How to Pick Flowers & Plants for an All-Year-Round Garden

Annual flowers like pansies create a burst of color in the garden.

Gardens filled with a variety of plants and flowers for every season provide a space to enjoy year-round. With a wide range of sizes and blooms, year-round gardens also create an ever-changing landscape to admire what's in bloom and anticipate what's to come. To ensure a successful all-season garden, pick those plants that grow in your U.S. Department of Agriculture hardiness zone. With a little preplanning, you can have a colorful, long-lasting garden to enjoy for many years.

Things You'll Need

• Blueprint
• Perennial flowers
• Evergreen plants
• Spring bulbs
• Annuals

Instructions

1. Choose flowers and plants that grow in the garden based on the climate and the amount of sun the garden receives. Pick easy-to-grow plants that are heat and drought tolerant to create a successful, long-lived garden.

2. Draw out a blueprint or rough draft of the design to refer to as you work your way through the project and to allow you to make quick changes during the planting process.

3. Grow flowers and plants for every season to guarantee the garden is in year-round bloom. Start by planting perennial flowers, a variety of plant that grows back every year fuller and taller than before.

4. Pick winter-blooming plants that emerge in winter to early spring to ensure color in the oftentimes colorless season. Grow flowers like snowdrops to create color in late winter to early spring.

5. Choose evergreen plants to grow inside the year-round garden to defy the barren landscape of winter. Pick blooming evergreens like hellebore and camellia for their bright colors and showy foliage.

6. Add spring flower bulbs like daffodils in the garden to fill in bare spots and supply color after winter. Grow the bulbs around the flower garden for splashes of color throughout.

7. Pick annual flowers that thrive within the current USDA zone to add color between the seasons and help fill in bare, hard-to-reach spots. Place annuals like pansies to create a full and colorful bed.

References

• University of Illinois Extension: Spring Flowering Bulbs
• North Carolina State University Extension: Annual Flowers