> Next: Planning Flowering Landscapes
Requirements for Growing Flowers
Choosing a Site for Flowers
After knowing the needs and types of flowers, the second step of planning a flower garden is to choose welcoming sites in your landscape.
Here, we’ll explore some sites you’ll quickly learn recognize in your own home’s yard. After all, Even though your suburban childhood home and a city apartment have the same climate and growing season, they’re very different places when it comes to planting flowers.
Choosing Sites
Sunflowers that look so majestic by a fence at the back of a wide backyard fare poorly in a windowbox on an urban balcony.
For that matter, they would become leggy if planted in a border along the shady side of most yards, too.
It’s time ask yourself some important questions about the planting sites in your yard.
Whether you plant your annuals in a hanging basket or a meadow, the locations you choose will guide your flower gardening possibilities.
City apartments, where your garden consists of a terra-cotta planter on a sunny kitchen table or plants on a balcony, rule out 10-foot-tall (3-m-tall) flowering plants. Choose tiny treasures—flowers such as viola or nemesia—that would play minor roles in larger surroundings. Scented flowers also smell sweeter in smaller spaces without wind or heat to dissipate their fragrances.
When you garden on a balcony, terrace, or rooftop, consider sun, shade, and heat carefully when choosing annuals to plant.
Put heat-hardy perennial flowers such as treasure flower or blanket flower in spots with full sun, and save shade-loving species—begonia or bergenia—for the shade of a wall or the balcony overhead.
For country or suburban landscapes with several flower garden sites, planting considerations have fewer restrictions, but still are important.
Will annuals and perennial flowers share space with trees or shrubs? These are often shady spots. The light for your flowers may be adequate in springtime, but by summer the foliage of trees often make the area too shady for the sun-loving flowers.
Worse, the roots of trees and shrubs may compete with your flowers for water and nutrients. These are more important considerations.
Will you plant annuals near a wall, patio, deck, or pool? Make sure that the flowering plants you’ve chosen tolerate the reflected heat from your structures and pavement.
Will your garden have high humidity or constant rains? If so, avoid mildew-prone plants such as zinnia. Choose instead monkey flowers, forget-me-nots, meadow foam, and other annuals that enjoy moist environments.
Difficult soil? Even with little preparation, moss rose, some succulents, and sweet alyssum will tolerate most conditions. These are tough plants, happy to grow between the cracks of a stone walkway, looking beautiful all the while.
The key is, examine your planting sites, pick flowers that will fit their conditions, and your flower gardens will be a success.
Light Needs and Plant Spacing
Light and Space Requirements
Different species of flowering plants have strong light preferences. Many are full-sun lovers, but others desire cooler conditions. Here’s a quick rundown on what to look for in your yard:
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- Full sun: 6–10 hours of direct sunlight daily
- Partial sun: 4–6 hours of direct sunlight daily
- Filtered sun: 2–3 hours of direct sunlight daily with 2-5 additional hours of dappled shade (light filtered by deciduous tree foliage)
- Partial shade: at least 2 hours of direct sunlight daily, with 3–4 hours of dappled shade daily and 2–4 hours of full shade (shadows filled with reflected light only)
- Full shade: 6–8 hours of full shade daily with 2–4 hours of dappled shade.
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Keep in mind that—as soon as your flowers grow tall—they will begin to shade the lower tiers of flowering plants around them.
That leads to the next requirement: proper spacing of your plants.
Space Requirements
One of the most challenging things for beginning gardeners to accept is that the plants they see in their garden center should be planted farther apart than they look like they should.
The temptation to fill one’s beds with plants a few inches apart is irresistible. It’s also, however, very wasteful and results in many plants crowding one another out. Plants both grow up and out.
A well-planted container, bed, or border looks sparse for its first few weeks until the flowers it contains begin to grow.
Always space plants at least as far apart as recommended on the plant tag, container label, or our plant guides.
Note the eventual height and—more importantly—width of mature flowering plants of each species. Most spacing requirements allow for half the plant’s eventual total width plus a few inches of bare ground. When mature, they will almost touch one another, but not quite.
This spacing allows air and light to reach each plant, keeping it healthy.
Always give your flowers the light and space they need to thrive. They’ll reward you with more flowers, larger flowers, and greater foliage and bloom beauty.
Soil Needs
Two Important Soil Tests
The only sure way to know the condition of your soil is to examine, sample, and test it. Two major types of soil tests are used by professional gardeners when they begin to install a landscape.
• Soil percolation or drainage tests
• Soil nutrient and acidity tests
The first of these tests—soil percolation—is easily performed by anyone equipped with a shovel and a watch. The second—nutrient and acidity—is a bit more complicated, but still within the abilities of most gardeners.
For your convenience, we’ve given you a complete step-by-step demonstration with clear pictures and easy-to-follow descriptions for how to conduct a percolation and nutrient soil test [see: How to Conduct Tests of Garden Soil].
For many gardens with good soil, the percolation test is the go-to choice.
Even though water is always important to flowering plants, soils that are too loose and porous drain too quickly for plants to stay healthy. On the other hand, soils that are too dense and clayey hold too much water and plants drown and die.
A percolation test is nothing more than digging one or more holes in your planting area, filling them with water, and timing how long it takes for all the water to be absorbed.
Great garden soils absorb water at a rate of 1–2 in. (25–50 mm) per hour. If your results vary, the answer is to add soil amendments that speed up or slow down absorption [see: Preparing Garden Soil for Flowers].
The nutrient and acidity soil test measures the levels of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium it contains, and determines how acidic or alkaline it is on the scientific pH scale.
Flowers need both nutrients and nearly balanced acidity to grow properly. The three major nutrients—Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K)—are key to proper foliage growth, root development, and flower and seed production.
Sometimes, soils have sufficient nutrients but they’re locked up in chemically in forms that makes them unavailable to your plants. The most common cause of this situation is that the soil has the wrong acidity.
Again, soil additives help correct both nutrient deficiencies and pH problems [see: Preparing Garden Soil for Flowers]
Step-By-Step Instructions
It’s easy to perform soil tests for texture and percolation, major nutrients, and acid-alkaline balance—pH—yourself.
Many garden centers provide testing services to assess soil and recommend fertilizers and amendments. They also make referrals to soil-testing laboratories that will do the chemistry for you and provide a complete report. Most also have home test kits you can use yourself.
Gather your shovel, clean containers, and soil lab instructions or a home soil test kit and follow these simple steps:
How to Conduct Tests of Garden Soil
Dig several holes in your planting bed 2 ft. (60 cm) deep. Fill them with water. After the water drains, refill the holes again. Time how long it takes for the water to drain.
Well-drained garden soil drains at 1–2 in. (25–50 mm) per hour.
Dig a hole at the planting site. Using a clean container, collect a small amount of soil from the hole’s side, 3–4 in. (75–100 mm) below the surface.
In large gardens, mix samples from different spots as a representative sample of the whole or evaluate each area separately.
Using part of the sample of moist soil, squeeze it in your fist, then open your hand.
If it feels gritty and falls apart when poked with a finger, the soil contains excess sand. If it holds together, roll it between your forefinger and thumb to produce a cylinder-shaped rope of soil.
If it breaks before reaching 1/2-in. (12-mm) long, the soil has ample silt or loam. If the soil reaches 1 in. (25 mm) or more before breaking, the soil contains excess clay.
Measure relative amounts of three soil nutrients—nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium—using a home soil test kit.
Follow package instructions, which vary according to the specific kit. Always use distilled water when testing soil.
Determine your soil’s acid-alkaline balance using a pH test kit.
Use distilled water and follow all the package instructions for best results.
Electronic meters check soil pH, too.
Verify accuracy by testing cow’s milk—it’s 6.5–7.0 pH.
Thoroughly clean the probe before you test your soil sample.