We love good garden inspiration. And we love flowers! Put ’em together, and we have some fantastic flower bed ideas, ready to make you run to the nursery or pull out those catalogs! So salivate over these photos, take some tips from design pros, and start learning how to transform your garden with these lovely flower bed ideas!
FLOWER BED IDEAS
FLOWER BED DESIGN
When you first attempt to design a flower bed, you may feel a touch overwhelmed. After all, there are thousands of flower combinations you could use, and hundreds of choices for flower bed edging, size, color and theme of your bed. No worries, use these easy tips on how to make a flower garden you will love, and just start! Dig in that shovel, plant those seeds, visit that nursery!
- Plan the Style
- Plan the Size
- Pick a Color Scheme
- Choose the Plants
- Prep & Edge the Bed
- Plant Your Flower Bed
‘Garden Design Magazine‘ has a great post on the basics of flower bed design principles. There are also several online garden planners that allow you to create your whole flower bed design on “paper” first. This is helpful for planning the size of your garden, and also helps you to plan how many plants you may need. These are all free resources, and have different levels of design capabilities.
Gardena
BHG Garden Planner
Marshalls Garden Visualizer
IDEAS & INSPIRATION
So let’s get inspired with these gorgeous ideas so you can make a perfect flower garden!The natural style of this home is enhanced by an informal garden full of pretty flowers that bloom in every season. A small tree and a few evergreen shrubs offer balance and winter interest. Great job matching the style of the home to the flower bed design! From ‘Anna Looper‘.
In this flower garden from ‘Designscapes Colorado‘, you can see that while the plants themselves seem a cottage garden jumble, this is actually a more formal garden design. Why? The hard lines of the hardscaping and the repeating plants within the bed are your clues. Just remember this if you have a cottage style garden that you want to add a little “properness” to!
From ‘Lowes‘, this tropical look corner flower bed is the perfect example of starting small. Front yards need flowers too, but sometimes we try to take on too much to maintain. This flower bed idea brings attention to the front porch, but isn’t too overwhelming to take care of. Notice how they stuck to a tight color scheme so the small garden space doesn’t seem disjointed.
From ‘David Morello Garden‘, here is a great example of a front yard flower bed design that really compliments the style of this Craftsman home. The flower beds & borders focus attention on that stunning front door and porch, yet make you want to take your sweet time getting up to it! A gorgeous color scheme of pinks, purples and yellows are given a solid foundation with low growing evergreens. This will allow there to be interest in the garden during the winter.
In this flower bed idea from ‘BHG‘, a gravel path and a large urn give the eye a destination from the direction of the house. This gives the borders & beds a focal point no matter which direction you view the garden from. Another tight color palette showing that you don’t have to use every pretty plant in your nursery to have a stunning flower garden!
These traditional style flower beds from ‘Amy Dutton‘ show us that when using a lot of bright color, a pop of white will keep things grounded and from seeming too “loud”. Green will accomplish the same thing.
This informal flower bed from ‘Natureworks Landscape‘ is a great example of using layers in your plantings… You see more greenery and height in the back, working forward to shorter and brighter flowers. This is great design approach when learning how to plant flower beds. I love the curved shape of this garden, it gives it a casual feel and softens the style of the home.
AD
Ok, leaving the most fantastic for last… This is Chrissie D’Esopo’s garden, courtesy the ‘Connecticut Horticultural Society‘, photo by Steve Silk. She opened her home up for a garden tour for charity, and it is AMAZING. Have you ever seen such a colorful and uplifting garden? Nothing more to say about this garden, but WOW!
Now that you have learned some fabulous flower bed ideas, are you running for the car, complete with gardening gloves so you can load up as soon as you get to the nursery? I’d like to tell you to slow down, take your time and think your flower beds through… but I’m already out the door. 🙂 When you get back, make sure you check out our posts on Easy Flowers to Grow for a Stunning Garden, and Hanging Flower Basket Secrets! And be sure to check out DIY Curb Appeal Ideas You Can Do In Just One Day over at TBD!
