To grow a beautiful perennial garden in your backyard isn’t an easy task. It requires planning, soil preparation, and good gardening skills to make an impressive garden.
Before embarking on the creation of a garden, it is necessary to understand what a landscaped garden is. It means a piece of our outdoor space, let’s try to make it as beautiful, harmonious and responding to our desires and tastes.
Why choose a perennial garden?
Gardening and outdoor space management are time needy. Perennial flowering plants can be the solution, once established they stay growing and blooming for years with a minimum of time and money spent.
Here are some of the many uses of perennials:
– Creating a colorful garden bed or border for your backyard
– Filling an island bed (an isolated, self-contained garden, like an “island” in a sea of lawn)
– Mixing them with annuals to assure full year flowering
– Edging a walkway, patio, pool area, or deck
– Interplanting them with roses or other ornamental shrubs to provide year-round interest – Dressing up an area that was formerly lawn
Things to consider before plantation
• What’s the best place to plant my garden?
– The garden location should be convenient for your daily life and easy to access. Also, be sure to plan the way you can get your gardening supplies and tools smoothly. Everyone aims to make their life easier, so why not you?
– You should have easy access to water in any corner of your garden.
– Plant in the flat ground: Placing your garden in a flat ground makes it easier to design your garden, distribute water for your plants, protect your seeds from winds and rainstorms, …
Gardening in a flat piece of earth is necessary.
– Soil: No soil is terrible for gardening. However, keep in mind that’s crucial to be informed about your soil composition, pH, calcium level and many other factors. These factors are to consider when choosing the best plants for your garden. Raised garden beds can be used as a solution for poor soil.
– Make your site well-drained: If the soil doesn’t drain, your plants will suffocate, and it’ll never be cool to work in a cloggy place.
– Avoid areas susceptible to be contaminated with toxins (maybe oil or other chemicals). You don’t want the toxic material to reach your plants.
– Follow the Airflow: It’s better to let access for the wind to your garden. Besides you and your plants needs fresh air to breathe, airflow can fight some fungal diseases (like mildew and anthracnose) and other parasites.
– Sunlight: Having the full sun in your garden may grow your list of plants you can grow in your garden. Most plants love to have more than 6 hours of daily sunlight.
Can’t you find a sunny place to establish your garden? You can consider cutting some high trees covering your backyard, or you can opt to choose the appropriate perennials for shade.
– It’s important to call the local authorities before digging in your backyard if you live in the city.
You could harm a water line, or another type of utility line wish can be dangerous for you and your neighbors.
• How to choose plants for a garden?
Gardens are meant to be beautiful to see. Everybody is taking care of selecting perennials with spectacular and colorful flowers, but there are many other important factors to consider when you are picking plants to grow in your garden if you want them to survive:
– Pick appropriate perennials for your climate: Sunny or rainy? Dry or moist? Hot or cold? Every plant has its suitable climate to grow, and you should take it seriously when choosing your garden composition. You can do your search about the weather (annually) in your region and suitable plants for this kind of weather.
– Native plants: They are a great option to take to enrich your garden flora, they are already adapted for your area. Search those plants in your area by asking and observing to find a good pick and keep in mind that many local plants are aggressive or harmful, and you should avoid them.
This is the list of plants to avoid split by states: https://plants.usda.gov/java/noxiousDriver
– Type of soil: Is it Loamy? Sandy? Clay? Acidic? Alkaline? What’s your soil pH? To answer these questions, you can refer to a soil test. The answer can help you to choose plants that can thrive naturally and to know which improvement your soil needs.
– Sunlight level in your garden: You need to know precisely how many hours of sun your garden receives daily. Since plants have a different light requirement, your garden success depends on your plants choice.
Take care to put the perennials for sun in sunny places and perennials for shade in places less exposed to the sun depending on their needs.
– Low-maintenance plants: If you are a beginner, I advise you to choose plants that still look beautiful even if you forget to irrigate them. To start, try to avoid plants that need daily care or special skills that you may not have yet.
• Garden design
If you want to design your garden yourself, the first step is to put your design on real plan drawing it yourself or using some design software.
Before planning the creation of your garden, be attentive to its close surround (large trees, subdivision, views to hide, etc.), anticipate your garden equipment location,…
– Chose the appropriate scale for your plan according to your garden dimensions
– Draw the perimeter of your garden
– Draw with different colors different utility lines buried on your yard (call 811 if you are in the united states)
– Draw all existing trees that you want to keep on your new garden
– Don’t miss to draw every existing building, installation or anything inevitable that figures in your garden site
– Plan your pathways to be useful and original
– When planning your garden put in mind to respect plants needs (For example put sun-loving plants in sunny places and put shade-loving plants in less sunny corners)
– Fountains can bring a bit of freshness to your backyard space, place in a half-shady place and make it look harmonious with its environment
– Use the altimetry of your garden to obtain a depth effect
– Design with plants: Put the right plant in the right place to make an impressive piece of art
– Your fences are what your neighbors see first, make them short and flowering if you want to be friendly with neighbors. If you want to stay mysterious in their eyes, make your fences high and somber
– Add some outdoor furniture in your garden to make it more relaxing.
Start the real work
After virtually planning your garden it’s time to pass to action. Starting a garden can be a full-time job in the beginning and even later depending on garden size and plants you are growing. It’s why you should scale your work depending on your spare time. You should never grow plants that need more time then that you have.
1- Start gathering tools you need in gardening (digging fork, spade, rakes, masonry trowels, gloves, shovels, water hoses, garden hoe, wheelbarrow, …)
2- Clear the ground: Get rid of the grass covering the area you want to plant and remove anything else you don’t want to keep
3- Level your garden ground
4- Trace your pathways
5- Start with permanent accessories you want to install in your garden (fountain, mini pool, …)
6- Start digging holes to plant your plants
7- Improve your soil quality by adding organic matter, organic matter also helps to improve soil aeration and drainage
8- Put your plants or seeds in the ground and water them
Then enjoy your creation !
