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Planning and Planting a Layered Island Flower Bed
The Layered Island Flower Bed Plan
Open lawn areas of landscapes make good locations for freestanding, layered island beds of flowers of varied heights planted in a formal pattern.
While specific plant choices, color selections, and placements are shown in this plan, most gardeners will freely substitute other plants, pick different flower colors, and make other changes to fit similar designs to their own flower bed.
Use this example island bed plan as a suggestion to learn how to make a formal flower bed with patterned plantings of colorful flowers. Once you’ve copied the design shown, you’ll easily plan designs of your own.
About the Plan
As its name implies, different species of plants in varying heights make layered beds visually interesting. Short foreground plants provide a blanket of colorful flowers that hide the foliage and stems of tall species planted behind them.
Layered beds appear luxurious, because nearly every view is of brightly colored flowers. That makes them perfect for island plantings, beds in a lawn or bounded by paths. It’s easy to view the flowers from every angle, something seldom seen in a floral border or edging.
These tiered plantings group low plants at the outside, mid-height plants in the middle, and taller plants behind as a background.
This flower bed plan uses edging lobelia as a perimeter to set the bed apart from the lawn. Inside the lobelia, bronze-leaved bedding begonia frame separate plantings similar to panes of glass in a divided window.
Those panes are the innermost layers of the design, made of separate blocks of midsized yarrow and dwarf blue sage. Towering along the back is a perennial, French lavender mixed with taller, ‘Blue Hill’ sage.
Measure and mark the layout of the entire bed before you begin to plant. Set the individual French lavender plants in the rear, working forward towards the front edge of the bed. Each lavender needs at least 12 in. (30 cm) of space around it. The blocks of ‘Blue Hill’ sage go into those spaces.
Plant the yarrow and ‘Blue Queen’ sage blocks, dividing them with rows of bedding begonia. Finish the planting with the edging lobelia border plants.
About The Plants
The plan and design calls for a selection of common bedding plants available in most regions. You may match the cultivars exactly, or substitute other varieties with similar color and height.
All of the plants are tender perennials, hardy in zones 8–11. For gardens in cooler climates, plant these as annual color and plan to replant in the following spring.
Sage, lobelia, and begonia prefer moist conditions, while yarrow grows best in well-drained, drier soil. For best results, mound the soil under the yarrow at least 4 in. (10 cm) above the rest of the bed’s soil.
The Plant Palette
B. Bedding Begonia
Bedding Begonia (Begonia X semperflorens-cultorum) ‘Bronze-Leaf Rose’ or similar cultivar.
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