Creating an Annual Flower Bed

October 26, 2009

Gardening
Annual flower beds are a beautiful site to see. Since most annual flowers are quite colorful, they’re planted into beds where color is most desired or needed. Used for a wide variety of exterior landscaping and garden design purposes, annual flowers come in every color of the rainbow and they can have any number of textures and shapes too.

Annuals are also popular because they’re versatile. In other words: You don’t have to make a long term gardening commitment to them. If you’d simply like to try various flower colors and arrangements around your home and lawn, you can put in annual flower beds whose designs change every year.

Creating an annual flower bed can be quite easy too. They range from the quick and simple to the more elaborate and established varieties. If for instance, you want a quick and easy annual flower bed, then you’d simply pick out a spot in your yard and get started with planting it. You could add a bed border later, or just not put a border on it at all so that the area is easily acclimated back into the rest of the yard next season.

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Garden Tip...

There are two simple methods of treatment that Cactuses should receive, namely: First, keep the soil about them constantly dry, and keep them in a warm place. Secondly, the soil should be of a poor quality, mixed with a little brick dust, and they should never be allowed too much pot room. If either of these two points are observed in the treatment of Cactuses, there will be no difficulty in keeping them in a flourishing condition all the time.
~ James Sheehan
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If you know for sure you’ll want a garden bed in a specific place for many years to come of course, then you might choose to create a raised bed instead. Even raised beds are quite versatile when used for planting annuals though, because while the location may stay the same, you’ll be able to try out many different types of flowers as often as you’d like.

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Garden Tip...

The spring is preferable to the fall for setting out trees and shrubs of all kinds. In the Northern States they should be set out about the first of April, to give the roots time enough to become established before warm weather starts the leaves.
~ James Sheehan
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Quite possibly the most difficult decision you’ll need to make when creating annual flower beds, is to choose which flowers to grow this year. Since annuals come in so many different varieties, colors, shapes, sizes, and textures, you may be tempted to simply plant an eclectic bunch of mismatched everything. And if you like the eclectic style, that’s of course perfectly fine to do.

When planting a wide variety of annual flowers, there are of course several guidelines you should follow to get the best results. First and foremost you’ll need to make sure each of the annual plants you’ve chosen can grow in the flower bed you intend to put them in. You won’t have much luck if you try to mix shade plants with sun lovers for instance.

The other thing you’ll need to know is how large the annual flowers will grow throughout the season. If you plant a little bit of everything randomly in your flower bed, you may find yourself with something of a mess in about a month or two. If you have tall flowers growing in the front of your bed for instance, and little bitty ground covers flowering in the back, you won’t see those flowering ground covers well at all because the tall plants will obscure them from site.

So a basic rule of thumb for flower bed gardening is to put the taller plants in the back, and plant successively shorter ones in front of them. Repeat this with each plant size, until you have the shortest, smallest, or trailing plants at the very front of your garden bed. Then when everything is matured and blooming nicely, you’ll be able to enjoy the full variations of colors, textures, and groupings in your annual flower bed.