Planting wildflowers can make a wonderful, and completely natural looking garden. Wildflowers often attract birds, bees and butterflies too, plus they're excellent to use for areas of your yard which always seem to be a bit too bare and unfinished.

Creating a wildflower garden can be as simple as scattering some wildflower seeds into a specific area of your yard, or you can create an actual garden bed or plot specifically designed for growing your wild flowers, then carefully place starter plants or seeds into a pre-arranged garden layout. Since wild flowers are supposed to look like they're growing there naturally though, you'll usually get the best results by simply scattering the seeds around.

Wildflower gardens are excellent to plant into open fields and empty lots, as well as specific areas of your yard too. They work wonderfully around a mailbox post for instance, because they grow in a variety of different colors and heights. Having wildflowers grow around your mailbox post can give your home a country design type of look which is quite popular and attractive.

Planting wild flowers usually gives you a low maitenance, natural looking garden that nature takes care of on its own. Since most wildflowers are native to the area you're planting them in, you don't usually have to worry about watering them much. Wildflowers also propogate on their own - which means they'll drop seeds to the ground so new flowers will grow in the same area the following year.

Some wildflowers are annuals and some are perennials. The perennials will continue to grow and bloom for several years or more without you having to take cuttings, collect seeds, or anything else to help them. Annuals will only live for one growing season, but many wildflower annuals develop their own seeds too. You can collect these seeds and plant them in new locations next year, or you can simply let nature take its course. When nature does the job, the seeds will drop to the ground and hibernate over the winter, then many of those seeds will sprout again on their own the following year.

Most people choose to plant wildflowers in a random way. They don't plan where exactly each flowering plant will grow, and they don't select plants based on color, height or texture either. Wildflower gardens can be created in almost any way you'd like though. If you'd like to have a field full of peach or red colored wildflowers for instance, all you'd need to do is select wildflower varieties which produce the appropriate flower color for your needs.

The most difficult aspect of wildflower gardening though, is thinning out the plants once they start growing. When you scatter the seeds randomly, you can't usually tell just how crowded the flowers will be in your garden when they start to grow. It's not uncommon to end up with too many flowers in one area though, so you have to pull some of them out to give the others room to grow. The flowers are usually so pretty in bloom though, that making yourself pull some can be difficult. You will be rewarded however, by the beautiful blooms you'll start seeing on those wildflowers you left in place once they have more room to thrive.

Tags: Perennials, Annuals, Wildflower gardening

Annuals are flowers and plants which only grow for one season, then they die off and must be replanted again by seed or starter plants the next year. Some annuals create seeds though, which will drop to the ground and naturally start sprouting on their own the following year, but many must be purchased again if you want to have those flowers blooming in your yard and garden again each year.

Annuals are a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to create beautiful color in your yard and garden in the springtime. Many annuals can be purchased in small four or six inch starter pots, and they'll often already have flowers blooming when you buy them. Buying them this way allows you to take them home, put them into the ground or into pots and containers, and have an instant blooming garden right from the start.

By planting blooming annual flowers along your walkway for instance, or into a new garden bed or container, you'll have instant color and beauty in your yard as early in the season as you'd like.

Most annuals are fairly easy to plant, take care of, and grow. Most of them also come in a wide variety of flower color selections too. Some annuals are particularly hardy through drought and strong sunlight, and some actually continuously bloom from spring through summer and into late fall too. These types of annuals tend to be the most pleasing to gardeners, because there is little work needed to keep their garden look fresh and colorful almost all year round.

Vinca flowers for instance, look a little like Pansies and they come in a huge variety of flower colors. You can buy vincas which have solid colored flower petals and blooms, or ones which have variagated colors on the flowers instead. The leaves of this plant are green and glossy, but it does extremely well in high heat and direct, strong sunlight areas.

Vinca's often grow to about ten or twelve inches high, and when you pluck the expended buds off of them regularly, they bloom in some areas for months on end. In Zone 7B for instance, it's not uncommon to see Vinca's in bloom from March through September or October.

Another easy growing annual that's a favorite of most gardeners is the Pansy. This plant also has glossy green leaves and many different flower colors to choose from. The flowers themselves almost look like little faces with the way they're colored too.

Morning Glories are another annual plant in most areas, and these also produce profusive flower blooms for months on end. As long as the roots of the Morning Glory vines are kept moist and out of direct, hot sunlight, these plants will climb all over a trellis, fence, and even bushes too.

Morning Glory vines create a tight spiral pattern when they're climbing, so you need to give them small things to grab onto. A trellis with wide wooden slats is too large for the tight spirals to get around easily, but a chainlink fence is ideal. You can even use string or thin twine for the vines to wrap around and climb.

Tags: Blue Picotee, Morning Glory, Annuals

Cactus gardens are something many gardener's feel are only used in the desert southwestern part of the United States. And many people who are unfamiliar with cactus plants, assume they're just an ugly, prickly, almost alien looking thing that crops up in the hottest and dryest parts of the world.

Cactus plants do grow wild in the desert southwest, and they do thrive in extreme heat and drought conditions. But this is one of the things that makes them so wonderful to use in a home garden. You see, anyone unfamiliar with cactus plants doesn't usually know that they produce some beautiful flowers too. In fact, most cactus plants produce flowers, and most of the plants also put on a wonderful color display throughout the year too.

Most flower blooms on cactus plants resemble more cultured and cultivated plants too. Not only are the flower buds themselves similar in shape to other types of plant flowers, but you'll find a wide variety of colors available for the cactus flowers too.

A prickly pear cactus for instance, can create flower blooms which look a bit like tulips or roses. You might see some that are peach and white, or some that are solid red. And these cactus plants are beautiful with large flowers sticking up on each sharp spine. Not only do these cactus plants create flower blooms though, the Prickly Pear cactus also changes color throughout the year. Sometimes it's a pale green color, and sometimes it will turn pink. Still other times you'll see the cactus pads turn a deep purple color too.

Prickly pear cactus are also edible, much like most cactus plants are actually, and it produces fruit pods in addition to flowers throughout the year. Both the fruit and the cactus pads can be eaten. Some people fry them with butter, while others will make cactus jelly and jam from the pads.

There are many cactus plants which grow quite tall - over 15 feet in some cases - and there are plenty which grow small as well. Most will spread themselves out over time though too, so you have to be careful not to plant them too closely when creating a cactus garden.

Cactus plants usually only need about an inch of water every one to three months, so watering - or not watering rather - a cactus garden is one of the most difficult things for gardeners to accept. If you water a cactus garden too much though, the plants will actually die off. Instead, you have to make sure the cactus stay quite dry. If you live in an area that gets regular rain, you may even have to create a container based cactus garden so that you can move them to a dry spot while it's raining outside.

Tags: Cacti, Cactus Gardening, Prickly pear cactus