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Spring is the perfect time of year for setting up a new garden space. Everything is alive, growing and happy, so it’s no wonder you’d want your yard to get in on the action.

To set up a basic bed for flowers, all you need to do is remove the sod and plant small plants or seeds in the soil. Getting rid of the sod can be a lot of work. An easy way to get rid of sod, which unfortunately takes a long time, is to cover the area you want to make into a bed with five to seven layers of newspaper. Cover the paper with mulch and allow it to sit undisturbed for at least six months. A year is ideal.

When you remove the mulch, the newspaper and the sod will be gone. Then all you have to do is plant, put the mulch back around the plants, and enjoy.

What Should You Plant

Assuming you already have a flower garden spot prepared, what should you plant? The answer depends on whether your area gets sun, shade, or a mixture, and what part of the country you live in. There are beautiful plants, such as impatiens, hostas, ferns and vinca, that thrive in shade, just as there are a multitude of flowering plants that glory in the sun, including all sorts of wildflowers, coreopsis, lilies and more.

To find the best plants for your yard, go to a local garden center and find the plants designed for the amount of light your garden spot gets. The plants you can buy locally will be well-suited to the environment where you live.

When designing your new garden space, remember that nature loves odd numbers. Buy three, five, seven or more of the same kind of plant or flower, and your garden design will look much more natural. Also, don’t line your plants up in rows. Nature doesn’t subscribe to straight lines. Go for a walk by a stream or in a field of wildflowers to see how nature designs, then go for a similar look in your yard.

Your garden can be formal or informal, stick with one color in all its shades or offer a multitude of bright, pastel or muted colors. The decisions all rely on your personal taste. Once you have picked the [flowers] and planted them according to the directions on the tags, then you can have fun filling the garden with cute accessories.

Using Garden Accessories

When a garden is new it can look a little bare because the plants are small and not fully established. You shouldn’t over plant your garden space if you are using perennial plants (those that come back year after year) because they will grow larger each year and eventually fill in the space provided.

Instead, fill the empty space with cute birdbaths, birdfeeders or birdhouses. Add decorative stepping stones or sculptures, gazing balls, even plant stands that will allow you to add height by placing a potted plant in your garden. If there is a tree in your garden space, you can hang a birdfeeder or wind chime for an extra touch of whimsy.

And when the color fades from your flowers, add a multi-colored fabric pinwheel that will leave a rainbow in your garden all year long.

Flower bed design is something that doesn’t seem like it should be that difficult, but it often gives new gardeners fits. Suddenly what looked like a small, manageable flower bed turns into a monster when you finally have to fill it with plants. Here are some tips that will make your flowerbed design a little easier.

First off, you need to choose a theme for your flower bed design. By theme I just mean you need to have an idea of what kind of plants and flowers you would like before you go shopping. Some important things to consider are:
·Color: do you want to use the same color throughout or several complementary colors? Get out your color wheel and choose colors that look nice together for easy flower bed design success.
·Hue: almost as important as choosing the right colors is choosing the right hue or tone of flowers. Stick with all pastels, all dark colors or all bright colors for a pleasing palette.
·Formality: do you want an informal, wildflower kind of look to your flower bed design, or would you prefer a more formal, structured look? The flowers you choose will dictate the mood of your garden.
Once you’ve figured out the basic feel you want your flower bed to have, you need to define your space. If you are improving an existing flower bed design, you might not want to alter the size or shape of the bed. If you’re designing a new bed, you will need to shape it out and prepare it before planting.
Many people like to curve the front of their flower bed, but a straight line is fine, too. If you decide to go with a curve, make it one long gentle curve instead of a series of waves. When it comes to shape, a wide flower bed is ideal because it will give you a chance to plant in layers, which will give your flower bed design a more natural look. Taller plants can go in the back of the bed, moving to smaller and shorter plants as you move forward in the bed.
Thus an important consideration in any flower bed design is how large the plants are ultimately going to get. You don’t want to plant something that’s going to be five feet tall in the front of your garden just because it’s only a foot tall right now. Instead, you should plan for what the plants will look like in five or 10 years and space them accordingly.
Annual flowers are perfect for filling in the spaces between plants that have not yet grown into their space. You can also plant spring bulbs between the plants and just remove them after a few years, or plant a ground cover that will make the area look less bare.
The actual plants you choose will be a matter of personal taste, but there are some more basic flower bed design principles you should keep in mind.
If you’re going for a formal look, symmetry is important. Choose a focal point such as a large plant, shrub, tree or even a fountain, and place that in the middle of your flower bed design. Build off of that with the same plants mirroring each other on each side of the flower bed.
Another important concept is that of planting in groups and repetition. A group of the same plant looks better than one individual plant, and a plant that is repeated through the flower bed design will look better than one that only appears once. This doesn’t mean you have to plant in rows or use huge mass plantings of a particular plant. Any odd number of the same kind of plant will look natural and nice.
If you’re still confused as to how to start your flower bed design, go for a walk. Look at your neighbors’ yards and see what works and what doesn’t. Better yet, take a hike in a natural place. Take notice of where the plants are in relation to each other. Nature’s rules of design are a great start for your own flower bed design: avoid straight lines, plant in clumps, seek harmony with flowers and greenery, plant flowers that like the same conditions next to each other. If you follow these practices, as well as those outlined above, you’re sure to build a flower garden you will enjoy.

flower bed design