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How Does the Soil Affect Your Flowers?

The type of soil in your flower beds and its characteristics affect your plants in many ways.

Flowering plants are typically a little more easy-going about the soil they’re in than vegetables, but it still impacts growth. Therefore, it’s essential to know some basics about your soil.

What is Soil Texture, and Why Is it Important?

Soil texture is the sand, silt, and clay ratio that makes up the uppermost soil layer known as topsoil. Ideally, you want your flower bed soil to be a blend of all three, which is commonly known as loam. Loam soils drain well while holding onto a suitable amount of water and nutrients.

Soils with too much clay don’t drain well. The water stays trapped between the soil particles, and the ground stays too wet. One of the benefits of clay, though, is it also holds onto nutrients well.

Soils with too much sand have the opposite characteristics of clay. They don’t hold onto water or nutrients but drain very quickly.

What Is Soil Organic Matter, and Why Is it Important?

Soil organic matter is made up of decomposing or fully decomposed plant and animal matter. It helps improve the soil’s water retention, holds onto nutrients to improve soil fertility, and helps the soil resist pH changes.

Why Is Soil pH Important?

Knowing your soil’s pH is important because the pH influences the availability of soil nutrients. If the pH value is too low or too high, nutrients become unavailable for plant uptake or become available in toxic amounts.

Most plants like soil pH values between 6.0 and 7.0 because this range has the best nutrient availability.

Testing the Soil to Determine its Characteristics

The easiest way to determine your soil’s characteristics is to collect a sample and have it professionally analyzed for a small fee. But if you’re the DIY type, you can determine soil texture and pH yourself.

Amending the Soil Before Planting

The following amendments help improve the texture, organic-matter content, water-holding capacity, soil pH, and fertility.

If your soil is high in sand or clay, add finished compost or fully decomposed cow manure to increase the organic matter.
If your soil is acidic, add lime to raise the soil pH.
If your soil is alkaline, you can add sulfur products to lower the soil pH.
If your soil is deficient in nutrients, add the recommended amount of fertilizer based on your soil test results.

Building New Flower Beds

Creating a new flower bed from scratch is an exciting project, although the building part might seem a little daunting. With some planning and preparation and a bit of sweat equity, you’ll be enjoying a flower-filled bed in no time.

Choose the Right Spot in Your Yard

There are a handful of things to look at when picking a spot for a new flower bed. Building a flower bed is a significant task — you don’t want to construct it and then discover it’s not suitable for growing flowers.

Does it Have Good Sun Exposure?

Most popular bedding plants need full sun to flower or a minimum of six hours of direct sun every day. Watch the spot for a few days, checking it at different times of the day to see sun exposure. Make sure it isn’t shaded by your house, trees, fence, etc.

If the spot is partly shaded, you can still use it for a flower bed, but you’ll be limited in what flowers will grow well.

How Close Is the Water?

Water accessibility is incredibly important. Your flower bed needs access to water, so make sure they’re close enough for your hose to reach or to carry a watering can there.

How Windy Is the Spot?

Keep an eye on how hard the wind blows through your yard. Ideally, you want a spot that has some protection from the wind. Strong winds can damage plants, move soil, and speed up the evaporation of water.

Is the Ground Level?

Level ground isn’t necessary, but you want the spot to be pretty level. Highly uneven ground creates water and drainage problems. The high areas dry out quickly, while low spots may not dry out and will have standing water.

Remove the Grass

Unless you already have a bare patch of earth, you must remove the grass before planting flowers.

Digging out the grass isn’t an easy job. Starting from the center of the bed, use a shovel to remove a chunk of grass. Then, remove pieces of turf by wedging the shovel or a hoe under the grass’ edge, lifting and peeling it away.

Get the Soil Ready for Flowers

Edge the Perimeter of the Flower Bed

After preparing the soil, the final step to building a new flower bed is outlining the perimeter with landscape edging. A border helps keep the grass where it belongs and prevents flowers from moving into the yard.

General Introduction to Flower Gardening

Whether you want to brighten up your yard or give yourself a reason to spend more time outside, flower gardening is a great hobby to begin.

What Type of Space Is Needed to Grow Flowers?

The amount of space you need for flowers depends on how much space you have and how much you want to devote to flower beds.

If you are limited on space, you can build raised beds for gardening, plant flowers in containers on your balcony or patio, grow flowers in window boxes, use hanging baskets, or purchase unique planters attached to the side of your home.

If your yard is larger and you have more available space, you are limited by your budget and how much time you want to devote to gardening.

Remember that the more flowers you grow, the more time you will devote to caring for them.

Why Should You Start Flower Gardening?

There are many reasons why you should start flower gardening. Flower beds add beauty to your landscape, increasing your home’s curb appeal. Beyond that, they also have many physical and environmental benefits.

Flowers within a person’s visible sight help improve their mood and reduce the susceptibility to stress-related anxiety and depression.
Flowers and other ornamental plants increase positive energy levels and also help people feel relaxed.
Planting flowers benefits the environment since they absorb carbon dioxide, helping lower greenhouse gasses.
Plants radiate oxygen, improving the atmosphere.
Flowers help improve pollination by drawing in bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other insects that pollinate food plants. Flowers are both a source of nectar and habitat.
Flowers can help stabilize soil prone to erosion as their roots grow through the ground.
Gardening is a great source of exercise.

What Tools Are Needed to Get Started?

Like vegetable gardening, there is very little you need to start with flower gardening. You need three things to get started besides your plants and the flower bed space.

As you spend more time gardening, you may want to invest in good gardening gloves, a long-handled shovel, a hoe, and a garden rake. Some people like having a cushioned pad to kneel on and a caddy to carry their tools.

Edible Fence Plants

While ornamental features are sure to attract plenty of positive attention to your garden, few plants are as exciting as edible ones. Growing edible plants near a fence can be an incredibly rewarding experience, but there are some insights you should be aware of before you set out to raise an edible fence plant garden.

The Pros and Cons of Edible Fence Plants

The most apparent benefit of growing edible fence plants is that you’ll get to enjoy tasty produce while basking in the satisfaction of knowing you grew it yourself. This outcome is not only satisfying, but it also makes for a healthier lifestyle as you’ll have fresh, healthy fruits and vegetables available in your own yard.

The major disadvantage of growing edible plants is that they tend to require significantly more labor on your part. Edible plants usually need plenty of attention, including specific pruning, fertilizing, and harvesting chores. These chores can be made more difficult when growing edible plants near fences, as fences can influence environmental factors and your plant’s growing space.

The effort required to grow edible plants can surprise and overwhelm some. However, if you are aware of the challenge and prepared to meet it, you’ll get the reward of a bountiful harvest in your fence garden.

Selecting the Best Edible Plants for Your Garden

The most important factor when selecting edible plants is to ensure that you choose plants that will survive in your region. Many of the popular fruiting plants that you buy in the grocery store will only survive in hotter climates. As such, these plants will not be ideal to grow outdoors near your fence if you live where the winter is cold.

By contrast, some fruiting plants, like apple trees, are cold hardy and will be capable of growing near your outdoor fence. These plants can have the opposite problem of warm weather loving plants, in that they may not survive hotter climates.

You should also consider the size, soil needs, sunlight needs, and ornamental features of your edible plants. Match these characteristics and needs to the appearance and growing conditions that your fence provides.

Creating a Bountiful Harvest

The key to creating a bountiful harvest with your edible plants is to follow the ideal care routine. Most fruiting plants need specific types of pruning and different amounts of water and fertilizer. It’s up to you to understand these needs and provide your edible plants with the conditions and maintenance they need.

Keeping up with edible plant maintenance can be a struggle. However, if you know what will make your plants grow best and check on them regularly, there is little in your way of creating a bountiful fence garden.

Flowering Fence Plants

Whether or not you grow your plants near a fence, the flowers your plants hold are some of the most impressive features in a garden. In this chapter, we’ll explore a few ideas about choosing flowering plants for your fence garden.

Selecting Flowering Fence Plants

Color, texture, size, and quantity are all relevant factors for you to consider when choosing flowering plants. Flowers can come in an impressively wide range of varieties, giving you plenty of options to choose from.

The most noticeable qualities of flowers are often their colors. These colors can range from white to pink, purple, red, orange, yellow, and more. Essentially, you can select from the entire rainbow when choosing flowering plants. Your goal should be to choose colors that complement the color of your fence and any other nearby plants.

The other flower traits are often secondary to the color but are crucial to your garden’s appearance as well. Some plants bloom with copious amounts of flowers that can be large or small. Others offer singly held flowers with interesting shapes and reproductive structures. Texture also comes into play with flowers, and you’ll find that there are many different textures that flowering plants can have.

Light Requirements for Flowering Plants

Flowers will grow in nearly any growing setting. However, most of the best ornamental flowering plants will exhibit their best blooming characteristics when they grow in full sunlight.

Sunlight typically gives flowering plants the high amounts of energy they need to develop impressive blooms. As such, flowering plants are best for locations that get plenty of sun exposure. For example, if you have a south-facing fence, flowering plants may be some of the best plant options for you.

Creating Color in Different Seasons

Flowers bloom during different times of the year. You should be aware not only of your plants’ blooming traits, but also when those traits will be present.

One of the most impressive effects that you can create in the garden is what many call a “march of color,” a phrase indicating that your garden has multiple flowering plants that each bloom during different seasons. When done well, your flowering plants will bloom one after another, adding variety, while also maintaining a consistent presence of bright, colorful garden flowers.

Ornamental Foliage Fence Plants

When many people think of ornamental plants, the first images that come to mind include showy flowers. What many people miss is that plants can add just as much visual appeal via their foliage. This chapter will cover a few ideas about how to select ornamental foliage plants for your garden.

How to Select Foliage Fence Plants

You should select foliage plants based on the leaf characteristics that most please your eyes. As you’ll notice when browsing foliage plants, these plant species can offer a wide range of lovely traits.

Foliage plants can impress you with their unique leaf shapes, captivating textures, and even a surprisingly wide range of color options. While some foliage plants have large, glossy leaves, others may add an element of sharpness with sets of bristly needles. It’s up to you to decide which of these qualities is best for you and your garden.

Common Light Requirements for Foliage Fence Plants

While there are plenty of plants with attractive foliage that will thrive in full sunlight, foliage plants are typically a go-to option for those gardening in lower light settings. Most flowering plants need at least partial or full sunlight to bloom their best, but that is not always true for foliage plants.

Many of the most popular ornamental foliage plants grow well in partial to full shade conditions. This ability to grow in shadier settings makes foliage plants an ideal option for those who have struggled to add intrigue to the darker areas of their garden. They are also a great option for garden beds that receive a lot of shade from a nearby fence.

Picking Foliage Plants to Match Your Garden

Most importantly, if you want your foliage plants to look fantastic in your garden, you need to select some that match the current aesthetics of your growing area. Observe the major plants and structures, including fences and trellises, and select foliage plants that will match that character. Fortunately, there are foliage plants that will work well with most popular garden styles.

How Fences Can Change Growing Conditions

You might first expect that growing plants near a fence is just like growing them in any other location. But the truth is that fences can alter growing conditions to a significant degree, which may impact the health of your plants. Read on to learn more about how that is the case.

Fences Can Block Sunlight

Fences, especially tall solid fences, can block sunlight, which may lead to weak or uneven growth for your plants. At times, the orientation of a fence can be so disadvantageous that it prevents sunlight from reaching your plants entirely. As most know, sunlight is crucial for plants, so you must study your fence to ensure it does not prevent your plants from getting the sunlight they need.

Fences that run from east to west and are located north of your plants will allow for the most sun exposure. A fence with the same orientation that sits to the south of your plants has the potential to block the sun entirely. Meanwhile, fences at other angles can alter sun exposure in numerous ways, which you should be cognizant of as well.

Fences Can Alter Wind Patterns

Fences can change the pattern of the wind in your garden, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. In the former scenario, a fence may be a welcome addition if you have plants that are vulnerable to cold winds and your fence stands where it can block those winds.

In other instances, your fence may channel the wind to create harsh wind tunnels that could cause harm to your more-fragile plants. As is the case with any other environmental condition, the wind is something you should observe often to understand how it will affect your plants.

Fences Can Intercept Rainwater

Occasionally, a fence may intercept some amount of rainwater that falls in your growing location. This effect is often minimal but can have an impact on the soil moisture where your plants grow.

The obvious remedy to this potential issue is to monitor soil moisture in your garden around the fence area. If you notice that your fence prevents your plants from getting the water they need from the rain, add supplemental water accordingly.

Fences Can Crowd Your Plants

One of the most prevalent challenges that fences present to gardeners is overcrowding. Fences can serve as a definitive boundary, marking the end of your plant’s growing space.

To prevent overcrowding, you need to understand the mature size of your fence plants and space them based on that size. Pruning and trimming are also helpful chores that will keep your plants and fences from contacting each other unnecessarily.

Tips

USDA Hardiness Zones

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) developed a guide for determining how likely certain plants are to grow successfully in certain climates. The zones go from 1 to 13 (coldest to warmest) based on the extreme minimum temperatures experienced in the area. While developed by the USDA to map out regions of the United States, the system has been adopted by other countries as well. Most trees sold in the US will include their hardiness zone for growers’ reference.

Selecting a Healthy Tree

When shopping for a tree, look for firm, healthy leaves that have good color. The branches should be relatively symmetrical and well spaced along the trunk. Check for signs of insect damage or disease, as well as physical damage from mishandling or sunscald.

If possible, you should also check the roots. They should be firm and relatively light in color. Avoid buying a tree with roots that are dark brown or black, mushy, slimy, or have an odor. These are signs of root rot from overwatering. In general, selecting a reliable retailer that cares for and handles plants properly is the best way to be sure you’re getting a healthy specimen.

Growing Trees from Kitchen Scraps

Lots of the fruits that we buy from the grocery store can provide viable seeds that can grow into a new tree. Try saving seeds from apples, avocados, cherries, all kinds of citrus, peaches, and plums to grow into trees. However, be aware that you may not reproduce the exact variety of fruit that you purchased, because growers use grafting and selective breeding to grow the exact fruit they want. However, you can still grow a beautiful tree from what would have otherwise been thrown away.

Getting Trees for Free

There are several ways you can get trees or seeds absolutely free! First, many local governments and nonprofit organizations will offer trees upon request. Some will even deliver! You may not be able to choose exactly what type of tree they give you, but the price can’t be beat.

Some trees can be propagated from branch cuttings, including willows, fig, olive, maples, oaks, and most citrus trees. You may be able to find seeds or even seedlings that have already sprouted up near mature trees. Be sure to ask for permission before taking any plant material from other people’s yards or from public lands such as parks.

Finally, check your public library for a seed library (and if they don’t have one, you can suggest it!). Online groups can also be a good way to find other gardeners who are willing to share or swap seeds in your area.

Bringing Your Tree Home

Once you get your tree home, obviously the first thing you’re going to want to do is plant it. Unfortunately, though, a newly planted tree can sometimes take some time to adapt to its new circumstances. The tree that looked beautiful and healthy at the nursery may suddenly wilt or develop brown leaves.

Recovery and Adaptation Time

Newly planted trees can go through a period of adjustment called transplant shock. This is a totally normal reaction to a stressful event as the tree adapts to its new circumstances. The symptoms of transplant shock are leaves wilting and turning yellow or brown.

It’s important not to overcorrect if your new tree displays these symptoms. The best approach is to keep a close eye on the tree and allow it several weeks to recover. Be sure not to overwater or underwater during this time. If your tree takes a turn for the worse or continues to look unhealthy, you may need to consult with a professional to determine what the problem is.

When to Plant/Water/Fertilize a New Tree

Autumn is typically considered the ideal time of year to plant new trees. During the window of time between the heat of summer and when the ground freezes, it’s fine to plant new trees.

Water the tree immediately after planting it. Newly planted trees need more frequent watering than established trees, but you should avoid overwatering. Check the soil before watering, but expect that you will need to monitor your new tree’s watering needs closely over the first few weeks. In general, new trees need water every two to three days, but this will depend on many factors, including temperature, humidity, and soil conditions.

Fertilizer should not be used on a tree for at least the first year after planting. During this time, the tree will have minimal nutrient needs that should be easily available from the soil. And, in fact, most mature trees also do not need supplemental fertilizer.

Where to Get Trees

Once you’ve chosen what type of tree you want to purchase and where you want to plant it, it’s time to actually get your tree! But there are lots of options for buying trees — which one is best for you?

Purchasing a Tree at a Nursery or Large Retail Store

There are several advantages to purchasing a tree from a local retailer such as a specialty tree nursery or garden center. First and probably most importantly, you can see the trees in person and choose exactly which one(s) you like. The staff at the store should also be knowledgeable about the local climate and what trees can thrive there.

If you are looking for a particular species of tree, it’s best to call ahead and make sure they have some in stock before you head out. You may also want to confirm if the retailer offers delivery, and the cost for delivery if so. Otherwise, be sure you have a plan for transporting your new tree back home.

Buying Trees Online

If you are looking for more unusual trees, or don’t live near a tree nursery, you’ll likely find yourself shopping online. It’s incredibly convenient, since you can shop whenever and wherever you like.

However, shipping costs can sometimes be high, depending on how large and unwieldy your new tree is. It’s also possible that the tree could be damaged during the shipping process. Be sure to double-check whether the seller offers any guarantees, and read reviews from past customers to see how they handle customer complaints.

Growing Trees from Seeds

If you don’t mind waiting for your tree to grow, starting from seed can be a satisfying process that is also cost-effective (especially if you need to plant a lot of trees). Most tree seeds require a cold period followed by a season of warm and wet weather. So, you might choose to sow your seeds outside in the autumn, and allow them to grow naturally. This is an easy option, but you risk losing a number of seeds to birds, animals, or unfavorable conditions.

The other option is to start your seeds in a controlled environment, and then plant the saplings once they have established themselves. This method takes more effort, but yields more trees overall and also allows you to select the strongest of the trees that have sprouted for planting.

To start seeds indoors, research the specific requirements for the tree species you want to grow. For example, some types of seeds have a hard coating that needs to be softened or sanded away to make it easier for the tree to sprout. Ideally the place where you purchase the seeds should be able to give you information on how to plant them, but the internet or a knowledgeable friend can also help.