Don't settle for potted pansies. With a little effort and patience, you can create your own backyard paradise.Maybe you've just moved from an apartment to your first house. Between family, work, carpooling and everything else -- has it been 12 trips to the Home Depot? -- your first garden awaits your imprint. Planting flowers is a great way to exercise your creativity, but it can seem daunting to the beginner. Don't despair: The investment of time and energy will repay you in spades. After more than 20 years of designing gardens, here's my insider's guide to getting started.
1. Know your property's relationship to the sun. If you have a true southern exposure, you'll get direct sun most of the afternoon. A northern exposure will give you mainly shade; eastern exposure, morning sun and afternoon shade; western exposure, pretty much late-afternoon sun, with shade the rest of the day.
2. Make sure the type of garden you want can be done with the amount of sun you get. For example, although most herb and cutting gardens need direct sunlight (six hours of sun a day), woodland gardens thrive in shade. If you have a shady lot and you want a cutting garden just like the one you saw in a magazine, forget it. Instead, try to re-interpret it by using shade perennials, bulbs and shrubs.
3. Choose a site for your flower bed that can be viewed from inside your house. If possible, take advantage of garden views from outdoor terraces or patios, too.
4. Let your garden reflect your personal style, just as your indoor space does. If you tend toward the traditional indoors, think in terms of a traditional garden with a formal, symmetrical outline, perhaps with pedestals of evergreens to add to the mood. If you lean toward a more rustic style, your outdoor space should reflect that informal feel: Let an abundance of flowers brim over the edges of the garden, and use some flea market finds as containers.
5. When you're ready to experiment with the placement of the flower bed, lay out a hose to outline its shape and size. (Or use spray landscape paint from a paint store.) Leave the hose in one position for a few days before deciding whether that configuration works. Geometric shapes generally indicate a formal design; irregular or island beds are more informal.
6. When the soil has warmed up and is not too soggy, you can dig the bed. First, remove the grass -- roots and all -- with a spade, or use an herbicide (like Round-Up) or an organic grass killer. Then rototill the area or turn it over with a fork. At least 12 inches of good organic matter should be laid on top of the existing soil. Once you've raked the organic matter evenly across the bed, edge the perimeter with a sharp spade to give it a professional, crisp finish.
7. The most effective gardens are simple ones that follow the adage "Less is more." Select plants of various shapes and textures that bloom at different times of the gardening season and that resist disease and drought. Limit your palette to two or three colors. I like to work with combinations of three plants to create a vignette.
8. Plant a lot of each specimen. The repetition of specimens and colors soothes the eye and paves the way for a more glorious design. I plant a minimum of seven of each specimen in a small garden bed, and up to 20-something of each in an expansive area.
9. Plant in a flowing or wavelike pattern. Play around with the plants while they are still in their pots, positioning them around your garden bed to see how they look before you actually plant them. Some of my greatest moments of inspiration occur when I make last-minute changes.
10. Spread mulch as soon as possible after planting (no more than 2 inches thick). Do it carefully, to avoid damaging the plants.
11. Until the plants are settled in (about two weeks), I water every third day early in the morning, 30 to 45 minutes at a time, with a soaker hose or a rotating sprinkler.
12. Over the remainder of the spring (in cool regions, into the early summer), fill in bare areas with exuberant summer bulbs or tubers such as dahlias, cannas, elephant ears, oxalis and colocasias, and annual plants or seeds that can be scratched right into your garden soil.
13. To give the plants extra "oomph," spray them with an organic fertilizer, such as fish fertilizer, once every four weeks, preferably first thing in the morning when it's cool -- never when the temperature is above 80 degrees.
14. Be patient. Plants won't fully mature for a good two to three years. Enjoy the process and keep notes on the plant combinations that give you great pleasure. I think you will be surprised how often you use them as you continue to create new gardens.
Three of my favorite plant trios-- Perovskia atriplicifolia (Russian sage), Echinacea purpurea 'Magnus' (coneflower), Liatris spicata-- Salvia greggii 'Maraschino,' Alchemilla mollis (lady's mantle), Dahlia 'Bishop of Llandaff'-- Phlox divaricata 'Chattahoochee,' Tiarella cordifolia (foamflower), Dryopteris marginalis (leatherwood fern)
"Fran Sorin is a great source of gardening information and inspiration. Check out her site, you'll enjoy it. www.fransorin.com Order her latest book Digging Deep http://fransorin.com/book/, it's a must have for any gardener of any level. I love it. "
Yvonne Grenier GM Landscape Vision.
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