How to Design an Instant Garden

Pull your garden together on short notice for a good cause - your friend's wedding or to sell the house. Design an instant garden that makes a big impact in a hurry and lasts, too.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Measuring Tapes
• Plants
• Seeds
• Trellises
• Pencils
• Graph Papers
• Pencils
• Pencils
• Seeds
• Plants

1. Go for the biggest impact in choosing a site for your instant garden. Make a splash beside the front door, create a view out the back window or surround the entertaining area.

2. Know your main goal: a gorgeous planting that looks mature now and can maintain that look. Fill your design with plants for texture and contrast as well as flashy flowers.

3. Measure carefully and sketch your plan on graph paper. Mark places for plants and for accents such as sculptures and large pots.

4. Choose a focal point - the place you want people to see most - and position an attractive evergreen plant, sculpture, obelisk trellis or bird feeder there to add a feeling of age and maturity right away.

5. Pick a second place to feature a small tree or shrub at the height of its season in your instant garden - make it one that blooms for weeks, such as hydrangea in summer or berried holly in winter. Use it to focus attention and serve as a conversation piece.

6. Draw plants in your design closer together - instead of spacing them a foot apart, plan for annuals (in 4-inch pots, in bloom) on 8-inch centers. Squeeze two shrubs in the space usually reserved for one.

7. Finish a small garden - less than 6 square feet - with a riot of colorful blooming annuals and perennials. Note the triangle of your design: focal point, focus plant and color.

8. Add another element to medium-size gardens (6 to 15 square feet) before the annual blanket of color. Draw in a shrub or large perennial like ornamental grass - something interesting to look at and different from your focus plant.

9. Repeat these two design arrangements for larger instant gardens by dividing your sketch into quarters. Start at your focal point and plan for a focus plant and one of secondary interest plus instant color in each quadrant.

10. Plan a neat edge for the instant garden - match existing bricks or pavers, or simply cut a shallow trench to define the bed with plants trailing over it. Add a deep mulch for an immediately finished look.

Tips & Warnings

• Shop with your plan in hand and be flexible about plant choices - know what you need and adapt your plan to what's available.
• Try to plant your instant garden at least a week before its debut. Water well, and deadhead any plants with aging flowers when you plant.
• Plan to transplant - if you keep the garden going, it will outgrow its crowded planting and you can use the extras elsewhere in your landscape.
• Use lush, fast-growing plants cautiously in the instant garden. Leave these in their pots when you plant them, and plan to move them where they can spread later on.

[HottCookie94210]

on 1/12/2008 the steps were really good and very thought out and very easy to follow. it was awesome!!!