Looking for instant color to dress up your deck or patio for that summer garden party or backyard barbeque? Or maybe you need a dash of color to brighten your landscape with long-lasting visual drama. Whatever your garden quandary, consider a low-maintenance shrub rose for nonstop color from spring until fall.

Shrub roses are easy to grow and cover any landscape with gorgeous color and flowers. They look beautiful spilling over the sides of a container, either alone or mixed with your favorite perennials or annuals. User-friendly and low-maintenance, they need little to no care for year-round color and nonstop blooms. Shrub roses are one of the hottest trends in gardening today, says Doug Jimerson of Better Homes & Gardens.

“Think of shrub roses as a flowering plant — not a rose,” Jimerson says. “The great thing about shrub roses is you don’t have to have a green thumb to make them grow. They are so easy — just plant in a sunny spot, water them and watch them grow. They’re the perfect plant for today’s busy homeowners.”

Jimerson recommends these four steps for a rosy garden:

1. Get Rich: Use healthy soil in a big hole for roses. Experts say to dig a hole twice the size of the container the rose is in. And be sure to provide ample space for the plants roots to assure healthy and beautiful roses.

2. Sun Kissed: For the most prolific blooms, plant Drift Roses in a location with plenty of sun. Hardy to zone 5, these ground hugging, ever-blooming shrubs are perfect as a border or bedding plant. Growing only about a foot around, they make a stunning low hedge or edge on a border.

3. Feed Me: Drift Roses aren’t fussy eaters. Give them a good dose of slow-release or timed fertilizer, which releases nutrients to the plant when the plant needs it most, and you’re set for the season.

4. Cover Up: And remember to mulch your roses. Mulching helps to buffer the cycle from wet to dry, keeps the feeder roots from drying out, and helps to establish the roots quicker. And less watering is required.

New Groundcover Roses Perfect for Your Landscape

This year try planting Star Roses’ new Drift Roses for a dramatic groundcover effect in your garden. They combine wonderfully with perennials intermixed with other upright shrubs like coreopsis, veronicas or lambs ear and even hostas.

Choose from four cultivars that bloom from spring to early frost. Ranging from scarlet red to bright soft peach, they provide the gardener with a complete range of color solutions for landscape use or in containers.

Two favorites in the collection are the Peach Drift Rose and the Pink Drift Rose. The most floriferous of the series, Peach Drift’s small bright apricot-salmon blooms have dark green, semi-glossy foliage and grow up to 2 feet in height. Pink Drift’s low growing mound of semi-double deep pink blooms, reaches 1-1/2 feet in height with a 3-foot spread.

Make no mistake that these are not finicky miniature roses. These hardy groundcover roses are true low spreading, dwarf shrub roses that grow only about a foot high by 1-1/2 feet wide and are covered with blooms that open to 1-1/2 inches. Drift Roses are perfect in small gardens, splashing your landscapes with visual delight.

Appealing to today’s busy gardener, these low-maintenance roses are highly disease resistant. They require no spraying except in the most humid regions of the Deep South. Bred to be “chemical-free,” Drift Roses resist rust, mildew, Japanese beetles and black spot while blooming for months on end.

Whether planting for a shock of ever-blooming color in a spectacular landscape or seeking easy, carefree ways to solve a gardening challenge, think easy-care Star Roses for long lasting, maintenance-free color.

To find out more about these and other Star Roses, or to find a garden center near you, visit www.starroses.com.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

Related posts:

1. Tips and Tricks for Adding Curb Appeal to Your Landscape
2. The Sweet Scents Of Landscaping A Rose Garden
3. How To Use Landscaping Shrubs

Perennials typically have less vibrant colors than annuals, which last only one year. But they are still often very beautiful. Pale pinks, subtle oranges, delicate yellows and gentle blues and purples can all be found among perennial species. Gardens composed of these flowers, at least in part, often have a very relaxing effect on the viewer.

Perennials come in much more than just flowering types as well. There are many perennials that have only very tiny or no flowers, but are nonetheless very attractive plants. They help to flesh out a garden, and provide the ability to design variety into the layout. Separating bright annuals with non-flowering perennials makes it possible to create an infinite variety of colored shapes and shapely colors.

Foxgloves are a perennial that have long rows of pale orange or pink, bell-shaped flowers along a thick green stalk. A few of these are a delightful addition to any garden, since they are easy to care for and give the garden variety in height and shape.

Hostas are another excellent perennial. Their large, light green leaves make for a beautiful display and, for a few weeks or longer, their lovely white flowers are a wonderful sight. They take very little care, since they get along on very little water. They do very well in partial shade, too.

In the Fall the blooms will die, and later the leaves will shrivel up to thin, light brown vegetation. The transformation is really astounding, considering the width of hosta leaves (nearly a foot) during the height of Summer. Just chop off the dead leaves at ground level before winter and you are all ready to go for the following Spring.

Thyme makes for great ground cover and requires almost no work at all. Sage, too, is terrific for adding not only a pleasant light green color to your garden, but a wonderful fragrance as well. Yarrow will work well interspersed between flowers and ground cover. Just be sure to keep it under control, since it can spread and take over large areas.

Irises have a lovely, large yellow flower on a tall green stalk. They come back year after year and only require a little tug once in a while to pull off the dead, wilted flowers as they bloom and re-bloom.

Bougainvillea bushes are an excellent addition and can be grown in a wide variety of zones. They thrive in the hot weather of California, but tolerate the winters in the Northwest equally well. Drought tolerant and easy to care for, their numerous bright red blossoms make them an excellent choice.

Though the colors are sometimes more muted, there are more perennials than any one garden could possible house. So you have lots of choices for low-effort, beautiful plants that will last year after year.

Related posts:

1. What You Need To Know About Landscape Plants
2. Choosing Landscaping Plants
3. Landscaping: Annuals

Nature has cleverly already solved the problem of which plants grow best in full sun, which in partial shade and which in perpetual shade. All you have to do is observe your gardening environment and pick the appropriate plant for a given spot. But, before you can pick a proper plant you have to know what kind of shade you have.

‘Full sun area’ is just what the phrase says, an area that receives a full day of sunshine, anywhere from 6-12 hours or more during the summer, depending on where you live.

Partial sun or partial shade occurs in areas where there is ample light, but it is supplied indirectly. This happens under awnings, beneath large or heavily-leafed trees or under any other kind of covered area.

All the light received, which is usually plenty for most plants, is reflected light. As it reflects off different surfaces it usually loses a lot of energy, which means there’s less for the plant. But that ‘less’ is often just the right amount for healthy growth without producing excessive drying or burning. That helps keep the soil warm and the plant’s leaves well supplied with sunlight for photosynthesis.

‘Full shade’, by contrast, means an area that receives very little light, even indirectly. It’s not completely dark, but it is dim and all the light reaching it has been reflected many times. That causes it to lose most of its energy, leaving little for the plant. Soil in such areas is often no more than cool at best.

Very few flowering plants do well in full shade, but it’s ideal for many kinds of ground cover. Mosses are the most obvious example. Walk around a heavily shaded forest and you’ll find moss growing. It’s often moist and accompanied by other types of fungi, wild mushrooms and the like.

A wide variety of plants, many of which produce beautiful flowers grow well in partial shade. In such areas there is often no more than 1-2 hours of direct sunlight per day, though there will be several hours of reflected light. The sunlight it does receive will rarely occur during the hottest hours of the day.

Hostas do well in partial shade. Their large leaves are great for absorbing the available light and they produce beautiful pale flowers on long stocks during late Spring and early Summer. Impatiens also do well in partial shade and produce a lovely pink or orange colored flower. Foxgloves, too, can thrive well in partial shade, provided the soil is warm enough.

Pick the right flower for the right conditions and you’ll be off to a great start.

Related posts:

1. Questions to Ask Yourself When Designing a Landscape
2. Container Gardening
3. Landscaping 101

Landscaping Ideas for Flower Beds

One of the best landscaping ideas for flower beds is to plant the flower beds in stages. This will help to save you both time and money, and you want to make sure that you consider and plan ahead whether or not there is going to be an adequate amount of lawn space and availability of structures for the type of design that you are interested in.

The border around the flower beds is going to need to be large enough to generate a pleasing visual impression, and yet at the same time you want to make sure that it is not too large that it will be difficult for you to maintain.

Aesthetic appeal is definitely one of the most important aspects to any landscaping design, and so planning beforehand is crucial for the most successful results. Layering and using lots of variation is important, and by grouping taller plants with intense foliage can help give you with privacy.

There are certain flowers that are considered as being best to use, namely because they are so easy to plant and maintain, and for instance this includes asters, chrysanthemums, daylilies, irises and ornamental grasses. You also want to be sure to choose flowers that offer long lasting blooms because this will result in providing a much stronger emphasis throughout the changing seasons.

Another of the best landscaping ideas for flower beds is to use variety with your border, for instance you can go with a double border, which will usually scamper down along both sides of a path or down the sides of property. There is also the option edging a double border, which, especially when done with brick, will result in making straight edges look much more attractive.

There are so many other great ideas that you can use as well, just make sure that you start off small and do not overwhelm yourself. After all it is much easier to start small and work your way up as you feel comfortable rather than starting off too big and getting lost with it all.

Related posts:

1. Planning and Laying Out a Flower Garden
2. Ideas For Landscaping Yards
3. Ideas For Landscaping Your Home

As a result, annuals have to be freshly planted every year – hence the name. But as a kind of reward, they offer gardeners and landscapers the widest array possible of stunning color and style choices. Annuals are the brightest, the most intense and among the most beautiful flowers available.

If you want a garden that is full of the deepest colors – shocking yellows, deep purples, vibrant reds – annuals are your best bet. If you want to pack your garden with an effusion of flowering plants, annuals will give you what you’re looking for. Just don’t forget you will have to re-do the effort every year. But then, for some, that’s part of the fun!

Annuals can be further divided into Spring, Summer and Fall annuals. Spring annuals such as pansies, violas or snapdragons can be planted in early Spring. Summer annuals, such as petunias or impatiens should be planted later, in order to avoid exposure to any late cold snap.

Unless you grow from seed, you’ll pick up some annuals already growing, probably already in bloom. Look for soil that has been kept moist but not wet. Excessively wet soil promotes diseases and harmful growths that often don’t show up until after you’ve had the plant for a while. Soil shouldn’t be too dry, either. That leads to sickly plants that sometimes don’t survive transplanting.

Young annuals are fragile and if the conditions in which they were raised before you acquired them aren’t right, they often won’t last very long. Best to invest your time and money in ones that have the best chance for survival.

Give them that chance by planting in loose, well fed soil. For fertilization, fish emulsion or other commercial mixtures containing the right amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other nutrients are a good start. Just follow the directions on the package.

Annuals can be planted close together, provided each has adequate soil, water and nutrients. A good guideline is to observe wild flowers in a densely packed area. Nature has figured out long ago how much room, sunlight and water a plant needs to thrive.

Many annuals are best acquired before they’ve begun to blossom. When you find young ones that have many healthy looking buds, you can bet you’ll have lots of flowers before long. Since they haven’t blossomed yet, they’ll have the maximum life span.

Picking out healthy plants isn’t hard. If it looks healthy, it usually is. Straight sturdy stalks (for those that grow that way naturally), no wilting, bright greens (with little or no browning), and other obvious signs rarely lead you astray.

Don’t worry too much if your first experiments aren’t 100% successful. In some cases, plants will die no matter how well you treat them. Annuals are relatively inexpensive and you’ll have plenty of room in your budget to create that carpet of color you want.

Related posts:

1. Perennials and Biennials
2. Planning and Laying Out a Flower Garden
3. 5 Tips for a Better Looking Landscape

A flower garden adds a great deal of variety and beauty to the landscape. Many people find that laying out flower gardens is a very rewarding task. And, while it is possible to create a very attractive flower garden without planning it out first, it is much more efficient, in the way of saving time and money, to make a plan for what you would like in your flower garden, and to have an idea of where you might like some of the different flowers. Then when you are ready to lay the garden out, you have a pretty good idea of what to do, and you are not bothered with having to re-arrange things to account for something that you may not have realized before.

The first order of business to determine when planning out your flower garden is how many annuals and how many perennials you want. Annuals last only one growing season, and therefore have to be replanted each year. Perennials appear yearly on their own. If you have all annuals, you can change your garden layout as you wish every year, and with perennials you have the same layout (unless you wish to transplant all of your flowers). However, it is possible to have a combination of the two, keeping the perennials where they are each year and varying the charm of the flower garden with a few different annuals in different placement.

Next, you should determine where you will likely place your flowers, taking into consideration the comparative heights of the plants, what time of the year they bloom, and what colors you will use. These things all contribute to an aesthetically pleasing look to your flower garden — one that implies order and beauty rather than looking ill-planned with some plants looking wildly out of place. Also to take into consideration when planning your flower garden: climate and sun exposure. Make sure that all of the plant you choose for your garden will flourish in your region, and that your garden is placed in a location that will allow the flowers to receive a proper amount of light.

After you have determined what will go in your garden, it is time to prepare the flowerbed. You should mark of the dimensions of your proposed garden carefully. Using a garden hose to mark the boundaries is advisable, as it is heavy and will stay in place, but it also provides the flexibility needed to tweak the proposed shape of your garden. After you have determined on your boundaries, you need to strip the enclosed area down to the topsoil. This can be done using a shovel for smaller gardens and a sod cutter for the larger sections.

After getting down to the topsoil, you should loosen the dirt by prying up a section with a shovel and then turning over the dirt. This loosens the soil and provides a good place for flower roots to establish themselves. You can make improvements to the soil but adding organic materials such as peat moss, mulch, compost, or manure. You should probably also roto-till the area to better mix the soil amendments in with the original soil. Next, use a rake to smooth out the soil without packing it down. Create your border with plastic edging, concrete, stones, or by digging around the edges, angling the soil down and creating a gap between flower garden and lawn.

After you have prepared the bed for the garden, acquire the flowers you would like to use. Seeds are less expensive, but you will not be able to see the final result until they spring up. If you purchase flowers in containers, set the containers, with their plants, in the places in the garden that they will inhabit. Then you can get an idea of what the garden will look like. If you need to move the flowers around for greater attractiveness, it is simply a matter of moving the pot around until the garden looks as you wish it to. After you have settled that everything is in place, begin removing the flowers from their containers and placing them in the ground, beginning from the back and working up toward the front.

 

Related posts:

1. Planning for the Future
2. Do-it-Yourself: Laying Sod
3. Planning Your Yard With Landscape Drawings