Fabulous Plants to Add to Your Garden this Year

It’s absolutely lovely to have a lush, colorful garden, but it can sometimes be challenging to decide which flowering plants go well together. It’s somewhat an art to combine shrubs, annuals, perennials, vines, and others to create an eclectic but harmonious garden. There are many factors to consider – the flower shape, blooming season, contrasting and complementary colors, and even flower shape.

The following tips on the choice of the best plants for your garden will surely help you create a winning combination and create a garden landscape filled with flowers that blend exceptionally well together.

Mix Shrubs and Flowers

Shrubs are excellent as flower borders. They add color, texture and structure to your garden while you still wait for your plants to bloom. They also come in a wide variety of colors to choose from, such as the yellow flowers of perennial ox-eye daisy. This plant makes the perfect summer companion to the leaves of dwarf golden privet.

Go Tropical

Even if you don’t live anywhere near the tropical regions, you can still have a gorgeous tropical garden. Provided the temperatures are hot and humid, tropical plants will yield colorful flowers and foliage throughout the summer. In subtropical climates like Australia, tropical plants grow well in protected microclimates like gardens with supplementary water and organic fertilizer.

Brighten Up the Shade

There’s bound to be some shady spots in your garden but there’s no need to leave them dull and barren. There are many shade-dwelling eye-catching plants that will spice up any corner, from bright green sweet woodruff, Japanese Hakone grass, and a large variety of colorful hosta varieties.

Add Potted Plants

Container gardening is a convenient and easy way to say goodbye to winter and get ready for spring. At a time when ground soil is still too hard and cold for you to grow anything, the potting soil in different containers can still absorb plenty of sun for your growing plants.

There’s a large number of plants that thrive in the cooler temps typical of early spring. Many of them even tolerate a light frost or snowfall. At the end of summer, these plants will be great for fall containers so your garden remains colorful deep into the next season. When this arises, what you need to do is to safely repot them and keep on enjoying the lovely sight!

Mix Herbs and Flowers

Your garden will be even more colorful and fragrant if you mix up perennials and flowering herbs as they will bloom together in May and June. You could opt for a combo of bearded iris and peonies on one side, and chives and lavender on the other. The difference in their heights will help this part of your garden look full and lush, particularly during late spring when everything blooms.

Include Roses

Roses, whether they’re a shrub or landscape variety, combine perfectly well with both annual and perennial flowers from spring to fall. For example, you can partner up a bright pink shrub rose with a purple-blue Siberian iris. Their opposing foliage will make excellent contrast. Both of these plants like full sun exposure and well-drained soil.

Don’t Forget the Perennials

Perennial plants are the ones that add pops of color and seasonal enthusiasm in gardens from April to November. They also attract bees and butterflies to their blossoms and are excellent for cutting bouquets.

Perennials are typically easy to grow, and incredibly multifunctional. You can use them as fillers between shrubs, in containers, as a groundcover beneath trees, or plant them along paths to create a classic flowery border. Thus they become an easy alternative to annuals as they return each year and grow even bigger as they mature. There’s a wide array of these plants to choose from and it all comes down to how you compose them together.

Go Vertical With Flowering Vines

Flower-covered vines are a perfect way to add more color to plain vertical spaces such as walls and fences. There’s no reason why color should only be reserved for the horizontal plane! Be intentional in your planting and pick vines that will bloom in a contrasting color to your walls such as a yellow coneflower or a purple clematis.

Plan for Drought Spells

Sooner or later almost every part of the country is susceptible to drought periods. You can still have a colorful garden but it’s wise to have an ace up your sleeve – a plan for the drought. When you’re designing your garden, pick a few dry-resistant plants such as a hyssop and creeping sedum. They’re both adapted to growing and blooming in a low rainfall season, and both will ensure that even then, you have pops of color in your garden.

Having a garden that looks amazing throughout the entire year is challenging, but with some clever planning and preparation, anything is possible. The key is to take control of your garden, add structure to it and strategically plan the flowers. There are always highs and lows in gardens, but with the tips listed here, you’ll be able to create a garden that is never devoid of color or flair!