Flowering Gardening

                Most people start digging and planting without thinking too much about flower garden design. I know I did - I just kept making my beds a little wider each year to put in more flowers. It was a matter of learning by doing. I started studying garden design only after a whole lot of moving plants around.

     

    Like most flowering gardens, my first one was grown, not designed. But with experience I've found that any flower gardening or landscaping project is more satisfying in the long run when you spend some time on thinking it through. It's a good way to avoid the classic gardener's dilemma: wandering around with plants you've bought, scratching your head about where to put them.

    Landscaping with Flowers

    When thinking about a flower garden, you don't have to draw the entire landscape on paper, showing where every plant goes. I was trained in garden design, and I don't have the patience for that! When I make a drawing, it's generally a rough one to show the layout of a bed and a basic planting plan.

     

    Take some time to think about how your flower garden should look and what you would want your garden design to do for your landscape. A lot of folks see gardening as primarily as getting color into their yards. But if you focus on colorful flowers first and foremost, it's a bit like arranging the lamps, accessories and pictures before your house has even been built.

     

    I once took a garden design course taught by the British garden design guru John Brookes, author of John Brookes Garden Design. He advises planning and planting in the following order: first, the "specials", usually trees that serve as focal points; next the "skeletons", such as evergreens for year-round structure; then "decoratives", flowering shrubs or tall grasses. Finally, you get to the "pretties" - spring and summer-blooming perennials, and fillers such as bulbs, annuals or biennials. According to Brookes, many gardens lack order and structure because they start out with the "pretties".

     

    What makes flower garden design so challenging? I think it's the fact that you're working with living things (plants) and other factors (the weather!) that you can't control - green thumb, or not.

     

    A flower garden may be a living work of art, but unlike a painting that's actually finished when the artist packs the brushes away, a garden is always changing. Plants don't always do what you expect: Many perennial clumps get bigger each year, but there's the odd one that will just disappear. Then there are plants that outgrow their spaces, turn out to be the wrong color or don't thrive no matter where you plant them - you get the picture.

     

    Remember: nobody creates a prize-winning flower garden the first year - but you weren't going to invite the garden club over for coffee - not just yet anyway?

     

    Planting your garden will be easier if you plan its design, layout and color scheme before you buy plants. For more garden planning tips, visit Yvonne's website, Flowering Gardening Made Easy.

     

    By Yvonne Cunnington:

     

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