Flower Garden Ideas for Your Landscape

A dramatic tree gives height to a bed planted mostly in flowers. This Japanese maple, for instance, offers both color and seasonal foliage.

How to Start a Flower Garden in 3 Steps

Subtly layering flowers from low-growers to tall spires keeps sight lines intact and creates a more natural look.

Discover five considerations when planning a new flowerbed in your landscape.

If you’ve always dreamed of having a gorgeous flower garden, now is the time to make it happen. Starting a flower garden is both fun and rewarding. Follow these guidelines for beginners and you’ll be off to a great start.

Step 1 – Know Your Garden

• Know your site: The first step in creating the perfect flower garden is to familiarize yourself with the area you want to plant. Landscape architect, Mary Ellen Cowan suggests, “Really know your site. Listen to Mother Nature to learn about your land’s traits. Be honest with light, moisture conditions, and the topography.”
• Know your soil: An important tip to ensure a successful flower garden is to do a soil test. Erin Benzakein, owner of Floret Flower Farm, explains, “To collect soil samples, dig a hole 1 foot deep, gather a few tablespoons, then repeat throughout your garden until a quart-sized jar is full. You can send your soil to a testing lab like the UMass Soil and Plant Nutrient Testing Laboratory (soiltest.umass.edu) and use the result to amend your soil before planting.”
• Know your flowers: Cowan also says, “Learn what plants grow well in your soil. From there, you can figure out what to do design-wise.” Carol Bornstein, horticulturist at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, recommends “visiting nearby natural areas that mimic your conditions in the wild to discover the flowers that you like.” Not sure where to start? Check out this list: 21 Easiest Flowers for Beginners.
• Know your frost cycle: To make sure your newly planted garden will survive the seasons, you will need to know your area’s average last and first frost dates. Benzakein notes this will affect when you start seeds and will allow you to plant varieties that will grow into autumn. Starting your seeds about 4 to 6 weeks before the average last frost date will give your plants a jump start. The plants will fill in faster and cut down on weeds. If you don’t have a greenhouse to start your seeds in, a covered seed tray indoors under growing lights will work.

Step 2 – Create Your Color Palette

• Create unity: When choosing a color scheme, Bornstein suggests picking one that will “help unify the landscape.” Using variations and different tones of the same color can make an impact without dominating.
• Create excitement: While sticking to a few similar hues can create a feeling of harmony, complimentary colors—opposites on the color wheel—create juxtaposition. For example, the combination of blue and yellow is fresh, lively, and summery. “In a sunny spot, warm tones like yellows, oranges, and reds make the most of the light, especially during the ‘golden hours,’ when the sun rises or sets. However, on their own, hot colors can appear rather flat. Blues compliment the yellows, creating harmony and vibrancy. Occasional splashes of hot orange and red add a little thrill,” says Keith Wiley of Wildside, his garden in Devon, England.
• Create peaceful areas: Wiley adds that it is prudent to practice restraint, as too much variety can feel tiring. “You can’t have everything screaming at you in the garden. Separate areas with intense color or high drama with neutrals,” says Bill Thomas of Chanticleer. Above all, landscape designer and author of Heaven is a Garden, Jan Johnsen encourages the use of colors you personally enjoy in your garden.

Step 3 – Design Like a Pro

• Design with shape: When designing a flower garden, world-renowned Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf suggests that shape is a good place to start. Perennials have several basic shapes: spires, plumes, daisies, buttons, globes, umbels, and screens. Try putting different shapes together and see if they spark off each other. Some combinations will be vibrant and dynamic, others may clash. Planting similar flower shapes together can reinforce an idea.
• Design with repetition: The repetition of key shapes or colors provides a sense of calm and visual unity. Ideally, advises Wiley, plants you repeat should have a long season, not look untidy after flowering, and flourish in the garden’s conditions. Strategic repetition of flowers offers continuity when moving from one area of the garden to another.
• Design in layers: Matt James, in his book, How to Plant a Garden, states, “When planting, try to pull one layer subtly into another — and vice versa — to create a more natural look, rather than simply arrange the layers like a staircase.” Oudolf warns that you can “lose plants in the back,” so it is important to make sure sight lines remain to see flowers at the rear of a border.
• Design in combinations: “Think in terms of plant combinations rather than individual species,” suggests Sean Hogan of Cistus Nursery near Portland, Oregon. Mixing plant heights, sizes, colors, scale, and textures keeps the garden engaging in all seasons. Relaxed plantings will provide color, movement and a meadow-like feel.
• Design with fragrance and movement: Dan Hinkley, plant hunter and author, has discovered what he enjoys most in his garden — fragrance and movement. “These elements of a garden aren’t included in the design often enough.” He advises to take advantage of natural breeze patterns to allow the scents of flowers to waft toward your home or patio areas.

Bonus Flower Garden Tips

• For a more productive flower garden and to encourage longer stems (better for cut flowers and floral design), Benzakein advises to plant flowers close together. “This will reduce weeds and increase the number of flowers you produce.”
• If you are growing flowers for cutting, “Don’t forget to grow foliage and filler plants for arrangements,” says Benzakein.
• Donna Hackman, retired garden designer, recommends that if you want your flowers to spill over in a natural way, but don’t want them within reach of the mower’s blades, install rectangles of flagstone around the beds. Also, keep paths between flower beds wide, so flowers won’t be trampled underfoot when walking through the garden.
• Hackman also suggests choosing smaller cultivars to reduce pruning work and planting shrubs at the center of your flower beds to provide year-round structure and height.

With seemingly endless design options, these tips will guide you in making the best choices when starting a flower garden, allowing you to sit back on a nice afternoon and enjoy the fruits—or blossoms—of your labor.

Flower Garden Ideas for Your Landscape

These beautiful gardens can be inspiration for your backyard landscaping.

Viveka Neveln is the Garden Editor at BHG and a degreed horticulturist with broad gardening expertise earned over 3+ decades of practice and study. She has more than 20 years of experience writing and editing for both print and digital media.

Get planting with these flower garden ideas in every color of the rainbow. Use these ideas to inspire your creativity, including blooms, hardscape, decorative objects, and flower selections.

Spring Flower Garden

A welcome burst of post-winter flower garden ideas comes courtesy of early-season flowers. When designing a flowerbed, plant in waves of color. These pink and yellow tulips provide an early burst of blooms in the spring.

Not all plants in a flower garden need be in the ground—here, the pretty blooms of Endless Summer hydrangeas fill a row of containers. As a bonus, the containers can be moved to add color to other sections of the garden.

A short row of boxwood, planted in the middle of a flowerbed, offers visual relief. If your bed is large, paths will make maintenance easier and enable visitors to wander through. Pastel hues—pink, yellow, lavender—in lighter tones blend well in this composition.

Charming Curves

Undulating borders contain beautiful blooms in this flower garden. Here, the flowerbed’s curving edges repeat alongside the lawn. Plants in similar hues—lavender, light purple, and fuchsia—offer a soothing palette. Access to, around, and through the garden is via round paving stones. Use geometry to contrast or complement.

Hardscape structures—such as this garden’s tall birdhouse—add whimsy to function. Mulch is essential; it keeps the weeds down and conserves moisture.

Rule of Three

Blooms add brightness to this flower garden idea. In place of a more formal material, gravel paths meander through the casual plantings. Meadow rue, planted at regular intervals along the back of the bed, provides vertical interest. A large decorative urn provides a segue between planted and paved areas.

Remember the rule of three: Group three of each plant to create visual consistency. Here, black-eyed Susans offer a cheery base for other plantings. Low-growing catmint gently transitions between the path and the flowerbed.

Room to Relax

Here, a spot for relaxing and dozing or enjoying an afternoon glass of lemonade is surrounded by a lush bed of blooms. Prolific, sun-loving flowers surround a table and chairs that blend seamlessly into the landscape in this welcoming flower garden idea. If trees and shrubs aren’t used to define a back border, use another hardscape structure, such as this purple trellis.

Planting one flower in various colors can make an impact, like these charming masses of pink, yellow, and white daylilies. Densely planted flowerbeds help to keep down weeds and conserve moisture; decrease the recommended spacing by half for growth that fills in quickly.

Around the Bend

Pretty plants become a boundary for a walkway, where a comfortable garden bench under a pergola is a scenic, relaxing spot in this garden. When choosing plants for a flowerbed, include vivid hues—the yellow of black-eyed Susan, for example—to attract birds and butterflies. Annuals, such as lavender and fuchsia petunias, fill bare spots in a perennial garden.

A dramatic tree gives height to a bed planted mostly in flowers. This Japanese maple, for instance, offers both color and seasonal foliage.

Pergola and Perennials

A pretty bed of perennials takes center stage in this flower garden idea, while delicate spring pansies fill in until they come to full bloom in summer. Gravel fills the space between the paving stones and offers a soft edge to the lush flowerbed.

A boxwood border divides the bed from the wired pergola structure. The purple salvia adds vertical growth. A dappled willow’s variegated foliage provides a color counterpoint to the deeper shades at the front of the bed.

Side View

Gorgeous blooms fill a narrow stretch of this yard, where a paved walkway provides a geometric contrast to the more casual flower garden idea. Moveable containers planted in succulents and blooms complement the colors featured in the garden.

A climbing rose rambles up a wall to supply height and color, and a small tuteur adds an unexpected element. Ivy climbs over the door and window awnings, where its green complements the home’s neutral wall.

Stately Sculpture

Consider plants for their sculptural value. Evergreen pines trimmed in a triangular shape offer a dramatic focal point in this beautiful flowerbed. Annuals, perennials, and bulbs give the garden vivid color and interesting shapes. Here, statuesque gladiolas neatly contrast with the more relaxed foliage and surrounding blooms.

Large swaths of color offer a soothing, restrained scene, but plants need not bloom in similar colors to work. Here, for example, the white gladiolas contrast with the red dahlias. If you’re content with minimalism, large groupings of similar flowers offer a fuss-free landscape solution.

Flower Flourish

A dramatic front yard flowerbed provides a constant stream of color. Use a planted edge to seamlessly transition from lawn to flowering space—here, a miniature boxwood hedge offers an understated border. Repeating plants and colors, such as patches of Endless Summer hydrangeas, daylilies, and astilbe, maintain consistency.

Breaking up a large flowering area with hardscape elements, such as short stretches of white picket fence, is a flower garden idea that can provide welcome visual relief. Tall shrubs, loosely shaped into mounds, offer a backdrop to the waves of color. A trellis reaching beside and over the front door provides an easy, inexpensive way to train a climbing vine.

Winsome Appeal

Nestled next to a small pond, this garden’s spots to rest and enjoy the blooms are essential. Here, a stone bench provides views of the plants and the water feature, while a gazebo, nearly hidden by shrubs, supplies an interesting hardscape element in this easygoing landscape.

If yours is large enough, a delightful flower garden idea is a pathway edged in rocks, which can diverge in two directions. The foliage and flowers of coreopsis, phlox, coneflower, and feather reed grass offer pretty blooms and attract birds and butterflies.