When you start decorating your site, you need to know not only how to set up a flower garden, but also how to care for the planted plants. Given what crops you sow, the cultivation technique will depend. Do not try to plant flowers as thick as possible, because every year perennials will grow both upward and in breadth, which means that they will need more and more space.
Before arranging a flower garden, choose a suitable place for this. In most cases, it should be well lit and protected from strong winds. Regardless of whether you want to arrange one large flower bed or place several small flower beds on a selected area, the preparatory work will be the same in any case.
Before you break up a flower garden on a site, first sketch on a sheet of paper for the location of flower and decorative plantings on the site. Be sure to indicate the grid with the footage, the names of the crops and their location.
Arrangement of a flower garden in the country: transferring a grid from a plan to a plot
After the plan for the arrangement of the flower garden has been drawn up, it is time to bring it, as they say, to life. To do this, using a wooden stick, you need to transfer the grid from the plan to the selected area, and then outline the contours of future flower beds. As you work, check the lines in each square of the plan with the lines in each cell of the grid drawn on the ground. Make the finished contour of each flower garden clearer by laying a thick cord along it.
To develop the flower garden in the way the correct technology suggests, by going back a few steps or climbing a dais, check the correctness of the forms, make adjustments if necessary. After that, dig up the soil in the flower garden, first cutting through the soil along the contour, and then digging it up inside the flower bed.
When arranging a flower garden with your own hands, carefully remove the roots that come across from previous plantings. Dig a small groove along the edge, then place a curb in it. It should rise 10-12 cm above the ground.
Before planting plants, in order to break a flower garden in the country, you need to apply fertilizer to the treated soil. Heavy clay soil, as well as sandy and peaty, require organic and mineral fertilizers with the addition of compost. After that, dig up the earth again, and then carefully loosen it.
These photos show how to break a flower garden on the site:
How to set up a flower garden in the country: a choice of beautiful plants (with photo)
It is not enough to observe the correct technology for arranging a flower garden – it is necessary to decide on which type of plants in terms of life expectancy it is better to choose for planting. There are three main groups – annuals, biennials and perennials. The first bloom takes place within one season after planting. Biennials and perennials usually bloom in the second year.
There are a great many varieties of seed for annual plants on the modern market, so the choice is very rich. They can be grown as seedlings or sown directly into the ground. After planting, after 7-10 weeks, the plants begin to bloom. Some of them bloom until late autumn.
Perennials are also considered annuals, which, due to the climatic conditions of a particular area, are not left in the open field for the winter.
The life cycle of biennials lasts for 2 years. In the first year, leaves appear, and flowering begins only in the second year.
Perennials, one might say, are very unpretentious, since they grow in the same place for many years, without requiring a transplant or any kind of care.
Perennial plants usually bloom in the second or third year of their life. They can grow in poor soil, next to a pond in the shade, usually these plants are decorated with alpine slides.
To set up a flower garden beautifully, as you saw in beautiful photographs, it is better to plant several types of plants together: since all of them bloom at different times, your flower bed will delight the eye all season.
Reproduction of perennial plants is carried out using bulbs, tubers, seeds, cuttings, as well as by dividing the bush. Despite the fact that most perennials do not require special care, the cultivation of bulbous and tuberous plants requires a special approach.
Look at the photo of how to set up a flower garden in the country and what plants you can plant:
How to arrange a flower garden: planting plants
Now is the time to plant the plants. When arranging a flower garden in the country, annuals are usually planted in flower beds in May, however, some annual crops will bloom well if the seeds are sown directly into the ground, and after the shoots appear, thinning is carried out. Sowing can be done in winter. In this case, the seeds are sown in late October or early November.
Biennial crops must be planted in the ground in August or September (this is done so that the plants take root faster). They can also be planted in early spring.
Planting of perennial crops in the ground is carried out in the autumn, as well as in the spring. The main thing is that the plant has time to take root before the first autumn frosts.
Bulbous crops are planted in a flower bed either at the end of August or at the beginning of September.
If the flower garden is small in size, it is best to plant two or three types of plants in it, which combine well with each other not only in color, but also in terms of flowering, and also have a beneficial effect on each other when grown together. In the event that you could not find plants that bloom at the same time, you can plant a flower garden with aromatic herbs that do not lose their attractiveness in appearance even when there are no flowers on them.
How to set up a flower garden on the site and how to care for it
If you are going to break a flower garden with your own hands, you should keep in mind that you need to constantly look after it. This primarily concerns watering. Plants are watered immediately after planting, even if the soil is moist enough. Annual crops need to be watered every day until they take root, and then every other day. Perennial plants require frequent watering only in the first year, and in subsequent years only during drought.
Watering plants is necessary in the early morning or evening, when the sun is low above the horizon. During the day, watering is not carried out due to the fact that crops can get burned, and the soil can crack.
Caring for the flower garden, you need to periodically clean it of dried leaves and stems, remove old inflorescences. In addition, you should regularly weed the beds and loosen the soil in them, and fertilize the crops. Removing weeds and loosening is necessary in order to retain moisture in the soil, as well as to maintain air exchange.
It is necessary to loosen the soil some time after heavy rain or watering. Loosening of annuals is carried out to a depth of 5 cm, perennials to a depth of 10 cm.To avoid damage to the roots of young plants, the soil next to the bushes is loosened to a depth of no more than 3 cm.
Top dressing of flower and ornamental crops is usually carried out with the use of mineral and organic fertilizers. As an organic fertilizer, a solution of cow manure and poultry manure diluted with water is used.
When arranging and maintaining a flower garden on a personal plot, mineral fertilizers are applied to the soil both in dry and liquid form (solution). Such a fertilizer is being prepared from the following components: 25 g of ammonium nitrate, 50 g of superphosphate, 15 g of potassium fertilizer (per 1 m2). Liquid dressing has a stronger effect, but remember: it must not get on the leaves, as well as the roots of crops.
Top dressing of annual plants is carried out 2 weeks after planting, and then after 1 month. Perennial crops require feeding 2-3 times during each year. The first time it is carried out in the spring, the second – before the plants bloom, and the third – at the end of their flowering.
