Creating a stylish flower garden is considered the supreme discipline of creative garden design. There is a great temptation to simply plant all your favorite flowers as a colorful hodgepodge. Anyone who goes to work with disciplined planning will receive admiring glances over the garden fence. This guide explains in practical terms how you can create a tasteful flower garden.
How can I create a tasteful flower garden?
To create a stylish flower garden, choose a suitable theme that fits the house style and harmoniously combine leading perennials, companion plants and filler plants. Consider site conditions and create visual depth through color combinations.
Cohesive motto demonstrates style confidence – creative options at a glance
Garden architects of distinction advocate the stylistic unity of house and garden. By giving your flower garden a theme, you are honoring the guiding principle. The following options for a successful combination of architectural style and flower garden have proven themselves successfully in practice:
- Modern construction: Japanese garden style or strictly formal flower garden with spartan planting
- Country house style: Mediterranean flower garden with warm tones
- Classic house construction or half-timbered style: cottage garden as a liaison of vegetables and historical flowers
Ultimately, the site conditions decide on the plants with which you can implement the motto in the flower garden. In the front garden on the north side, you cannot create a Mediterranean-style flower garden, but will prefer the more flexible plant arrangement for the Japanese garden. Conversely, moss-covered hills in a Zen garden have a difficult time on the south side in full sun.
Leading perennials, companion and filler plants – tips for more planning security
Theorists among hobby gardeners concretize the motto of garden design in a true-to-scale plan sketch. If you count yourself among the practitioners, position the selected plants in the intended location in advance in order to take in the appearance. However you proceed, we would like to recommend these premises for the plant composition:
- Majestic leading perennials as a backdrop or eye-catcher in the center
- Companion plants tailored to the color and growth habit of the leading perennials
- Flowering ground cover and annual perennial bloomers as gap fillers
The proportion of key perennials ranges between 10 and 15 percent. In contrast, companion plants and filler perennials each make up around half of the remaining plant community in the flower garden.
Tip
Did you know that you can simulate spatial depth with the right color combination? Choose darker tones for key perennials in the background than for companion and filler plants. Light pastel colors in the foreground of the flower arrangement suggest to the viewer more spaciousness than the small garden actually has to offer.
