Gardening advice?

Question

I want to start a flower garden, but I don't have any experience. Can someone give me advice how to get started, and what flowers are easy to grow for beginners?

Answer 1

Spade up your area and add some compost or potting soil to the earth and mix well. pull out all of the grass roots, etc that you can. Smooth out the bed surface and lay down a layer of muclh, 3" deep all over the bed. Think about making a border between your lawn and the flower bed of bricks or stones or just edging.

Plant annual flowers first.. they are inexpensive and produce a lot of color. push the mulch aside where you want your flowers to be, dig a small hole, just large enough to accept the plant and then go to the next one.

make sure you select plants that are compatible with your area.. sunny, shady, part sun. There are tags in the flowers that help determine what that plant likes.

Get some controlled release fertilizer like osmocote or multicote. you can get it at wal-mart. Sprinkle a little bit around each newly planted flower. Water occasionally. Keep weeds pulled and enjoy.

That's way simpler than it is to build a garden, but you gotta start somewhere.

for sun, petunias and vincas do well.
for part sun, try begonias.
for shade, impatiens.

Gardening is fun. I hope you enjoy it.

Answer 2

The best thing to do is get a shovel and dig up the area you want to plant. You can use a garden hose to "mark out the area" so you know where you want to dig. The you get some good potting soil,they sell it at WalMart and pour it over the soil and then use the shovel and mix it all together really well. Then you get a Flower Carpet(They sell them at WalMart near where the potting soil is) and you roll it out on the area you want to use for the flower bed. Then you wet it down really well. Then cover it up LIGHTLY with some more potting soil,about a 1/4" to 1/2" and lightly water that. Keep watering it at least twice a day and more often if you can,until it comes up within about 2 wks you will start to see the seeds coming up,just keep watering it and in about 6 wks you will start to see a beautiful garden that will keep coming back year after year and fill itself in with more and more color as the years go by. OR You can get the soil ready like I told you in the beginning and then go to WalMart and pick out some plants that are already blooming and put them in. OR you can put down the flower carpet and plant some other flowers around it so that you have color before the carpet starts making more color. Just some ideas and good luck. I put flower carpets down and mine are starting to grow and in about a month I will have a beautiful flowerbed with lots of wildflowers in it. :-)

Answer 3

I remember planting flowers in a flower garden every spring with my mom. But then she mostly took care of them after that. :)

I think my first "gardening" experience all by myself was when I lived in an apartment; I bought some seedling flowers and planted them in pots that I left out on the balcony.

Now that I own my own house, I do the same basic thing. Buy seedlings from my local greenhouse (although you can also buy them from Home Depot or some other variety store). Stick 'em in the ground and make sure they're watered well and don't get eaten by rabbits and bugs.

Good choices may be marigolds, petunias, impatiens, violets, snap dragons, geraniums..... Those are all called anuals. (I remember this by knowing that they all have to be planted every year - anually.)

Otherwise, I like peonies (more of a shrub) and irises and tulips and dafodills and lily of the valley that come up every year on their own. Those are super easy to care for.

Hope that helps!

Answer 4

Welcome to what will in all probability become your greatest hobby bordering on addiction, if you like it at all! :) It doesn't matter if you have no experience. The only way to get experience is to DO something, and the only way to learn to do it "right" is to do it wrong. So if you have a shovel, clear you an area and make a start....

Depending on your soil (which you should probably amend - http://www.herworldonline.com/soilamending.shtml ) I've found yarrow, canna, mexican petuia, mexican heather, dianthus, pansies, petunias, polkadot plant, and coleus to be quite easy to grow, but you need to keep in mind that some plants require less sun than others.

Again, welcome, and Happy Gardening!

Answer 5

Go to Home Depot or Lowes or even your local nursery and go and see what will grow best where you live. Also, they WILL point you in the right direction as far as how big a space you have to plant, if you wanna do pots, etc...

Answer 6

Before you go to the store, go to hgtv.com. They have all the cable gardening shows there. You can get plans, lists of plants with pics for your area, tips on care, everything you need. You can get an idea of how your garden will look before you go to the store.

Answer 7

u don't say whatr part of the country u live in and that does make a difference but i would go with day lillies, they grow absolutely every where and under any conditions. u can also check with ur local home depot, and they can help u pick out stuff that grows in ur area