Soil Requirements for Garden Flowers

The beauty of flowering plants needs little exaggeration of any description. Every gardener seeks the beauty and color that a variety of flowers can bring to the landscape. The proper arrangement of flower beds in your garden and thoughtful care to them can insure you a continuing bloom of colorful flowers year after year.

With planning, it is possible to maintain flowers in your garden during the entire length of the growing season. Borders and beds are planted with flowering annuals and perennials which bloom at different times during the year. By choosing carefully from the beginning, and caring for the flowers thereafter, the bloom periods will overlap each other. There will never be a period when an old bloom disappears and a new one will start to show its color.

Soil Preparation

Preparing the soil for flower beds or borders requires more care than planting a lawn. For example, digging must be deeper. You could dig the bed 2 feet deep, although 1 1/2 feet is suitable. It is, possible to grow flowers in a shallower bed than this, but the deeper you dig, the better your production will be. Any heavy lumps should be broken up, spread in some sand, cinders or ashes in the bottom soil to break it up. It’s a good practice to work in some manure, well-rotted compost, grass clippings or peat moss into the bottom. Let it settle naturally - do not firm the bottom soil down.

Good loam should be used for the topsoil - e.g., humus, peat moss, well-rotted manure, well-sifted leaf mold or heavy sand. Wood ashes are fine for spring, and lime may be used for loosening the soil. You might think about the character of your soil and consider the particular fertilizer which contains the elements your soil needs most. Should you use manure - CAUTION - be careful not to let it touch the roots of plants.

The problems of color should be kept in mind when planning flower borders and beds, so that while there is sufficient contrast in texture and color of the flowers, there is at the same time an attractive blending.

Video: How to Prepare Clay Soil for Gardening

Beds and Borders

For example, a bed of annuals, might be designed to show off zinnias, with contrast provided by such softer flowers as chrysanthemum, scabiosa, nasturtium, cosmos and andytuft. The position or location of the flower bed is important. Ideally, it should be close to the house, facing south or southwest. Any location that gets good sun, however, will produce lots of color.

The border should be located away from trees or shrubs. These plants absorb more than their share of moisture and nutrients from the soil and, because of their strength, can overpower the more delicate flowering plants. A good background like a stone wall or a fence adds to the beauty of a border or flower bed, and evergreen shrubs make a pleasing backdrop. No need to hold back on edgings, as they are often one color (e.g., the white of alyssum). The foliage of coral bells makes a handsome edge, are an all-season flowering plant, and provide unusual cut flowers. Baby pansies, violas, portulaca, ageratum, dwarf double nasturtium and dwarf marigolds are multi-colored flowers.