flower garden design ideas

Geranium 'Rozanne' flower bed

Geranium ‘Rozanne’ at the front of a perennial border

This article provides you with some flower garden design ideas that will boost your creativity and give you inspiration for your garden.

One of the easiest ways to create a beautiful display of colours for your green space is to create a perennial border.

A bed of perennials, with properly selected plants, will fill your garden with blooms across the seasons. There is a fantastic array of perennial plants available, which can bring lots of different colours to your space.

As always, first consider the soil type and the Sun’s journey across your garden and select plants accordingly to how much sun your garden border gets.

If you want to add some plants at the front of your garden border and simply fill some gaps, Geranium ‘Rozanne’ is a great example. It will not only deliver a fantastic display of lavender-blue flowers that will blossom for a very long time, but will also create a good ground cover, protecting the soil, and keeping the so called ‘weeds’ at bay.

A good flower design idea is to incorporate some plants that will add real drama into the overall planting. Verbena hastata, which can reach about 1.5m will deliver a fantastic upright accent with its spiky, pinkish-purple flower.

When selecting plants for you flower garden design you need to think about the colour palette that the blooms will create. It is important to think at the very beginning what sort of mood you want to achieve in your garden. Do you want your space to make you feel energised? Or you want to make soothing and relaxing experience?

Verbena hastata flower garden design

Verbena hastata

In our previous article about garden borders, we suggested that looking at a  colour wheel is a great idea as it will allow you to see which colours are coming from the same family and which are contrasting.

By doing this you will know, which colour combinations are going to deliver a boost of energy and which are more calming.

Some of the best flower garden design ideas can be really simple.

For example, a rose bush climbing on a wall can be underplanted with Salvias and Nepetas. Here the round blooms of rose will contrast beautifully with dark, purple spikes of Salvia.

A narrow garden border with roses underplanted with Nepeta & Salvia

In your flower garden design, it is also important to think about different shapes of blooms, like spikes or umbels. This not only will create more interesting overall planting but will also attract different types of insects to visit.  

When thinking about a flower garden design, especially when working with perennial plants, it is important to consider plants that will give you a good structure, the so called back bone of  the overall planting.

Evergreen shrubs like for example Viburnum tinus or Sarcococca will act as a good framework, and they will set off beautifully a colourful border design. They will also deliver a good bloom display for winter months.

To add to your flower garden design ideas, you could also include a statement tree, like for example an Amelanchier tree. It is a versatile small tree that will provide you with blooms in spring and fantastic foliage in autumn.

There are many plants that could be used to create a garden that is filled with blooms.

From perennial plants to small shrubs and small statement trees, the selection of plants that could be used to create a flower garden design that suits your needs and mood requirements  is extensive.   

There is nothing more creative than selecting colours and textures of blooms that will fill you garden space across the seasons and it will be a joy to watch as the flowers open and grow. 

Are you looking to introduce more flowers into your garden design project?

Feel free to contact us if you are looking for planting design services for your own project.

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plant pot design ideas 

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simple tips for designing a garden border