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

Creating raised garden beds is a wonderful way to get a garden started easily. When you plant your flowers or vegetables in raised garden beds, you don't have to pull weeds first, turn soil, or dig out a lot of rocks and other debris. Instead, you simply choose the location you want your garden bed to be, lay down your bed retainer walls, and fill it with dirt.

Raised garden beds are popular because they're easy, but also because they allow you to start growing seeds and small starter plants earlier in the season. A raised garden bed will become warmer earlier in the season than a ground based garden bed, and that allows you to start your gardening earlier in the year.

The first step to creating your raised garden bed is to choose the materials you'll use for the walls of the bed. There are a wide variety of materials that can be used to create your garden bed. Rocks for instance, can be piled together into a rock wall design. Bricks can also be used to create a more formal looking garden bed too. Wood or railroad ties are easy, attractive and sometimes even free too.

Regardless of what you choose to create your garden bed with, you'll need to gather enough materials to make the bed as high as you'd like it. Some people like to create garden beds just a foot or two tall, while others create tiered garden beds which have multiple levels ranging from a foot or two in height, to four or five feet at the tallest level. How you design yours is completely up to you of course, and your budget.

Once you've decided on the materials you'll use to create your raised garden bed, the next step is to choose the location for the bed. Where you place your garden bed will depend on how much space you need, and how much sunlight you'll need too. If you're building a raised garden bed to plant a vegetable garden for instance, you'll want to place the bed in a location which gets at least five to six hours of sunlight each day.

Now that you have your materials and location chosen, it's time to build the bed. And all you need to do is simply lay out your material in the design you want for the garden bed to create the bed frame. Once the frame for your garden bed is ready, then you just need to fill it with soil. Put enough soil into the new garden bed to bring it to at least one or two inches below the top of your garden bed frame.

All that's left now is planting. You can plant small starter seedling plants in your bed, sow seeds directly, or put more mature plants in, whichever you prefer. After planting your plants in the new garden bed, surround them with some type of mulch material such as tree bark or dry grass clippings, so the plants and bed won't dry out too quickly during hot spells.

Tags: Flowers, Raised garden beds, Vegetables

Perennials are plants and flowers which live for two or more years. You can plant them where you'd like to have them grow, and some of them will live, grow, and thrive for twenty years or more. Some perennial plants only live for two to three years, but on average most will live for at least five years. This makes them an excellent investment for long term garden planning.

Since perennial plants tend to be a long term decision though, where you plant them and the types of plants you choose are critical decisions to make during your garden planning process. You won't be happy putting a perennial plant in a prime location for instance, only to find out later you don't like the plant at all and you're unable to easily get rid of it.

Most new gardeners will plant a mixture of annual and perennial plants together in a new garden though, because the annuals give them immediate flower blooms and bursts of color while the perennials are still becoming established. Some perennials won't even bloom for the first year or two either, and this can be frustrating and disappointing for someone when they first plant their gardens.

Most fruits are perennial plants, as are shrubs, bushes and trees. Strawberries and grapes for instance, often don't produce fruits the first year or two they're in the ground. Grapes require some sort of climbing support as well, because they are a vine. Strawberries on the other hand, will send out shoots which take root and start new strawberry plants. You can help encourage your strawberry plants to concentrate on creating fruits by snipping off most of the new shoots that the plant sends out.

Since fruits are high in water content, the plants which grow those fruits require large amounts of water to grow successfully. Fruit plants also require lots of sunlight too - usually at least five to six hours of direct sunlight each day.

Many shade loving plants are perennials as well, such as the various forms hosta plants that can be purchased at almost any local garden center. Verbena is another beautiful, long blooming plant which sometimes comes in perennial form too, and it's especially easy to grow in hot, dry climates.

Some types of annual flowers and plants will act like perennials simply because they reseed themselves each year. The morning glory vine for instance, and four o'clock flowers are two examples of annuals which produce massive numbers of seeds each year. Those seeds drop to the ground and are scarified over the winter, then they start sprouting up on their own the next spring.

Tags: Dianthus Plumarius, Perennials