How to create dazzling summer flower garden designs

You're done with your indoors spring cleaning tasks. Your windows, floors and furnishings are sparkling. Now it's time to turn you attention to work that's a bit more appealing that of getting your garden in shape. Maybe you'd like to refresh last year's look with a new take on flower garden designs, but don't relish the expense involved with landscaping services. While you may think that successful flower garden designs are only achieved by the professional landscaper, this simply isn't true. With careful planning, imagination and a little work, you can create you own design which will be the envy of the neighborhood and provide you with much personal satisfaction. Let's walk through the process.

For the purposes of this discussion, we'll assume that the early spring maintenance and soil preparation tasks are complete. Except for 'permanent' garden design features, such as hedges, fences and major pathways, you've got a blank slate before you.

Effective flower garden designs build on the previous and coming seasons. For example, a drift of spring flowering daffodils can be inter-planted with early blooming summer annuals, such as pansies or phlox. These colorful blooms can serve as an edging, behind which you plant taller, midsummer bloomers, such as Marguerites or Marigolds. A few, more robust flower plants perhaps deep blue or white Agapanthas provide textural contrast and carry your lovely flower garden design right into fall, with a plentiful supply of nicely contrasting flowers through the warm season.

Porch railings and fences lend themselves well to garden plants with a vining, climbing habit. Some good examples of easy-to-grow annuals include Morning Gory and Black-eyed Susans. These flowers are fast growing, sturdy plants that bloom prolifically, require little care, are drought resistant and easily pulled and composted when their season is over.

Generally speaking, the most successful flower garden designs consist of a mix of annuals, perennials and bulbs. Plants of staggered heights add visual interest as do different leaf textures. Color is also an important component of good flower garden designs. Colors which are opposites on the color wheel, such as a deep blue Lobelia and a bright, rust orange Marigold, provide eye-catching contrast in your garden. Also keep in mind that light colors 'come forward' while darker colors recede, visually. If you wish to create optical illusions that make the best visual use of a small space, a planting of white Morning Glories against your back fence will appear to be further away when you plan a thick row of deep red or violet flowers in front of the morning glories.

You can see that you can create a brilliant display for your summer garden, choosing the colors and textures you like best. Your dazzling flower garden design ideas are limited only by your growing zone and our own good imagination.