is reminiscent of a traditional flower border, except that the taller flowers are clustered in the middle of the island. In contrast, the smaller ones are scattered along its periphery.
Flower bed: Tools and materials required
A flower bed will need several materials and a selection of equipment. Here is a list that will assist you in getting started with constructing a flower bed.
- Utility knife
- Garden shovel
- Garden staples
- Trowel
- Plants of varying heights and colours
- Mulch
- Soil amendments
- Landscape fabric
Flower bed: 10 steps for preparing a beautiful bed
Creating a mental picture of how you want your new flower bed to look is the first and most crucial step in actually planting the flowers. When you initially plant your bed, it may not appear like much, but after a few months, it will have grown taller and filled up with more vibrant flowers and foliage. The key is to predict how tall, colourful, textured, and heavy all the different plants will be. Starting early and paying close attention to attractive flowers in the area will help you achieve this goal.
If you need help figuring out where to begin while preparing a flower bed, the instructions below will help you make a beautiful flower bed in your yard.
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Select a location
To begin, choose a location in your yard that would work well as a flower bed. Most blooming plants need at least six hours of full sunlight each day to develop, so a full-sun position is ideal, but a garden bed may be made in a shadier spot as long as the gardener is prepared to stick to shade-loving species.
It’s safe to assume that the same part of your yard that boasts healthy grass growth will also be able to sustain a healthy flower bed. Keep your flower bed away from large trees since their roots can drain the soil’s moisture and nutrients, making it difficult to grow healthy plants without much additional work.
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Select design and colour scheme
From a colourful “island” of blooming shrubs to a neat and tidy garden of annual flowers grown specifically for vase arrangements, flower beds may take on numerous shapes and hues. However, most people understand a flower bed as a border bed of mixed perennials and annuals that provides colour throughout the year. One or more shrubs may be added to such a garden to provide form, texture, and perhaps some wintertime colour.
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Select plants
The true excitement lies in choosing the kind of plants for your flower bed. Learning about the specific requirements and personality traits of the plants you’re interested in is a fun part of this process. Only buy plants that will thrive in your area if you purchase them online.
Consider the plant’s texture and form, and colour while making your selections. A garden that has been thoughtfully planned will contain plants that have a range of different types of leaves, such as gladiolus, which has a texture similar to a sword, and bleeding heart, which has the texture of delicate lace.
Finally, make sure you account for different plant sizes. Most garden designs call for taller plants to be placed in the background, while those of a more intermediate stature to be placed in the middle, and those of a smaller stature to be placed around the edges of the garden in the front.
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Prepare the flower bed
If you want to get a head start on your gardening, start preparing your flower bed in the spring when the soil is sufficiently warm to be worked. Establishing a flower bed on the grass is the first step. Using spray cans, powdered chalk, or a flexible garden hose, it’s easy to define the flower bed on the grass.
A typical oversight is to design a too-small flower bed, even though beds may be any size. At the very least, you need a five or six feet deep bed and ten or twelve feet long. If you want to maximise your garden’s visual appeal, most landscape architects will tell you to build it oval or kidney-shaped.
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Eliminate the grass
If you want to make a flower bed out of the grassy ground, you’ll need to dig it all up first. Using a normally pointed shovel to remove the sod in pieces is an efficient method. After that, you may hammer the sod with the shovel’s blade by laying it on its side with the edge vertical to the ground. Using this method prevents the loss of valuable soil while preserving the sod. If you want to get rid of the sod, you may throw it away in your compost pile.
A more common practice is only eliminating the grass. Broad-spectrum, short-lasting herbicides like glyphosate are suitable for this purpose. First, thoroughly sprinkle the grass inside the flower bed outline, and then wait a week or two for the grass to turn brown and die. After that, you may aerate the soil and reanimate the dead grass by excavating it repeatedly. Aside from enhancing the soil’s texture, the grass’s decomposition also contributes valuable organic matter.
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Add soil amendments
An organic supplement, such as composting, peat moss, or leaf mulch that has been properly decomposed, is something that should be added to almost all flower beds since this will be beneficial to the soil. As a further soil amendment, peat moss should be added to clayey soils if they include clay.
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Utilise a weed barrier
Weed barriers aren’t required, but they do assist decrease the amount of work needed in the garden. Flower beds benefit greatly from woven landscape cloth as a weed barrier. Woven weed barriers, as opposed to the more commonplace black plastic sheets, allow air, moisture, and minerals to access the soil and, ultimately, your plants. A layer of mulch will be spread over the weed barrier thereafter to keep it in place.
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Introduce the plants
Plants may be split using garden shears after being laid out on the cloth and their locations marked. Then, you will need to dig a hole, unfold the cloth flaps, and carefully set the root ball into the earth. Fill up the space surrounding the root ball with soil and refold the weed barrier around the plant’s trunk.
Be careful to provide enough room between each individual plant. You should be prepared for the fact that your flower bed will have a more sparse appearance during the first season, but be assured that it will quickly fill in and become thicker.
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Add mulch
Once all of your plants are in, spread several inches of mulch over the topsoil or weed barrier material. Mulch for landscaping may be made from various materials, some organic, like compost or bark chips, while others are inorganic, like crushed rock, or synthetic, like shredded tires. You can use anything you choose, but remember that all mulches will eventually need to be replenished due to natural decomposition or water erosion.
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Add a point of focus
If your flower bed is missing that last polish, try including a statement piece that draws attention to your bed. For instance, a porcelain planter or birdbath with intricate detailing might serve as a conversation starter.
Flower bed: Five tips for starting one
If you’re going to take the chance to design a unique flower bed, here are some things to bear in mind:
- Include shrubs with a wide range of bloom periods to provide continuous flowering throughout the year. Annual blooming plants are great for adding a splash of colour to a flower bed, but your ultimate objective should be a perennial garden that doesn’t need any supplemental annuals to thrive.
- Ideally, you’d want to have a flower bed with some tall plants in the rear to use as a background or canvas for your other plants and flowers. This method is called layering and refers to placing the tallest plants in the rear, the lowest plants in the front, and the rest plants in between. When all of the plants have matured, the aesthetic value of a flower bed with distinct layers is at its peak.
- Pay attention to how the colours interact with one another. And this pertains not only to the colour of the flowers but also to the colour of the leaves. Avoid using colours that are obviously going to clash.
- Besides colour, think about form, texture, and contour. Diverse elements of design, not simply colours, should be included in a well-planned garden bed. Small shrubs are a great option for adding a variety of textures to a garden.
- Keep in mind that you are free to alter the layout of your flower bed at any time, rearranging, removing, or introducing plants as you consider appropriate. If at first, you are unsuccessful, you shouldn’t worry about it too much since you will eventually succeed.
5 Flower bed: Design ideas
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Start with bright traditional bedding plants
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In the middle of summer, there is nothing more beautiful than a flower bed packed to the brim with traditional bedding plants. Common summer annuals include begonias, petunias, and marigolds, which provide a continuous stream of vibrant blooms. They’re simple maintenance blossoms that need just regular watering.
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Grow wildflowers for simple upkeep
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When you want to lighten the appearance of your garden, wildflowers are a great choice, especially if you have a lot of hard landscaping or if you’re going for a wildlife garden aesthetic. If you want to brighten up your flower beds with poppies, blue cornflowers, and other colourful species, try sowing a wildflower mix.
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Select bee-friendly species with visible colour
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If you want to attract bees to your garden, planting certain flowers is a good first step. Thankfully, many of the most visually appealing flowers are also very popular with bees and provide them with a wealth of honey. Alliums are our top pick because of their unique spherical form, sturdy stems, and enticingly regal purple hue.
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Select a colour scheme with two colours.
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Tulips are available in such a wide range of colours that they can easily achieve any desired aesthetic effect, making them ideal for use as garden border plants. To give your yard a little more pizzazz, you can combine them with annuals or even daisies for a really low-maintenance aesthetic.
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Consider drift planting for a dramatic effect
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Drift planting, which is really just planting in rows, looks amazing in big backyards. This lovely floating plant idea uses alliums and salvia, which look great when planted in contrasting hues or alternate rows.
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FAQs:
Why is preparing flower beds so essential?
The soil must provide plants with water, nutrients, and enough oxygen for their roots to thrive. When preparing beds, a gardener must ensure that the soil has all the necessary nutrients for the plants to thrive.
Where should you put a flower bed?
Six or more hours of daily sunshine is required for your flower bed throughout the year. However, in reality, you want as much sunlight as possible. To get the most out of the sun, your flower bed should be positioned on the southern side of your house or on other tall buildings like garages, sheds, or fences.
Why is a flower bed raised?
Since the soil in raised beds is already amended with compost or manure, it warms up faster in the springtime and drains better than regular garden soil. A well-prepared raised bed, especially in the South, provides air circulation for plant roots.