How to design a flowerbed - making it easy
The Border Design course starts here, as we take a look at the nuts and bolts of a successful planting design. And coming up: a new series on garden design challenges
Don’t know where to start with planting?
The Gardening Mind is here to help: I’m going to take you by the hand and walk you through designing flowerbeds and flower borders
I’ve put together this bed/border planting design course to demystify the whole thing. Island beds, shady borders, sunny patches - I’ll cover as many as I can, so if you have a request for a particular problem spot, let me know.
If you have a garden, the chances are that it’ll have some bits of it that are planted. That area may be a flowerbed, it may be a border. It may have a certain style that you can pinpoint: informal or formal, cottage or town. Or it might NOT have a style, but you’re longing to inject some kind of personality into it.
Or maybe there’s no planting at all, and you want to have some flowers in your garden, but you don’t know how or where to begin?
If any of the above apply, then fear not. I’m going to take you by the hand and walk you through flowerbed and border design.
People refer to herbaceous borders, shrub borders, perennial borders and so on and so on, and we can often find ourselves quizzically looking at an area of planting, wondering what on earth it is - bed or border, and does it even matter? - and how on earth to deal with it. The thought of tackling it can often seem overwhelming, a task to be endured rather than enjoyed.
But this CAN be enjoyable, I promise you, and that’s why I’ve put together this bed/border planting design series, to demystify the whole thing. Island beds, shady borders, sunny patches - I’ll cover as many of these as I can, and if you have a request for a particular problem spot, just let me know.
But before we get to planting:
Your design questions and requests inspire so many ideas here on The Gardening Mind, and and it’s because of these questions that we’re going to have a new occasional feature here, called Common Garden Design Conundrums.
There are A LOT of garden design challenges included, and here’s a taster of just a few of the subjects that I’m going to be covering over the next few months:
How to create privacy
How to screen bins and a bad view
How to cope with wet soils
How to garden with children and play in mind
How to deal with a shady garden
How to deal with areas that are hot and dry
How to deal with a sloping garden
How to design your front garden
How to deal with a wide and shallow garden
How to deal with a long narrow garden
These are just some of the Common Conundrums I’ll be resolving for paid subscribers, and if you have one of these conundrums, do stay tuned. They’re all inspired by your questions - so look out for the next Gardener’s Question Time Ask Me Anything, where you can add your own conundrum! You can read the most recent AMA here.
A quick note here before we get on to border design - if you’re coming to this month’s Gardening Mind Meet-Up at Water Lane and you haven’t answered the poll yet, please could you head to the end of last week’s ‘How to Make Your Garden Look Great in June’ post here and just tick if you’re coming and if you’d like lunch?
Sissinghurst and Great Dixter are nearby, as is the pretty village of Rye, and from Rye it’s just a 25-minute drive from Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage.
I’d love to see you at Water Lane, and I know some of you are travelling a long way and making a weekend of it - it’s going to be fun!