Creating a flower garden in the country is an interesting business, but it requires some knowledge and skills. Few garden areas are complete without flowers. The correct flower garden should not combine a huge number of flowering herbaceous plants and shrubs in its area. An alley, front garden or garden can become beautiful and harmonious even with only a few types of flowers. Even if most of the land is occupied by a vegetable garden, one or more beautiful flower beds can give it a more romantic, stylish or cozy look. Working on the creation of a flower garden allows you to show your imagination, and then enjoy the result of your labors for a long time. The main thing is to correctly arrange the plantings on the site.
How to make a flower garden
Even before creating the simplest flower bed, you need to draw up a clear plan. The entire garden is carefully examined, assessing where exactly the future flower garden will fit best. Usually, the most prominent place is chosen for him or they arrange flower plantings near the resting corners.
You can choose a place for a future flower bed, depending on the requirements of the plants that will be planted on it. There is another approach - the selection of species for the conditions of the selected area. Along with the decorative function, the flower garden can also perform a practical one - serve as a conditional border, contributing to the zoning of the site. Flowers can separate one part of the garden from another, or mask unsightly corners of the garden.
Having decided to make a flower garden in the garden, you need to evaluate:
- The total area of the garden, as well as the size of the local area or yard. The larger the garden, the more flower beds there can be. But at the same time, they will require more care.
- The style of the site and the buildings located on it. Combining with them, flower plantings will help to complete the landscape and add the necessary accents.
- An area occupied by other plantings - a vegetable garden, fruit trees or bushes. It is important that there is enough space for everyone. Sometimes flower beds are inscribed between the beds. Some plants, with their aroma, are able to drive away pests, helping crops growing nearby.
Style selection
When a corner for the future flower bed is found, you need to decide on its type. There are many different types of flower beds, including mixborders, ridges and borders, stone gardens and monoclumba. For example, a flower garden in a regular style is clear contours and lines, geometric patterns that are conveyed by plants in flower beds, ridges, parterres and as a border. And the landscape composition is distinguished by smooth lines and contours, as in rockeries and mixborders.
Having decided on the place and method of decoration, the area allocated for the flower garden is limited to a full-fledged or symbolic side, which will serve as the edge of the flower bed and additionally emphasize the flower island. It is recommended to prepare a place for planting flower beds in the fall.If it was not possible to take care of this in advance, they begin to equip the flowerbed at least a couple of weeks before sowing or planting seedlings.
Correct selection of plants
Plants for flower gardens can be selected based on external characteristics. So a flower bed can combine different shades of the same color, represent a full color variety or a composition of several colors.
In order for different species to get along better with each other, it is necessary to select flowers with similar requirements for light and watering. The filling of the flower bed will also depend on how much time it will have to devote. So that the flowers do not lose their appearance without careful care, you should dwell on well-proven unpretentious plantings. But even they will require some care.
Some species and varieties of flowers, as they develop, can begin to crowd out neighbors, so their roots must be limited in advance by digging into the ground a semblance of an obstacle. Planting must be carried out taking into account the subsequent growth of plantings - excessive tightness can lead to the development of diseases, and plants planted too far from each other will take up a lot of space and will look less impressive.
The plants in the flowerbed are selected in accordance with the taste of its creators. It can be a flower arrangement of the same shades of flowers or similar in palette. You can plant bright flowers next to white ones, this will create a colorful and attractive look. By alternating flowers not only in shades, but also in height, you can create a multistage or wavy surface from high and low specimens.
A flower garden will become even more attractive if a pleasant aroma emanates from it in any weather. To do this, you can sow seeds of flowering herbs, which will smell in hot weather (like thyme and lavender) and cloudy (like silver-leaved immortelle) equally pleasant. One has only to purchase the necessary seed material in advance.
The shape and layout of the flower garden
Before building a flower garden, it is recommended to make its project on a sheet of paper. First you need to decide on its shape. Depending on the available land area in the country, the flower garden can be round, oval, rectangular or elliptical. After choosing the shape, you can proceed to the marking on the ground.
The easiest way is to make a round shape. A small wooden peg is driven into about the middle of the future flower garden, one end of a rope is tied to it, and another small peg is tied to the other. With the help of such a kind of "compass" it is easy to outline the boundaries of a circle on the surface of the earth. A small circle can be made by shortening the length of the rope, and a large one by adding it.
Using the same pegs and a rope, various geometric shapes are marked, some of which are quite simple (like a square or rectangle), while others will have to spend a little more time (like with an ellipse). Having decided on the boundaries, it is recommended to immediately use a shovel to make a depression along the entire perimeter or circumference of the territory. And in order for the outlines of the flower garden to be clearly visible, you need to spread out a fifteen-centimeter layer of turf along the outer edge.
Types of flower beds
Mixborder
A mixborder is a flower bed of flowers that differ in size and shape. A variety of plantings can be concentrated in such a flower garden, from annual grasses to bushes and trees. Most often, mixborders are organized next to the support - near walls or fences, and also use them as zoning plantings. Mixborders can also be placed against a green background of larger trees or bushes. Flowers look especially impressive next to coniferous plantings.
In such a flower bed, plantings are distributed in tiers, based on size and height. So that the flowers do not obscure each other's light and do not interfere with admiring the entire species diversity of the flower beds, low bushes are located in the foreground, and the highest ones in the background.Depending on the selected plants, the flowerbed can bloom together or gradually. The first method allows you to produce the maximum decorative effect in a shorter time. The second is to create a flower bed that will delight the eye from spring or early summer until autumn. In this case, you will have to select plants with different flowering periods. The fading should be replaced by new plantings. This will allow the flower garden to remain decorative throughout the warm season.
Some plants in such a flower garden are considered "skeletal" - the composition is built based on their height and width of the bush. When choosing plantings for such a flower bed, preference is given to plants that remain beautiful even after flowering or are completely hidden from view behind the foliage or flowers of neighboring plantings. A sloppy or flown bush can destroy the entire beauty of the composition.
Mixborders can be made from both annuals and perennials, or arrange a mixed-type flower garden. The first option allows you to quickly create a seasonal flower bed and change it completely next year, if desired. The second option assumes a longer development cycle of seedlings - not all perennials begin to bloom in the first year, but then it will save you from planting worries.
Border
If the territory of the site is not large enough for large flower beds, you can frame the paths with flowers. This type of flower bed is called a border. The width of such a flower bed usually does not exceed half a meter. For its filling, bright and long-flowering plants are most often used. So that the growing bushes do not interfere with walking along the path, preference is given to compact, strong and not too tall species.
Pansies blooming all summer long look great as a flowering border. And one continuous flowering carpet can be obtained by planting flowers very close to each other.
Rabatka
Another flower bed in the form of a strip is a rabatka. Such a flower garden is wider than the curb and resembles a multi-colored mosaic. To create a rabatka, several types of plants of the same height are used, alternating them with each other in various combinations to create a rhythmic pattern. The finished flower garden resembles a living carpet. Such a flower bed looks elegant and attractive, therefore it is often located in front of the house.
Most suitable for a rabatka are cosmos, garden daisies, tulips, daffodils, lupins. These plants can be used to distinguish the contours of the porch, paths, paths or resting places in the backyard.
Paved area decoration
The courtyard near the house is often lined with tiles or paving stones. This design looks neat and makes it easier to care for the local area. But planting flowers among the tiles will no longer work. To decorate such a courtyard, a variety of mobile containers are used. Flowers here can grow in flowerpots or any suitable container. At the same time, walls or curtain structures can be decorated with pots with ampelous plants.
Usually flowerpots with flowers are placed near the entrance to the house. Such a design allows, if desired, to supplement the composition with other containers with plantings, as well as transfer or rearrange flowers, depending on the situation. The use of hanging containers with plants, in addition to decorating, significantly saves space on the site.
Sometimes, when paving the courtyard, an open area is specially left for planting flowers. Most often it is located near the fence. This allows the use of climbing plants that completely encircle the fence and visually expand the area of landscaping. In the foreground in such a flower garden are variegated annuals.
Flower garden using stones
Flower beds with natural stones are becoming more and more popular. They are divided into two main groups: rockeries and rock gardens. In the first case, stones play the dominant role of the composition, and in the second, they serve as a background for plants.
Rockery
To form rockeries, you will need a flat piece of land.Large boulders will be distributed on it. To create the effect of a natural landscape, the largest stones are dug into the ground. Smaller stones are distributed next to them. Free places are covered with pebbles, sand or fine gravel. Usually, a contrasting color is chosen for the dumping - this way the stones will seem more noticeable against its background.
It is recommended to create rockeries from stones of the same breed: limestone, sandstone, tuff. The composition is only completed with plants, they are planted when the main design work has already been completed. Unpretentious and not too bright, but attractive species look best in rockeries: conifers and various cereals.
Rock garden
Unlike rockery, which requires a flat area, rock garden involves the creation of an earthen slide. The resulting hill is supplemented with stones, and herbs and flowers are planted between them. For rock gardens, ground cover species are ideal, quickly filling the free gaps between boulders.
In addition, you can use perennial flowers with creeping shoots: gentian, rezuha. Low conifers will also fit well into the composition. The height of the rock garden must be calculated from the total area of the site so that the result looks harmonious and natural. Low alpine slides look good against the background of large bushes or coniferous plantings.
A properly designed rock garden will require very little care. Ground cover species grow rapidly, clogging weeds on their own. To prevent their appearance at an early stage of planting, geotextiles are used. They cover the base for the slide, and the cultivated plants are planted in the holes made in it. Stone filling will help to hide the protective layer from sight. For rockeries, this method is also suitable.
Time-consuming flower garden
Most flower beds require regular maintenance. If there is no time left to take care of the flowers, but you still want to decorate the site, you can create a flower lawn on the site, also called Moorish. Unlike the usual lawn of smooth green grass, it is a motley lawn of cereals and flowers. Cereals form the basis of the lawn - it consists of about 70% of them, everything else is unpretentious flowering species.
In the Moorish lawn, you can find poppies and cornflowers, nigella, tansy, echinacea and other species that are undemanding to care for, which can revive the green lawn. Unlike a mixborder, which combines plants of different heights, here the plantings should look uniform and not be knocked out of the total mass.
Monoclumba
A flower garden made up of many plants of the same species or variety is called a monoclumba. Usually, such massive and catchy plantings are placed against the background of an ordinary lawn, freeing up for this a "window" among its grass. Its shape is most often simple: round, oval, rectangular, etc.
Such a flower bed can also be seasonal, but this will require changing the plantings growing there. Usually in the spring they have bulbs there, losing their appearance with the arrival of summer. Then, in their place, seedlings of bright flowers are planted, delighting for a long time with their appearance: petunias, zinnias, cellosis or marigolds. Perennials, including roses, can also be used for monoclumba. Sometimes, instead of flowering plants, monoclumbas are filled with decorative leafy species, for example, hosts.
There can be several or only one flower bed, but they will certainly add charm to the appearance of the garden.
Making a flower garden in the country is not only a pleasant and responsible occupation, but also an opportunity to learn how to create the appearance of continuous flowering of various plants throughout the season. For example, when planting perennials, it becomes possible to admire their tenderness in spring, brightness and saturation of shades in the summer and autumn colors with the arrival of September. For each style of flower garden, it is recommended to select different types and varieties of plants.
