Choosing the Right Flowers for Your Garden (4/4)

There is nothing like springtime in the South. The weather is warming up. The birds are chirping. The days are longer. The grass is greening. And just about everywhere you look, the landscape is punctuated with luscious blooms in a kaleidoscope of colors. While a flower’s hue may be the first thing that catches your eye, flowers do a lot more than just add color to your yard. They can add texture, drama, sophistication, charm, elegance or intrigue, so it is important to choose plants that reflect your personality and style. But where do you start? With so many types of flowers to choose from, it can be a challenge to figure out what to plant.

A good place to begin is with the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. It is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which plants are most likely to thrive at a location. According to USDA, most of metro Atlanta is in either Zone 7B or 8A. Why does this matter? Knowing your zone is the key to choosing plants that can survive and thrive in your particular area. This is especially important with modern gardening because you can find so many plants for sale online, and choosing plants that are not hardy in your zone can lead to frustration, disappointment and unnecessary expense. Thankfully, Atlanta’s hardiness zone offers a lot to choose from, including annuals, perennials, bulbs and landscape plants. 
 
While understanding your hardiness zone is a good first step, with so many choices available, it is still helpful to narrow it down a bit further to get your desired results. Here are some additional things to consider to help you create the garden of your dreams.
 

• Sunlight Requirements – Every plant needs light to grow and flourish, but the right amount of sunlight varies. When choosing plants and flowers for your garden, look at the plant label to check its light requirements. Choosing flowers that are well-suited to the amount of light available in your garden or the part of the yard you will be planting them is important. Flowers that require full sun, for example, will need at least six hours of direct sunlight each day to grow and bloom. Flowers that prefer partial shade or dappled light will need less sunlight and may be grown in areas that receive less direct sunlight.

• Soil Type – One of the most important factors to consider is the acidity of the soil. As a matter of fact, it is one of the first things you need to explore before you plant or buy any flowers. Soil acidity varies and its value could be anywhere between 1 and 14. That value is what defines whether a flower will grow or not. Some soils have such high levels of acidity that growing flowers in them is almost an impossible task. Knowing the levels of pH in your soil is the key to having healthy and beautiful flowers. If the pH level of the soil is from 1 to 6, the soil is acidic, and a pH from 8 to 14 makes the soil alkaline. If the soil pH is 7, this means that the soil is neutral. Most flower types grow better in neutral soil and alkaline soils. However, there are a few of them that prefer to grow in acid soil. Flowers such as blue hydrangea and rhododendron can actually grow only in soils with high levels of acidity. A local nursery or garden shop can help you find the right amendment for your soil based on what you want to plant and its current value.

• Bloom Schedule – Gardens that look their best all year long include a variety of plants with year-round interest and staggered bloom times. It is important to consider both factors before selecting plants. You likely do not want to create a garden full of color in the summertime but bare in the fall. Using a variety of different types of plants makes it easier to cover all the seasons. For example, you can rely on shrubs to provide spring blooms and winter structure, summertime perennials and fall-blooming annuals.

• Plant Size – When deciding what plants to use, be sure to consider the plant’s full height in your selection process. For example, if you want to plant a colorful foundation garden along the front of your house, the tallest plants should go in the back, but be sure they will not be so tall that they block windows, doors or even shrubs behind them. If your flower garden is more of an island, then the tallest plants should go in the center. Also, keep a plant’s mature overall size in mind to ensure it has enough room to grow without crowding its neighbors or spilling out of the bed too much.

• Color Combinations – Let’s face it, some colors look better together than others. But creating the best color combinations in your flower garden can be tricky. One way to start is by looking at a  color wheel. For example, gardens planted in shades of the same hue, like pink, are pleasing to the eye. Colors next to each other on the color wheel, like purple and red, look good together. So do colors across from each other, like purple and yellow. And foliage can provide much-needed texture and color for visual interest when blooms are wilted away.

• Cohesiveness – When creating your flower garden design and layout of your plants, try to have more than one of each type repeated throughout the bed. Not only does it create cohesiveness, but it makes the flowerbed feel less jumbled than a hodge-podge collection of plants. Including at least three, or any odd number, of the same kind of plant in a grouping is considered most pleasing to the eye. It also feels more dynamic, as opposed to a more symmetrical look you get from using plants in even numbers.

• Focal Point – Do not forget to define a point of focus when designing your flower bed/garden. Focal points are used in garden design to draw and direct the eye. If you think of a garden, large or small, that is just a swath of plants, as beautiful as it may be, your eye sweeps along not knowing where to land. And while a sense of flow is nice, without a focus your garden is not really taken in and studied. It could be as simple as anchoring a large bed with boxwood shrubs in the corners and a flowering shrub in the middle or planting a mass of a single flower type in the center of a skinny border. You can also use a piece of garden art as a focal point. The key is to have fun and get creative. 

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