Gardening For Beginners: Tips For A Beautiful Flower Garden

Looking for ideas and tips for flower gardening for beginners? If you want to fulfill your dream flower garden, these practical tips and smart ideas in flower gardening could help. Read on and help yourself to this basic guide to flower gardening!

RELATED: Gardening for Beginners: Tips For A Beautiful Flower Garden

In this article:

1. Flower Gardening for Beginners
2. Flower Gardening 101
3. What You Will Need to Start a Flower Garden
4. Flower Garden Designs
5. Flowering Plant Selection
6. Basic Flower Plant Care Tips

Flower Gardening for Beginners | Useful Tips & Ideas

Flower Gardening for Beginners

I started flower gardening a few years back. Taking some much-needed advice from other green thumbs helped me.

With a few hits and misses, some troubles and pleasures, I got it going pretty successfully for some time now. You won't have to go through the frustrations and struggles of starting your own garden from scratch.

Here are some tips, ideas, and guide to flower gardening for beginners.

Flower Gardening 101

Looking at gorgeous flower gardens from around the country or perhaps even just your neighbor's must have inspired you to start a flower garden. Mine comes from reading my favorite books like The Secret Garden and Anne of Green Gables in my childhood.

I was quite taken with how different flowers were pictured and I'm proud to say I've been growing them successfully since I started. Whatever your inspiration is, trust me, having your own flower garden is an amazing adventure.

Think about how you would want your flower garden to be. Do you want a flower garden for your sanctuary?

Do you want it to be a source of stunning cut flowers for your vase? Or do you want a flower garden for a beautiful front yard display?

Knowing what you want will help you avoid some flower gardening mistakes.

What You Will Need to Start a Flower Garden

You don't need fancy gardening tools just yet. Simple gardening tools like fork and trowel will do, plus a good sunhat to shield you from the sun's heat. A good gardening cart could be handy too when transferring your potted plants.

For your first run, you will have to buy seeds and potted plants from nurseries and garden stores. As you progress in gardening, you will learn how to save seeds or bulbs, separate root crowns, and even propagate plants from cuttings so you won't have to buy them again.

Flower Garden Designs

You will also need the right flower garden design or layout suitable for your land area and landscape.

1. Flower Gardening for Scale

We can be overexcited when starting a new project. While we want more varieties and fancy plants ASAP, again, consider your space. If you've got good space, then you may grow bigger and taller plants. Plant larger and taller plants toward the back when growing flowers as borders or lining a pathway.

2. Think Inside the Box

|

For flower gardening beginners, growing in containers or small-sized raised beds can be a good place to start. Think about the principle of thriller, filler, and spiller when growing in a tight space like containers or planter boxes. The thriller is the focal point planted in the center, the spiller adds drama, and the filler is planted to fill gaps between the two.

3. Think Vertical

|

A limited space should not stop you from growing your dream flower garden. Go for some lovely flowering vines like clematis and honeysuckle. A simple trellis or a garden arbor along a small entrance will do the trick!

4. Small Scale Flower Garden

|

Jazz up a small picket fence or a mailbox with flowering plants. Flowers of all sizes and shapes running riot around a small spot will draw attention. I bet it will put a smile on your mailman's face too!

This to brighten up your day!👌❤👏 via @garden_flix #gardenseason

A post shared by Garden Season (@gardenseason) on Mar 20, 2017 at 4:00am PDT

Flowering Plant Selection

Before you get too excited from looking at catalogs of flowering plants, consider your landscape and your flower garden design. Here are some tips and ideas for picking the kinds of flowers or variety:

1. Perennial Flowers

These are flowers that stay dormant in winter and then grow back in spring. Perennial flowers might be the best choice in flower gardening for beginners. Shasta daisy, roses, flowering bulbs like gladiolus, and tulips are just some of the best perennial flowers I can recommend.

2. Annual Flowers

|

If you want flowers for a stunning bloom in the summer, then annual flowers are your go-to-flowers. Their flashy blooms won't disappoint a flower gardening beginner like you. Cosmos, marigolds, and zinnias are some of my favorite annual flowers. In fact, I have them in my flower garden now.

3. Bedding Plants

These are fast-growing flowering plants temporarily planted for display. Lovely flower varieties such as pansies, petunias, and nasturtiums are great bedding plants. So, if you want a head-turning front yard flower garden, invest in these plants for a season! Your flower garden will definitely be the talk of the town.

4. Climbing Plants

|

When you've got a limited space for flower gardening, don't despair. Climbing plants are here to the rescue! Transform bare walls with gorgeous climbing plants like Clematis, Ipomoea, and even roses. You'll be able to maximize limited flower garden space plus you'll breathe life into the dull and boring bare walls.

RELATED: 19 Stunning Climbing Plants Perfect For Trellis And Arbors

5. Native Flowering Plants

|

It's tempting to go for unusual flowers but as a beginner, I suggest to go for native flowering plants. They're just as gorgeous but growing and maintaining them is straightforward and inexpensive.

Grow anemone and merry bells in the Northeast, Lewisia, and Columbine in the Northwest, and jasmine and gardenia in the Southeast. While the red yucca and yellow bells grow best in the desert areas of the Southwest, you'll grow hibiscus and lantana easily in the tropical areas of the South.

6. Rose Gardens

Growing roses may be intimidating, but they're so gorgeous, they're well worth your effort. These stunning rose varieties without thorns might give you inspiration. Remember, pruning is the key to growing great roses.

7. Pond Flower Plants

|

Got a wet and marshy landscape? Then you can start growing a flower garden with flowering pond plants. Lotuses and lilies are the most common pond flower plants but water cannas are my favorites.

8. Drought-Tolerant Flowers

|

Down south, growing non-native flowering plants can be high-maintenance. Avoid the expense and grow drought-tolerant flowers like cactuses, Euphorbia milii, and yucca. You can even avoid pricey lawn costs and go for xeriscaping instead, using these amazing drought-tolerant plants and flowers.

Basic Flower Plant Care Tips

Here are more tips for growing and caring for your flower garden:

1. Grow Invasive Plants

|

Grow invasive plants like gooseneck loosestrife in containers first. Then bury the plant roots with the container to keep it from spreading uncontrolled.

2. Loosen Roots

|

Flowers you buy from garden supply stores may have their roots all stiff and clumped from overgrowth in containers. Make sure to gently loosen them before planting.

3. Use Wire Mesh

|

Protect your newly planted bulbs from pests with wire mesh until they've been established.

4. Companion Planting

|

Pests can be a problem after a while, but you will soon find out companion planting also helps a flower garden. Planting chives with roses, for instance, works wonders.

5. Mulching

|

Weeds will be the ultimate nuisance rowing in areas they're totally uninvited fighting for space and nutrients. Counter this problem with mulching.

6. Know Your Soil

The soil is everything but there are drought-tolerant and even inferior soil-tolerant like cosmos and zinnias which produces more flowers in a rocky and sandy soil.

Find out how you can start your flower garden with perennial flowers in this video of gardening for beginners by Sugar Greek Gardens:

Flower gardening isn't only for the green thumb. It's never too late for a late bloomer like you to plant your very own flower garden now. With this basic guide in flower gardening for beginners, growing your dream garden will soon be underway!

Have you got a successful flower garden growing? We'll be delighted to hear all about it in the comments section below!

UP NEXT:

• How To Grow Anemones | Winter Flower Gardening Ideas
• Stunning Perennial Flower Garden With 10 Easy To Grow Varieties
• Gardening Terms You Probably Don't Know But Should

Want to stay up to date? Follow Garden Season on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated for quality and relevancy.