When it comes to flower garden design, it's mostly up to you. Sure, it's important to do a good job of soil preparation and carefully match plants to the site. If you ignore these imperatives, your results will likely be disappointing.

The aesthetics, however, are more a matter of personal preference. You might prefer a formal look with straight edged beds and plants in orderly patterns. Or you might prefer a more natural look with sweeping curves and irregular clumps of plants. The shapes and styles you choose are up to you.

The tips below avoid as much as possible the prescriptive "shoulds" that dominate advice about flowerbed design. Instead, they'll point out the aesthetic consequences of different strategies. Remember that, in most cases, there is more than one way to arrange plants in the flower bed, and that many of the "rules" of design were made to be broken. What's important is that your annual flowerbeds look and feel good to you.

Annual Flowerbed Combination Ideas For: Sun I Shade

Match plants to the sun
Break this rule at your own peril. Different annual bedding plants need different amounts of light. Most candidates for annual flowerbeds prefer full sun (6 or more hours of direct sun each day). Others require shade or afternoon shade. See Annuals For Sun and Annuals for Shade

Pay attention to soil needs
This is the other unbreakable rule. Most annual bedding plants need well-drained soil. To achieve these conditions prepare your beds properly in advance of planting. Clay soil tends to to be moisture retentive so we always suggest preparing raised or mounded beds to most successfully grow your annual flowers. Raised beds are easy to make and once done make planting an ease. See How To Prepare an Annual Flower Bed

Where to plant annual flower beds?
Plant flower beds where you can see them. Especially consider the views from private outdoor spaces such as patios, decks, and terraces. Don't forget about how the beds will look if they will be viewed through windows from inside the house. Also consider how neighbors and passersby will see them. We often plant annual flowerbeds near entryways, around mailboxes, along walkways or paths, or aside decks, patios, porches or other sitting areas where they will be enjoyed while relaxing outdoors.

What shape?
The beds in formal gardens usually have straight edges. But some gardeners find these dull. Gently curving edges and shapes provide a less formal and more relaxed look.

Edging
When making a new flowerbed use a garden hose or orange spray paint to mark the edge of your bed before you build it. Plan to maintain the boundary of the flowerbed by trenching along the painted line or inside edge of the garden hose with a shovel. You can also work a variety of edging materials into your plan, including products made from metal or plastic, bricks, field stones, or pavers. See All About Edging & Borders.

Color Combinations
With a wide selection of annual flower colors available, you can change your color scheme from year to year. To create visually appealing and alluring gardens you must effectively combine colors. The distinction between warm and cool colors is important to the gardener for several reasons.

A color wheel is a diagramatic way of showing relationships between colors. Colors on the right side of the wheel are warm. Colors on the left side are cool. Colors adjacent to one another are analogous. Opposite colors are complementary. What is important to gardeners, is how colors clash with or complement one another and the distinction between warm and cool colors.

Tips for selecting your color combinations:

- Cool colors are good for close up viewing and warm colors are good for more dramatic displays in your garden even when viewed from a distance.

- Planting warm colored annuals around a warm area will make it seem even hotter. However, if you plant with plenty of cool green, blue, violet, and pastel colors, the area won't actually be any cooler, but it will seem so and be a more inviting place.

- Be careful of cool and warm color combinations. If your garden is primarily cool colored, a mass of flame orange zinnias in the background would divert attention from the more subtle colors in the foreground and disrupt the harmonious effect.

Foliage and form
Spectacular blooms grab our attention, but don't ignore the foliage plants. Many plants, such as the seemingly endless varieties of Sun Coleus, display outstanding foliage colors and textures.

Plants also come in a variety of shapes (also called form or habit). Some plants such as verbenas and purslne grow into cushions, mounds, or mats while others such as purple fountain grass and salvias are upright and spiky, providing vertical accents in the bed. Still others such as begonias and geraniums are round and bushy.

Arrangement
In formal flowerbeds, plants are usually arranged in vertical, horizontal, or diagonal rows, or other regular patterns. In informal gardens, they can be in clumps (a circular group of three or more plants) or drifts (an elongated grouping of plants). Clumps and drifts are most often planted with an odd number of the same kind of plant to give the appearance of a more natural grouping. In the most informal flowerbed many varieties of plants are used as specimens (1 of each) to fill the bed, creating a cottage garden effect.

Specialty or theme flowerbeds
You may decide to create a certain theme for a flowerbed. For example, a moon garden might consist of only plants with white flowers or plants with white to light grey foliage. Other themes of particular interest might be growing plants that attract butterflies or hummingbirds. A foliage bed would consist of plants such as grasses, sun coleus, or licorice plants, all known for their outstanding or unique foliage characteristics.

Combination Ideas For Spring Flower Beds, .Select from a category below to see combination ideas for annual flowerbeds in our area (Zone 8).

Sun I Shade

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Combination Ideas For Fall Flower Beds

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