Having a garden set up with plants and flowers for all season blooming is the dream of many gardeners. Most gardens, however are rather small, and have other restrictions as well. Is it possible to create an all year blossoming garden with few varieties?
Creating a garden for all season interest means that your selection of plants will have to produce interesting foliage, flowers or fruits in all four seasons of the year. If you'd like to define in more detail, what interesting means in this context, you'll have to look into the features that can significantly differ from plant to plant. First there is the plants appearance, its shape, height and width, its growing habit and, of course, its colour.
For all season blooming areas, your plant selection will usually be a mix of annual plants, which last only one season and will have to be re-sown or replanted if you want to have them for another year, and of perennial plants, which overwinter and keep on growing and producing leaves, flowers and fruits year after year.
Apart from that, every garden should have at least one architectural feature. It is the focal point of the garden, and attracts instantaneous interest. This could be an outstanding plant, for instance a pampas grass, or it could be a sculpture or a hard landscaping feature like a pond, patio or piece of garden furniture.
Achieving this is not easy, especially if you are limited by the small size of your garden, or if you have a very limited space with limited growing conditions like a balcony. The art therefore is in restricting yourself what works in a small space.
Bulbs are suitable for the smallest of spaces, as long as they have enough available light, heat and water. For a small garden or balcony you could pick a selection of spring bulbs, like snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths and tulips, and mix them with some summer flowering bulbs like lilies, dahlias, begonias and gladioli.
Add another set of autumn flowering bulbs, like nerines, colchicum, cyclamen or saffron crocuses, can add the required colours for autumn to your balcony or garden. For balconies, simply mix a selection of each group in pots of differing size and shape into the growing compost and arrange them nicely, where they get rain water (i.e. not underneath shelters) and sufficient sun light, and all you have to do is waiting for the bulbs to grow and perform.
For gardens, you would like to achieve nicely designed borders and beds. Therefore, a mix of bulbs, herbaceous plants and perennials is ideal. Perennials will require less maintenance and still perform every year, while annuals give you a huge selection of colours, shapes and growing times to add them carefully to the borders.
As an architectural highlight of your garden, I'd like to suggest implementing a water feature. This will not only add a focal point to your garden, but also give you the tranquillity of running water if you power it with a pump, which is so relaxing when you sit out there on your bench and relax after a good days work.
I'm passionate about gardening and trying to realize my ideas in different garden projects in the vicinity. Creating a wonderful environment for other people according to their desires is a very rewarding work. I'm also writing about gardening, for instance in my blogs http://gardenlatest.blogspot.com/ and http://www.greenveggiespot.blogspot.com/.
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