Planning and Planting a Formal Mixed-Flower Bed
The Mixed-Flower Bed Plan
Neat, structured, and orderly are a must for planning and planting a formal, mixed-flower island bed in your landscape or yard.
Either follow the specific plant choices, color selections, and placements shown in the plan, or feel free to substitute other plants better suited to your climate and conditions, pick different flower-color combinations, or make changes to the order in your own geometric design.
Use this example bed plan as a suggestion to learn how to plant an island bed with colorful flowers. Use it for a first try, but the same principles will produce your own unique flower plantings.
About the Plan
If this plan looks elegant and simple, that’s because it is.
It overlays arcs of four circles on a rectangular area, just missing the bed’s corners.
The four arcs create a unique diamond-shaped planting area in the center of the bed for colorful, featured flowers, while the outer perimeter makes a contrasting border of lavender-pink floss flower, subdued in color so that the center plantings show up.
In the center of the diamond and part way down the narrowing section of the rays, groups of hot pink, pink, and white cosmos flowers rise above the plane, a field of bright-yellow marigolds.
This height difference gives the formal island bed detail and elevation that helps separate the field from the accent plantings.
About the Plants
Flossflowers, used in the outer perimeter as a field of color, are low and mounding annual herbs. They have brightly colored, showy clusters of flowers. Flossflowers’ long-lasting blooms open in summer and bloom through to autumn. This durable display makes the bed a perfect mid- to late-summer floral arrangement for your yard.
If desired, dwarf periwinkle is a good substitute for flossflower.
Marigolds, the plants in the golden center field of the diamond, are another reliable season-long bloomer. With deadheading of spent blossoms to keep the bloom alive, the center of your bed will be filled with a cascade of golden flowers within weeks of planting.
Besides the more common gold used here, marigolds also are available in a variety of shades of yellow and white.
Cosmos, another annual flower, typically grows quite tall. The dwarf cultivars selected as taller accents in the plan are more bushy.
Dwarf cosmos has short-lived flowers, but the repeatedly form new buds. They will bloom many times throughout the early summer to late autumn.
Cosmos flower colors are pink, red, and violet. A single species, Cosmos sulphureus, blooms in gold or yellow.
All of the annuals selected for this bed grow equally well in fertile, well-drained soil and full sun locations.
The Plant Palette
C. Cosmos
Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus)—First variety of a 3-variety mixed planting, ‘Imperial Pink’ or a similar hot-pink cultivar.
Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus)—Second variety of a 3-variety mixed planting, ‘Sea Shells’ or a similar light-pink cultivar.
Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus)—Third variety of a 3-variety mixed planting, ‘Sensation’ or a similar ivory-white cultivar.
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