Perennial Flower Gardens

Whether you just want it to look beautiful or be
exotically perfumed, a little planning before you begin is a good idea. However, once your perennial flower garden is established, it is important to know, how to care for it.

Care of the Flower Garden

Knowing how to care for your flower garden can make a big difference in both the look and over-all health of your plants. Here are a few simple tips to make your garden bloom with health

1. The essentials should always be given first consideration.
Water, sunlight, and fertile soil are a plants basic needs. Lack of these necessities will greatly affect the health of any plant. It is vital to water your flower garden more frequently during dry spells.

When planting out, make sure bulbs are planted at the correct depth.With shrubs and perennials, make sure that soil or mulch isn't heaped up around the stem. If it is,then water will drain off instead of sinking in, and the stem could start to rot because it is overheating.

2. Mix and match perennials with annuals.

Perennial flower bulbs needn't to be replanted as they grow and bloom for several years, whilst annuals only grow and bloom for the one season. Mixing a few perennials in with annuals in a flower bed, ensures that you will always have plants coming into flower.

3. Deadhead to encourage more blooms

Deadheading is simply removing the flower heads after they have wilted and this makes the plant produce more flowers. Make sure that you don't discard the dead flower head on the garden, or mildew or other plant disease could attack your plants.

4. Know which are the good bugs.

Almost all garden insects do far more good than harm. Butterflies, beetles and bees are known pollinators. They fertilize plants through unintentionally transferring pollen from one plant to another and 80% of flowering plants rely on insects for survival. Without these little helpers, their would be no life on Earth.

Woodlice and dung beetles together with fungi, bacteria and other micro-organisms are essential for the decomposition of dead plant material. Thus enriching the soil and making more nutrients available to growing plants.

Other insects like lacewings and dragonflies are natural predators of insects which do real damage, such as aphids.

An occasional application of organic liquid feed when plants are flowering will keep them blooming longer.

Always prune any dead or damaged branches, to prevent disease. Fuchsias are particularly prone to snapping when you brush against them, but the broken branch can always be potted up to give you a new plant. That way,it won't be wasted.

Landscape gardening has often been likened to the painting of a picture.

Your art-work teacher has doubtless told you that a good picture should have a point of chief interest, and the rest of the points simply go to making the central idea more beautiful , or to form a fine setting for it. So in landscape gardening there must be in the gardener's mind, a picture of what he wants the whole to be, when he completes his work.

In this article we will be able to work out a little of the theory of landscape gardening.

Let us go to the lawn. A good extent of open lawn space is always beautiful. It is restful. It adds a feeling of space to even small grounds. So we might generalize and say that it is well to keep open lawn spaces. If the lawn space is covered with lots of trees, with little flower beds here and there, the general effect is choppy and fussy. It is a bit like an over-dressed person.

A single tree or a small group is not a bad arrangement on the lawn, but don't centre the tree or trees. Let them drop a bit into the background. Make a pleasing side feature of them. In choosing trees you must keep in mind a number of things. You shouldn't choose an overpowering tree; the tree should be one with a good shape, with something interesting about its bark, leaves, flowers or fruit.

Although the poplar is a rapid grower, it sheds its leaves early and so is left standing, bare and ugly, before the fall is old. Mind you, there are places where a row or double row of Lombardy poplars is very effective. But I think you'll agree with me that one lone poplar is not.

The catalpa is quite lovely by itself. Its leaves are broad, its flowers attractive and the seed pods which cling to the tree well into the winter, also add interest.

The bright berries of the mountain ash, the brilliant foliage of the sugar maple, the blossoms of the tulip tree, the bark of the white birch, and the leaves of the copper beech all these are beauty points to consider.

Position makes a big difference in the selection of a tree. Suppose the lower part of the garden is a bit low and moist, then the spot is ideal for a willow. Don't group trees together which look awkward. A tall poplar doesn't go with a nice rather rounded little tulip tree. A juniper, so neat and prim, would look silly beside a spreading chestnut. One must keep proportion and suitability in mind.

I'd never advise the planting of a group of evergreens close to a house, or in the front yard. The effect is very gloomy indeed. Houses surrounded in this way are overpowered by such trees and are not only gloomy to live in, but truly unhealthful. The chief requisite inside a house is sunlight and plenty of it.

Place makes a difference in the selection of a tree. Suppose the lower portion of the grounds is a bit low and moist, then the spot is ideal for a willow. Don't group trees together which look awkward. A long-looking poplar does not go with a nice rather rounded little tulip tree. A juniper, so neat and prim, would look silly beside a spreading chestnut. One must keep proportion and suitability in mind.

I'd never advise the planting of a group of evergreens close to a house, and in the front yard. The effect is very gloomy indeed. Houses thus surrounded are overcapped by such trees and are not only gloomy to live in, but truly unhealthful. The chief requisite inside a house is sunlight and plenty of it.

As trees are chosen because of certain good points, so should shrubs be. In a group you should have some which bloom early, some which bloom late, some for the beauty of their fall foliage, some for the colour of their bark and others for the fruit.

Most spireas and the forsythia bloom early. The red bark of the dogwood makes a bit of colour all winter, and the red berries of the barberry cling to the shrub well into the winter.

Certain shrubs are good to use for hedge purposes. A hedge is usually rather prettier than a fence. The Californian privet is excellent for this purpose. Osage orange, Japan barberry, buckthorn, Japan quince, and Van Houtte's spirea are other shrubs which will make good hedges.

I forgot to say that in tree and shrub selection it's usually better to choose those from locality you live in. Unusual and foreign plants do less well, and often harmonize poorly with their new setting.

Landscape gardening can follow along very formal lines or along informal lines. The first would have straight paths, straight rows in stiff beds, everything, as the name tells, perfectly formal. The other method is, of course, the exact opposite. There are danger points in each.

The formal arrangement can sometimes look too stiff; the informal, too fussy, too wiggly. As far as paths go, keep in mind that a path should always lead somewhere. That's its business, to direct you to a definite place. straight, even paths are not unpleasing if the effect is to be that of a formal garden. The danger in the curved path is an abrupt curve, a whirligig effect. It's far better to stick to straight paths unless you can make a really beautiful curve. No one can tell you how to do this.

Garden paths may be of gravel, dirt, or of grass. You can see grass paths in some very lovely gardens. They probable don't serve as well in small gardens. They are so limited, that they will need to be be re-spaded each season and this is just extra work.

Of course, a gravel path nearly always looks good, but you may not have gravel easily available. It is a simple job to dig out the path for two feet, then put in six inches of stone or clinker. Over this, pack in the dirt, rounding it slightly toward the centre of the path. Don't leave depressions in the central part of paths as these form convenient places for water to stand. The under layer of stone makes a natural drainage system.

A building often benefits with the help of vines, flowers or both to tie it to the groundsto form a harmonious whole and vines lend themselves well to this.It is better to plant a perennial vine, and let it form a permanent part of your landscape scheme.
The Virginia creeper, wisteria, honeysuckle,
climbing rose, clematis and trumpet vine are all ideal for this.

Close your eyes and picture a house of natural colour, with the mellow grey of weathered shingles. Now add to this old house a purple wistaria. Can you see the beauty of it? I shall never forget a rather ugly corner of my childhood home, where the dining room and kitchen met. Just there climbing over, and falling over a trellis was a trumpet vine. It added a wonderful touch of colour and softness to this awkward area.

Of course, the morning-glory is an annual vine, as is the moon-vine and wild cucumber, but these have their special functions. Often, it is necessary to cover an ugly thing for just a short time, until better things and better times come. The annual is 'the chap' for this work.

Along an old fence a hop vine is a thing of beauty,one often sees the ampelopsis vine festooned from one rotted tree to another.

Flowers can go along the side of the building, or bordering a walk. In general, though, keep the front lawn space open and unbroken by beds. What is lovelier in early spring than a bed of daffodils close to the house? Hyacinths and tulips, too, form a blaze of glory. These are little or no bother, and start the spring off well. Of course there are some bulbs which are an exception to the rule of unbroken front lawns. Snowdrops and crocuses planted through the lawn are beautiful. They don't disturb the general effect, but just blend with the whole.

One expert bulb gardener says to take a basketful of bulbs in the fall, walk about your grounds, and just drop bulbs out here and there. Wherever the bulbs drop, plant them. Small bulbs such as those we plant in lawns should be in groups of four to six and daffodils may be planted like this too.

The place for a flower garden is generally at the side or rear of the house. The backyard garden is a lovely idea, isnt it? Who wants to leave a beautiful looking front yard, turn the corner of a house, and find a rubbish heap?

The flower garden can be laid out formally in neat little beds, or it can be a more careless, hit-or-miss sort. Both have their good points. Great masses of bloom are attractive.

You should have in mind some idea of the blending of colours. Nature appears not to consider this at all, and still gets wondrous effects. This is because of the tremendous amount of her perfect background of green, and the limitlessness of her space, while we're confined at the best to a relatively small area. So we really should endeavour not to blind people's eyes with clashes of colours which don't blend well at close range. In order to break up extremes of colours, you can always use masses of white flowers, or something like mignonette, which is in effect green.

So lets sum up our landscaping lesson:

The grounds are a setting for the house or buildings.

Open, free lawn spaces,

A tree or a proper group well placed,

Flowers which do not clutter up the front yard

Groups of shrubbery.

The paths should lead somewhere, and be either straight or nicely curved.

If you startwith a formal garden, dont mix informal with it before the work is done.

For more great points about gardens and gardening, go to:
Perennial Flower Garden Ideas