by Carol Flett

Created on: August 28, 2010

If you are looking for a new way to bring life and beauty to your garden, try adding some flower beds. Properly done, flower beds can transform a garden into a sanctuary or a show place with surprisingly little effort. All it takes is some careful planning, a pile of newspapers, some compost or leaves and mulch, a few carefully chosen plants, and a few hours of enjoying yourself outside.

Start by taking a careful look at your garden and thinking about your lifestyle and preferences. Do you need all the lawn space, or are there corners that are just a waste of mowing time? Is there something such as a compost bin or children's sand box you would prefer to hide? What about traffic flow? Would you like to redirect some of the traffic through your garden? Are you the type of person who prefers interesting surprises to open spaces? All these things will have a bearing on how you plan your garden beds?

Unless you have a very formal type of nature, and you have a lot of time and money to spend, try to steer clear of straight rectangular beds. Straight is not usually part of nature, and plants do not understand the word. They twist and sprawl and cuddle with their neighbors. Though "formal", and "straight" work well around some mansions, they usually have full time gardeners tending them.

Try instead to shape your garden bed with flowing lines such as you would find in nature. Use a stiff garden hose to outline the shape, always trying to keep the curves natural. Look, not only at the space you have created, but also at the surrounding area. Does it feel balanced? Is there enough room to move freely around the bed? When you are sure you have what you want, take some chalk line chalk, or spray paint and mark the bed.

After removing the hose, use a spade to lift a row of dirt or sod from around the inside of the perimeter. You can throw this dirt directly into the bed. When you have gone all the way around, spread the extra dirt and sod evenly over the surface. Next, bring out the newspapers and wet them. Lay out at least seven layers of paper, starting down in the dug out perimeter, and carefully overlapping them across the whole bed.

Now you are ready to start dumping the leaves or compost on top of the papers. If you are building this in fall, use all the leaves you can find and then top them with a layer of compost to hold the leaves down and quick-start the decomposing process. If you are doing this in spring, check to see if your city has a compost site. Spring is usually the time when compost is made available to the public, and you can add four or five inches of this pure black gold.

When planting your bed, make sure there is plenty of dirt surrounding the roots of your plants. Make a hole in the leaves and compost, cutting a slit in the newspapers below if necessary, and set your plants in fairly deep. You can choose annuals or perennials, or a combination of both, but make sure they blend well together, have the same basic water requirements, and are varied in height, generally with the larger plants in the back and smaller toward the outside. You can break away from this height rule somewhat for the sake of interest, but the bed on the whole should look well designed when you are done.

Water your bed when you have finished planting, and add a decorative mulch if you wish, as long as it does not detract from or clash with your flowers.

Now, dust the dirt off your hands, sit back, relax, and enjoy your garden. You're new bed will be weed free, and your flowers will grow vigorously in the rich environment you have given them, and will spend their summer rewarding you for your effort.

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