Important information of Flower Beds

Plant a garden, and you’ve beautified your world and created recreational and educational opportunities for yourself and your family. If you don’t have several acres and a personal gardener to maintain a large garden, you may want to consider establishing flower beds instead. Let the kids help plan and plant each bed, and give them maintenance chores and a reward when their efforts bring blooms. You could also sign up to maintain one public flower bed in the parks to contribute to everyone’s enjoyment.

1. Function:
Flower beds help organize the garden into separate areas for different plants that may have different horticultural requirements. They allow us to keep our lawn  on our city or suburban lots and enjoy gardening at the same time, and they allow us to individualize our gardens  by having control over how our garden will look and exactly how much work we want to undertake.

2. Features:
Flower beds are areas of a property that have been specially designated for flowering plants. Each bed has a specific design that is outlined with a material that will contain the flowers and keep grass and weeds at bay. Each bed should be prepared, by cultivation and soil amendment, to provide a proper place for the plants that will grow there. Flower varieties are chosen to match the light, soil and water for each bed.

3. History:
The history of gardens begins with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Persian and Indian pleasure gardens that were maintained for no other purpose than to provide joy for the beholder. Flower beds were part of a formal landscape that included architectural details and water into which the owner could disappear after a long day at the kingdom. Not until the Middle Ages did common people begin planting flowers in a corner or patch of a cottage garden, most of which was devoted to raising vegetables. An apothecary’s rose, foxglove and cowslips might form a little flower bed set off from the rest. Rosemary might serve double duty for color. Flower beds also anchored wealthy gardens, massing certain flowers for effect. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the middle class grew and more people owned property, both in the Old World and the New, the cottage garden gave way to a collection of flower beds and garden elements—a landscape. Today, only some are fortunate enough to have been able to visit the great gardens at Versailles or Kew, but anyone with a little time can plant a flower bed or two in order to be able to enjoy the beauty of nature.

4. Type:
Flower beds can be made for annuals or perennials. Their residents’ needs for sun or shade determine placement. Beds may be formal, geometrically arranged in a pattern or informal curved islands and borders in a yard. Design flower beds to complement your house or to be historic mirrors for an old house. You can even use containers to form flower beds. Whatever your taste and temperament, design your flower beds to please yourself and enhance your home. Although conventions do exist regarding placement and population of flower beds, today’s flower beds are designed for convenience and individual expression rather than as the result of academic rules.

5. Benefits:
Planting your own flower beds stretches your intellect as well as your body. The planning phase can last all winter and the execution and maintenance of a flower bed keeps your body going from spring to fall.