Planning and Organizing Your Garden
When using bright colors for your garden, you should decide the overall color scheme of your flower arrangement. Do you want to use three main colors, with a few accent colors, provided by smaller flowers? Are you only using two or three flower types? If so, how many color varieties do you have to choose from?
After you know about how many flowers you’ll use, decide which flowers should be which colors. In order to maintain your color scheme, you should observe the color of the flower’s entire blossom. No flower is all one color, and the minor colors in the blossom will help you to find other flowers you can use. Look at all sides of the flower, and check to see if the petals have stripes of spots that will match with another flower. Also, lots of flowers tend to change colors as they grow and wilt; be sure to keep this in mind when choosing accent flowers, so that all the flowers will match during the entire display.
The shape of a flower and its petals will do wonders for your garden presentation. If you’re using bright colors, a flower that is unique in shape will make your garden stand out. Flowers that are both unique in shape and can be found in bright hues include zinnias, tulips, and hyacinth. These flowers can be found in red, purple, blue and pink hues, and these shades work very well together, especially in the springtime. Flowers of different lengths can produce the same effect; once you’ve chosen colors, you can select flowers that grow at different heights and plant them either in one common area, or in ascending or descending order.
One-color gardens can also be beautiful. Bold white flowers, like lilies, dogwood, magnolias, and lilies-of-the-valley work very well together to produce a monochromatic garden with a variety of flower shapes and sizes. Other monochromatic garden suggestions include orange gardens, using flowers like tulips and Klondike cosmos, or all-blue gardens, with flowers like mophead hydrangea and morning glory.
If you have plans to plant a garden using bright colors and the flowers you want are not yet in season, try choosing one flower with a bold color, a smaller flower to accent, and foliage to complete the rest of your flower garden. This will not only allow you to plant your garden without having to wait a whole season, and you’ll be able to showcase your flowers more exclusively; sometimes simplicity is best, and foliage can really add an understated elegance to your garden.
If you’re new to gardening, test your ‘garden vision’ out first in a small planter before making a space in the yard. Plant the flowers you have in mind for your larger garden using soil from your yard to see which plant flourish best. Then, when you’re ready, transfer your new garden to a more permanent home, and add more flowers (or take away some) to continue changing the look of your garden.
