Easy Flower Gardens

A flower garden is ridiculously easy to look after if you choose the right plants, and with a little good advice.

At almost every garden visit I go to, the owner asks for an “easy care garden’, however many have given up on the idea of having both an easy care, and a blooming-beautiful flower garden.

The trick is to start in the beginning of your garden-making, from the soil level, and work up. A healthy soil grows healthy flowering plants with less problems. If you have poor soil, raise your garden edges about 200mm and add a new soil and compost blend.

Secondly, and very importantly, barricade out the weeds. If your neighbor has a lovely crop of Convulvulus and Clover on the other side of the fence, you will need to put a ‘root barrier’ along the boundary to prevent the weeds creeping into your garden.

Next, choose your plants wisely and plant closely. When your lovely flowering plants are grown, you need them to be snuggled in together to block out any weed intrusions. Then mulch with a degradable material like pea-straw, compost or oat-husk. These mulches are low cost and add to your soil.

Consider a small hedge in front of your flowering shrubs. This is a fabulous solution to keep your garden tidy and presentable during all seasons, also shelters plants creating a cosy microclimate in your garden.

For top, easy-care flowers I like to go for evergreen shrubs like Federation Daisies or Perennial Wallflowers that flower persistently through the year. You might like the bright yellow on silver of Euryops daisy, Braccyglottis ‘Sunshine’ or Lavender Cotton. The evergreen NZ Hebes also now have so many varieties and are all the rage overseas for their bee-attracting blooms. Another favourite of mine are Pelargoniums, they are dense in foliage, with more flowers and hardiness than geraniums.

For deciduous plants, the hot trend now is Hydrangea paniculata with her longer and more pointed blooms and relaxed, spreading habit. Plus there has never been a better time than to give roses a go. Carpet roses far outperform most other garden shrubs throughout summer and only require a trim with hedge clippers once or twice a year! Iceburg roses have a light scent, are thornless with apple green stems and have a very long show of flowers. Adding to these are the David Austin roses which were bred for their tenacity and delicious perfume of a 2000 year lineage old rose, and crossed with the repeat flowering capacity, colours modern shrub roses. Do not be too fussy with pruning your roses in winter, it is more important to follow the initial steps, as previously stated, of developing a healthy growing environment, and to keep the water up to all your flowers with an automatic watering system - and they will never fail you.

Email me via the contacts page, if you would like some guidance on setting up your easy-care flower garden.