If you have never had a flower garden before, don’t be intimidated. It is not difficult to build a very nice flower bed or flower border. You can start a flower bed any time in the spring, summer, or the fall. If you have some patience, the best time to start the bed is in the fall when you would dig up the soil, add organic matter, and then mulch it for the winter. This gives the soil a chance to build its fertility, begin attracting beneficial soil organisms, and get settled by the rain and snow and freezing and thawing. Then by spring, your new flower bed will be in great shape to receive your plants. If you build the bed in the spring or in the summer, it will still work, but it takes a year or so for the soil to mature, so your plants might not be so wonderful in that first year. Next year they will be better.
Locating The Flower Bed
A flower bed can be located in full sun, in part sun or shade, or in full shade. Whatever the light situation is will determine which plants you will be able to grow in your bed. A bed in full sun offers the best environment for growing flowers, but while it is a bit more of a challenge, a flower bed in the shade can be lovely all season long. The plants that grow in full sun cannot be happy in shade and vice versa.
Size Of The Bed - If you are building a flower bed for the first time, you are best advised to go slowly and not start off with a huge garden all at once. You can always expand a flower bed. A bed that includes up to 100 square feet gives you plenty of space in which to develop a beautiful garden. You can grow annuals, perennials, bulbs, and even a couple of small flowering shrubs in 100 square feet. If the bed is 4 feet wide, it would be about 25 feet long. If you are a beginner, then you will be learning about watering, fertilizing, weed control, transplanting, and insect control, so starting with a garden that is too large could be overwhelming in the first year.
