> Next: Plant Hardiness and Climate
Regional Differences and Flowers
In This Section
In this section, you’ll find discussions, explanations, and directions that will help you understand the conditions of your site and regional differences present in your area, along with five do-it-yourself garden building projects helpful for flower gardeners:
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- Understanding your garden’s site and influences of climate, microclimates, wind exposure and other factors.
- Regional tips specific to planting and growing flowering bulbs and bulbous plants.
- How to find and apply U.S.D.A. Plant Hardiness Zone descriptions to your garden and plants.
- Five complete do-it-yourself (DIY) garden building projects with plan drawings, step-by-step instructions and photos, and building materials lists.
On This Page
Here, you’ll find discussions of the following subjects or referrals to building projects beneath each of the following titles:
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- Garden Sites and Building Projects
- Growing in Your Climate and Conditions
- Your Climate is Different Than Your Neighbors’ Climate
- Site Improvements
- Improving a Garden’s Hardscape
- Garden Building Projects
- Building Planters and Beds
- Building a Mailbox Planter
- Building a Wooden Rose Arbor
- Building a Window-Box Planter
- Building Border Edgings
Garden Sites and Building Projects
Understanding the growing conditions of your planting site and building improvements are sure ways to help your flowers thrive in every climate.
Whether you live in a woodland setting, by the seaside, in the desert, or have a prairie home, you can beautify your home’s landscape with flowering plants.
In this section, you’ll recognize how your garden location is unique from gardens in other regions or even from your neighbors’ yards down the street.
You’ll also find your U.S.D.A. Plant Hardiness Zone, a key to knowing how cold winters can be in your area, and which perennial flowers will survive in your climate.
Finally, you’ll find several different do-it-yourself projects to build or construct new features that beautify your landscape and home.
Let’s get started by looking at what your flowers need to thrive and how you can help them grow strong, healthy, and produce beautiful blooms.
Growing in Your Climate and Conditions
Regardless of where you garden, you’ll find many flowering plants that fit your climate and site’s conditions.
Each flower naturally is adapted to certain preferred growing conditions, including cold- and heat-tolerance, the amount of light it receives, exposure to drying winds, and the soil moisture, fertility, texture and acidity in which it is planted.
These factors stem from the plant’s native habitat—where it grew wild.
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Flower breeders widen these requirements by selective breeding of new hybrids. Botanists choose parent plants that naturally tolerate more heat or cold, less or more light, or grow well in soils that are less fertile and inviting than those preferred by their wild ancestors.
Let’s look more closely at these needs, so that you can judge the quality of the flower planting sites found in your own yard.
If you want to know the details of flower horticulture or biology of growth and blooming of flowering plants, first refer to Flower Facts and Flower Plant Lifecyles]. Both articles provide valuable understanding useful for gardeners growing flowers in home landscapes.
All annuals and the frost-tender perennials die at the end of the garden season in areas with cold-winter climates. In milder regions, the tender perennials may live on for years along with their hardy cousins.
Your Climate is Different Than Your Neighbors’ Climate
It’s important, therefore, to know how cold winters occasionally get in the location where you garden. It’s easy. Just refer to the U.S.D.A.’s convenient plant hardiness zone map for your country [see: Plant Hardiness and Climate].
Once you know your hardiness zone, every flowering perennial plant you may consider for your flower garden has a convenient plant hardiness zone rating to show where it will grow reliably [see: Perennials Guide]. Choose only plants rated for your zone, or treat those from other zones as temporary, annual flower plantings in your yard.
Sun exposure is another very important consideration. Most flowering plants do well in full sun, but some prefer partial sun, filtered sun, or even shady planting sites to those with full exposure.
Planting a flower that prefers full sun in a part of your yard with too much shade means they will barely flower and will grow leggy and weak foliage.
Again, use the Perennials plant guide, seed packages, or plant tags to find the light exposure needs of plants you will grow and match them to locations in your garden.
Try to avoid planting flowers in areas of your yard that receive strong, drying winds.
Winds rob plants of their moisture, forces gardeners to stake tall flower spikes, stems, and clusters, and causes them to use more of their energy to grow strong instead of producing flowers.
Lastly, soil for your flowers has three main requirements: fertility, proper drainage, and high organic content.
Mineral soils are made up of sand, silt, and clay. Organics such as decayed plant materials—green compost—and decomposed animal manure—brown compost—help hold moisture and slowly release nutrients for use by your flowers.
Good soils for most flower gardens are a mixture, nearly half of which are minerals. The rest, surprisingly, is mostly air (20–30%) and water (20–30%). Only about 5–10% is organic material, yet that does the most good for your flowers.
Fortunately, it’s easy to learn how to prepare the right soils for annuals and perennial flowers and bulbs, including special soil mixes used to grow plants in containers:
Site Improvements
Both structural improvements—landscape installers refer to them as “hardscape,” as opposed to the plants, or “greenscape”—and aesthetic additions add to the beauty of your landscape, flower garden, and yard.
Your garden plan may include adding hardscape systems such as drainage lines, garden lighting, or irrigation. Masonry or wood borders and edgings are useful for dividing turf areas from your planting beds.
These improvements always should be completed before you amend or fertilize the soil in planting areas, and before you plant your flowers.
Many gardeners also like to include structures—arbors, gazebos, or shade covers—or attractive features—planters, container stands, and plant hangers in their landscape plans.
Improving a Garden’s Hardscape
Adding systems such as drainage, garden lighting, and irrigation are easy tasks for most gardeners. For help with any complex site improvements, consult with a licensed landscape contractor.
It’s best to install underground drainage and irrigation pipes before the soil is amended and graded prior to planting. Add low-voltage lighting fixtures after planting.
Here are a series of tips on these common site improvements:
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Drainage
If your property has heavy runoff during storms or standing water remains even though skies clear, consult a professional for advice before proceeding.
Always build walks and raised beds so they either channel runoff away from structures and neighboring yards, or install drainage channels and pipes to pass beneath them.
When perennial beds are installed near a house or other structure, always grade the soil to a slope that is at least 2 inches (50 mm) fall every 10 feet (3 m), The slope will help direct and drain water away from the building.
Irrigation
An automatic irrigation system is a lifesaver for your plants, especially in gardens subject to an arid or Mediterranean climate with intermittent periods of drought. They also are convenient for those with limited time to water, mobility issues, or gardeners with jobs or lifestyles that require travel for extended periods of time.
There are two basic styles of permanent irrigation systems: high-pressure sprays and low-pressure drips.
High-pressure systems are made of rigid polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe that delivers water to stationary or rotating spray heads. Such systems deliver lots of water—1.5–3 gallons per minute (6–11 lpm)—equivalent to a heavy downpour.
Low-pressure drip irrigation systems use flexible polyethylene tubing installed in runs along the garden’s soil and covered with mulch. Drip systems deliver water slowly—at rates ranging from 0.25–3 gallons per hour (1–11 lph) —through an array of drip emitters.
Avoiding overhead watering is better for most flowers’ growth, so pass up high-pressure water systems and consider drip.
Drip systems have the added benefit of being easier to install and control than sprays. They’re also easy to adjust, reposition, and change as you add or replace plants.
Spray heads, rotors, and drip emitters are divided into separate watering “circuits,” each on a separate valve, since different outlets require varying lengths of time.
Both systems use electronic control valves that mount to your yard’s permanent plumbing fixtures. Most include automatic timers to turn the system on and off.
Lighting
Installing low-voltage lighting, available in kits at most garden stores, makes the flower garden safer during evenings and helps showcase your beautiful flowers. Adding low-voltage lights is easy. These lights and cables are very safe to handle, virtually free of electrical shock hazard.
Before connecting low-voltage lighting transformers to any 110 volt electrical outlets in your landscape, however, make sure that your site’s electrical feed includes an outlet protected by a ground fault circuit interrupter [GFCI] or ask an electrician to install one. GFCI circuits turn off instantly should a short-circuit be detected.
The lighting kit’s transformer plug into this protected outlet. Include spotlights and floodlights rather than path lights to focus light on your flowers. Place floodlights in spots that accent your tallest plantings.
Set floodlights at the corners and curves of beds or borders, at the front edge to illuminate pale flowers or muted foliage, and in the middle of beds to brighten narrow, open, or elegantly shaped plants.
Check the layout from every vantage point before choosing light fixture locations. When connecting fixtures to 12-volt cable, allow extra cable between each fixture—loop it into a tidy circle at the base of a stake—so you can move and adjust lights as your plants grow. Cover the excess cable with mulch, or trench and bury it safely out of sight
Garden Building Projects
There’s little but imagination to prevent an enthusiastic flower gardener from dressing up their landscape with construction and building projects. These projects are just a few that add unique and personal touches to your garden and yard that aren’t available in any store at any price.
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