Making a Flower Bed

How to Design a Flower Bed

This video by Dave Epstein shows you how to design a flower bed that will showcase your landscaping and add beautiful blooms to your yard. Be sure to watch the related videos for more great gardening tips.

Tips for Low Maintenance Flower Gardening

Imagine endless garden beds filled with beautiful fragrant flowers that come up effortlessly year after year without any help from you. Okay. Now wake up. You're dreaming. Most gardeners I know would be happy to spend less time watering, weeding, and maintaining their flower gardens. And while it might not be realistic to dream for zero maintenance, a low-maintenance flower garden can be a dream come true.

Building Soil

Healthy soil is the cornerstone of reducing garden maintenance. Fertile soil that is rich in organic matter is easier to work, results in fewer cultural problems, and reduces your overall workload. Make building and maintaining healthy soil your number one priority and you've won half the maintenance battle.

• Get to know your soil. Have it tested to understand what amendments you might add to maximize the growth of healthy plants.
• Feed the soil. Then let the soil feed your plants. Keep up the health of the soil by top-dressing it with leaf mold, grass clippings, homemade compost, or decomposed manure on a regular basis.
• Don't pay for weeds. If you're buying topsoil, check the source carefully to be certain you won't be bringing weed seeds and diseases into your garden.

Weeds and Weeding

A weed is just a plant growing where you don't want it to. In some cases weeds can even be beneficial additions to your garden! Don't aim for eradicating weeds. Instead, set a goal of keeping them under control.

• Weed for shorter amounts of time more often. Try weeding for a few minutes every day or two rather than for three to four hours every two weeks.
• Exercise patience. The first years are the worst years. When your garden is young it's a given it will require more weeding. It takes time for plants to grow and develop enough foliage to sufficiently shade the ground and prevent weed seeds from germinating.
• Don't let weeds go to seed. One weed can produce thousands of offspring through its seed. If your garden is being overrun with weeds, focus on removing the weeds that are going to seed first.
• Use mulch around ornamental plants to keep weeds down and moisture in.
• Don't let weeds fall between the cracks. Use the largest stones you can afford for patios and walkways.

Garden Plants

• Put the right plant in the right place. Choose flowers that are right for your zone, your local growing conditions, and the sun and wind exposure in the spot where you plan to plant them.
• Group plants together that have similar growing requirements, e.g. moisture-tolerant, drought-tolerant, shade-tolerant, etc.
• Plant native trees, shrubs, and perennials to help reduce the need for watering and increase resistance to disease.
• Design low maintenance plantings for containers. Choose "self-cleaning" varieties, repeat bloomers, and plants with striking foliage for long-lasting color. Avoid flowers that require constant deadheading.
• To grow annuals without the yearly fuss of planting, take advantage of the easy-growing self-sowers like bachelor buttons, California poppies, cosmos, and tall verbena.
• Don't be too hasty to replace your lawn with flowering ground covers. Less lawn doesn't always mean less maintenance. Some ground covers require constant weeding and annual pruning to look their best.

By Ellen Brown

Low Cost Flower Bed

Photo Description
It was getting dark when I took this picture. The strange arrangement of colors is due to the fact that the flowers weren't labeled and not in bloom when I bought them. At the base of the rocks are some newly planted Ajuga reptans. They will soon spread and cover the bare ground.

What is interesting here can't be seen in the picture. The Ajuga was a gift. The Pansies and Viola were on clearance last Fall for 10 cents per six cell pack. It's not the prettiest little niche garden, but when I consider it cost less than a dollar; I appreciate that I can be thrifty.
Most of all, I appreciate Mother Nature.

Photo Location
Tarheel State (North Carolina)

By likekinds

Plant Veggies In Your Flower Bed

Even if you don't have garden space you can get a few homegrown foods by adding a few choice vegetable plants to the scheme of your flower bed. Just pick your favorite veggies in unusual varieties. Good greens are lettuce, mustard, turnips, spinach, kale - curly or flat, come in all shades of green, red, purple, yellow and black.

You can get cabbages in purple, red, bluish as well as green. If you get the winter decorative cabbages they even come in pink!- and they're still edible. You can grow beans as a great vine with flowers that are purple or red.

There is a super ornamental pepper with all the hot colors, yellow, orange, and red, that covers the plant with edible peppers. And of course my most favorite, tomatoes, can be found in small or tall plants and the yellow, pink, red or even white fruit. They all add just as much color and texture as flowers but with the plus of produce.

By Trace from Wartburg

Top 10 Tips for Cost Efficient Flower Gardening

A beautiful flower garden doesn't have to cost a fortune. The secret is finding ways to get the best value for your investment. For gardeners on a tight budget, here are 10 great tips for stretching your flower gardening dollar.

1. Avoid The "Instant Garden" Mentality

A garden is a work in progress, and one that is never quite finished. Smaller plants come at smaller prices. This especially true of perennial flowers, trees, and shrubs. Buying small plants will cost you a little more in the way of patience, but after a few years, small plants will catch up to their more mature (and more expensive) nursery mates. In the meantime, you'll be able to buy twice as many with the money you've saved.

2. Divide And Trade

This is the cheapest and easiest way to increase your garden stock and the most fun! Spring is the perfect time to divide many perennials, and gardeners who have been gardening for awhile usually find themselves with extra plants to spare. Acquiring plants from family, friends, co-workers and neighbors also adds meaning to your garden, and for nothing more than the cost of digging. If you don't know anyone with extra plants, keep an eye out for local gardens that catch your eye. Pay those gardeners a compliment by asking them if they have extra plants they would be willing to share. If they agree, a pair of pretty gardening gloves or a batch of your homemade jam are nice ways to show your appreciation.

3. Minimize Your Losses

You can save yourself a lot money (and a lot of potential heartache) for the cost of a little preparation and planning. Invest in a $15 soil test you will avoid wasting a lot of money (and time) on fertilizers and soil amendments you don't need. Stick with plants that are suitable to your USDA hardiness zone, and avoid pushing plants not adapted for certain environments. Example: planting full sun plants in partial shade.

4. Start Your Own Seeds

Seed packets are cheap and usually contain the potential for 50 or more plants. The cost of most seed-sowing equipment (flats, grow lights) is also usually a one-time investment that can pay for itself after the first season. As an alternative to buying seeds, ask friends and neighbors to save you seeds from their gardens.

5. Buy Multi-Packs Or Flats

Save money by purchasing plants in bulk. Take a friend or neighbor shopping with your and divvy-up the flats so you each walk away with a variety of beautiful plants.

6. Shop End-Of-Season Sales

You can save big money on perennials by shopping the end-of-season sales at garden centers and nurseries. Don't wait for fall to start scouring for these bargains. Many smaller greenhouses and roadside stands close up shop soon after the volume of spring shoppers start to dwindle. In some parts of the country, this can be as early as mid-summer.

7. Deadhead

It's free, it prolongs the life of your flowers by encouraging more blooms, and it's very relaxing!

8. Buy Self-Sowing Annuals/Biennials

It's been said that "perennials are an investment and annuals are an expense." This certainly isn't the case for self-sowing annuals and biennials. Many cottage-style flowers (e.g. bachelor buttons, cosmos, poppies, snapdragons, hollyhocks, etc.) are wonderful self-sowing plants. As long as you provide the right conditions, they are sure to find a way to pop up year after year in your garden.

9. Shop Gardening Club Fundraisers And Plant Sales

Many garden clubs and botanical gardens have annual plant sales. Look for announcements at coffee shops, grocery stores, or search the Internet for events in your area. Beyond the cost advantages, you'll often find excellent and unusual specimens that are dependable performers in your area, all at very reasonable prices.

Tip: These sales sell out fast. Get there early and prepare to hustle!

10. Get Educated! Knowledge Is Power

Take classes, read books and magazines, watch gardening television shows, attend local gardening days! Nurseries and county extension agencies routinely offer free (or low cost) classes to area gardeners throughout the year. This is a great way to meet others who share your passion for gardening and gives you the opportunity to learn from the experiences of others.

By Ellen Brown

Great Soil for Flower Beds

For an awesome, fail proof flower bed, select a location for your flower bed, being careful to remember what you want to grow, with or without sun. My favorite flower beds are under trees, surrounded with blocks. ALWAYS, throw all left over foods in your beds, including coffee grounds, egg shells, vegetables, cooked or raw, tea bags, anything except meat and dairy.

Make it a habit to throw used paper towels and or napkins in flower beds along with your Sunday newspaper, shredded by hand. Over time, this will compost and make great black soil! It is not necessary to wait to plant flowers, they will grow and hide all the paper and food under them.

Remember, never forget to throw these in your flower beds forever! Makes a great soil with simply your garbage. Why pay for potting soil when this is better!

By Sharon from Lakeland, FL