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Landscape Area and Bed Plantings
Flower Garden Edges and Beds
Because most gardeners have homes and landscapes bounded by streets, walks, fences, or other borders, you’ll find these areas are perfect for unique and special flower gardens.
The other common garden location in home landscapes is an area planting. We’ll discuss how gardeners and landscape designers choose to plant both of these situations in detail.
Area Plantings
Area plantings are perfect spots to use more carefree looks than the formal designs found in well-defined beds or borders.
Most such gardens also are maintenance friendly.
There are a few things to keep in mind when you’re designing an area planting, and especially for large areas.
Since the expense of large numbers of bedding plants can strain most budgets, you may wish to pick annuals that you can sow directly into your garden.
Option 1: Repeat Patterns of a Single Species
Choose flowers that aesthetically lend themselves to being planted en masse: a glade of daisies, treasure flower, viola or pansies is more pleasing than an expanse of crested cockscomb.
Use background and foreground plants to create variety. A low-growing groundcover flower sets the stage for a stand of tall plants, such as purple coneflower or bearded iris.
Option 2: Mixed Flowers
A second option is to mix flower freely in a large area, creating a meadow effect.
Mixed wildflowers are simple to grow from seed, come in mixes for sun or shade, for attracting butterflies, for cutting, or even for certain heights or color combinations.
Wildflowers also frequently self seed. That means in many climates that they’ll return to bloom again, year after year.
Option 3: Formal Patterns
For a more formal look, fill areas with plants that look carefully placed—nearly geometric: squares, triangles, straight lines—but keep your plan simple. Plant different varieties and cultivars of a single annual species.
If you share the Victorians’ love of formality, you can mass plant low-growing varieties of your favorite exotic annuals for a neat, almost clipped appearance.
Option 4: Drifts of Flowers
A final choice is to use sinuous curves and drifts of a single or several similar species to create rivers of blossoms, complete with islands and edges—all made of flowering plants.
Divide the area with imaginary diagonals drawn from its corners, widest spots, or edges, then plant the diagonals with flowers, varying them from 2–3ft (60–90 cm) wide.
Halfway or a third of the way to the center of each diagonal, plant either taller or lower species of a different color and form. Repeat the planting on the opposite diagonal.
The effect will appear casual and random, but it actually makes a composition that will draw the eyes of viewers to travel repeatedly through your flowers once the bed grows in and begins to bloom.
Designing Flower Borders and Island Beds
Border Flower Beds
Let’s say that you have a border bounded on one side by a structure and you want to fill it with annuals.
First, decide on a color scheme. It’s best to stick with one to three colors, so choose whether your bed will have shades and tints of a single color, complementary colors, or primary colors.
Also decide whether you’ll plant the bed to enjoy once and then replant after its flowers fade, or you’ll plant a combination of different species with different bloom cycles, making a progression of blooms [see: Inspiring Flower Gardens].
Next, look for plants of varying height.
Try to balance larger plants in your back border with a several smaller ones in the mid- and front border. That gives each a sense of scale and proportion, and makes sure you can see each bloom.
Group your plants so that the forms of their flowers and foliage complement each other.
If you’re aiming for the unstructured effect—say, an English border—try for a many different plant forms. Flowering plants come in wide, narrow, rounded and spiky shapes. Some are dense, others are airy and branching.
Alternate drifts of color with similar plants and different shapes. Repeat patterns at different heights. The canvas is yours to choose.
Island Flower Beds
You can use the same tips provided for borders to design freestanding—or island—flower beds. There’s a caution to follow, however.
You may find that planning a bed is a bit trickier than planning a border because islands can be seen from nearly every angle.
For this reason, put your tallest plants in the center of the island, planting them first. Surround them on all sides with shorter flowering plants, either a single row or several rows that each step down in height.
Island beds usually have regular, or semi-regular, geometric designs. They help conveys a more formal feeling. Remember that fact might affect your plant choices and require a bit more thought.
These basics of good flower-bed design always provide a foundation for those who have an adventurous spirit as well as for those who prefer simple or traditional gardens.
Step-By-Step Instructions
Plant mixed annual and perennial flowers in group settings, with several individual plants of a single species building either an orderly or irregular shape that joins with nearby neighbors.
To emphasize the difference, choose plants that have different profiles, growth habits, and foliage texture, as well as complementary flower colors and shapes.
Gather your transplants, shovel, garden trowel, and a small rake, then follow these simple steps:
How to Place Mixed Flowers in Borders
Start at the rear of the bed. Place plants at the back margin of a border or in the center of an island bed. Dig planting holes and plant them.
Mark a wedge-shaped area, place tall blooming flowering plants in the marked area, and plant them.
Next, move to one side and forward in the border or bed.
Mark an oval-shaped drift or grouping of flowering plants of medium height. Place and plant them.
Working carefully around the previous plantings, mark a half-oval of low-growing plants, farther forward in the border or bed.
They should span the area between the first two planted groups.
Their purpose is to unify the three groups and complete a triangular composition of flowers when they bloom.
Mark a line along the front of the border, spaced as far from the edge as the typical spacing distance for the flower species.
Place low-growing, trailing, or spreading plants along the line. Stagger the plants diagonally on each side of the line in a Z-shaped pattern. Plant them.
This completes the border or bed’s plantings. Adjust to fill any bare spots or improve the look of the groups.
In a few weeks, the plants will fill in their areas, grow taller, and start to flower.
As plants finish blooming, replace them with later-blooming flowers with similar growth habits and colors.
Arranging Containers of Flowering Plants
Small containers look best when arranged in odd-numbered groups.
The best mixed-floral displays of flowering plants or bulbs use containers of the same general appearance. Plant each container with a different species, keeping in mind your arrangement’s design.
Next, gather your planted containers and a role of masking tape, then follow these simple steps:
How to Arrange Containers Groups
Evaluate your site, marking its boundaries with masking tape. Choose a geometric design: a circle, rectangle, or triangle.
Use the tape to mark the outer edges of the display after measuring the length of your assembled containers’ perimeter.
Line the containers with the tallest plants in front of green foliage, along a wall or edge, or arrange them in an L-shape at a corner.
Divide containers with mid-height plants into two groups.
Position a group at each side, and move them slightly in front of the back row of tall plants.
Fill the spaces between the two groups and the front of the grouping with containers of short or trailing flowering plants.
When making container arrangements in open or island areas of a deck, patio, or other area of landscape, place the containers in a triangle or diamond shape, with its tallest plants at the arrangement’s center.