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IT’S SUMMERTHYME IN THE GARDEN!!!
Ready to add some instant color to your garden? I’d love to share my favorite garden bedding plant ideas for Summer with you!
With summer just around the corner, I am sharing my favorite garden bedding plant ideas today! Bedding plants are a easy way to create a colorful garden in almost no time!
As a bonus today, I am joining several of my blogging friends to give you even more ideas for your garden. You will find links to their posts at the bottom of this post. I hope you enjoy their creative ideas!
What is a bedding plant?
If you are like me, as soon as the first warm day hits you are ready to race to the garden center and purchase a cart full of blooming plants!
Many blooming plants are considered bedding plants. Using bedding plants is a quick way to add some instant color and texture to your garden.
Bedding plants are normally sold in individual pots or in flats. They are quite often started from seeds during the winter in a greenhouse. Once the danger of frost has passed, the plants are taken outside and added to the garden for an instant splash of color.
My personal favorite flowering bedding plants include petunias, geraniums, dianthus, snapdragons and salvia. Another bedding plant I like to use is dusty miller.
Bedding plants are so versatile. They can be grown right in the soil in a flower bed, a window box, a hanging basket or a combo pot.
PIctured below are some hanging baskets, planter baskets and containers that I sold when I had my flower shop. I often say my interests range from flowers (a former florist) to flour (a former pizzeria owner) and many things in between! My entrepreneurial journey is highlighted here:
Some Things to Consider Before Grabbing your Trowel
Be ” In Your Zone”
The USDA has the country divided into various growing zones based on the average annual minimum winter temperature, divided into 10-degree F zones. The zones range from 1a (Alaska) to 13 b (Puerto Rico). The zones help gardeners determine which plants are most likely to thrive in which locations. You can access the hardiness map here to get information about your growing zone. https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/
When I lived in Illinois and Ohio, I was living in the hardiness zone of 6a. Now that I am living in Southwest Florida, I am considered to be living in zone 10a. Southwest Florida is considered to be tropical. It has been somewhat of a challenge learning to garden in a different zone. So many of the plants I loved in Illinois can’t grow here due to the high humidity and lack of cold weather. But, I can have blooming plants outdoors practically year round!
What Does the Plant Need?
In addition to knowing your growing zone, to be a successful gardener you also need to know how much light and water a particular plant needs. Most bedding plants will come with a little plastic care tag. Everything the plant requires will be listed on the tag!
How Much Time & Space Do You Have?
If you are just getting started gardening, spend some time thinking about how much time you have to devote to your garden. Even easy care bedding plants need some care!
If you live in a small space, try combo pots or container gardens. Raised beds work great if you have mobility issues.
6 of My Favorite Bedding Plants:
All of these bedding plants are easy to care for. Adding dusty miller to your flower beds and containers is one way to add interest and texture to your garden. All of my favorite blooming bedding plants are easy to care for. Snapdragons, petunias and geraniums are available in a variety of colors. Dianthus or “pinks” as they are sometimes called come in a range of pink colors as well as white.
With the range of colors available, you are bound to find bedding plants to fit your desired color theme.
Snapdragons
Petunias
Salvia
Dianthus
Geraniums
Dusty Miller
How I Use Bedding Plants in My Garden
One of my very favorite things to do is to design combinations of blooming and green plants. When these combinations are for outdoors, they are called patio pots or color pots. Pictured below is a pink themed color pot perched on an old grindstone.
In preparation, I added potting mix to a 12″ terra cotta pot that I had given a makeover with white chalked paint.
When designing a patio pot, I try to use the thriller, spiller, filler technique. The thriller is the focal point. The spiller is a plant that will grow or spill over the edge and filler is the plant or plants that fills in the empty spots. For my pot, the petunias are actually filling both the filler and the spiller category.
In order to get a full look right away, I used quart sized containers of snapdragons and petunias. The dusty miller was in a 4-inch pot and I also used another annual called bacopa which is also a spiller. Because I used larger plants to start with and I live in Florida, I will probably have to transplant this color pot into a larger pot in about a month.
I placed the snapdragon to the back of the container. Then I added the petunias to the front. These petunias are the Proven Winners Bubble Gum Vista petunias. To learn a little more about Proven Winners and their petunias, please check out this blog post.
After adding the dusty miller and the bacopa, I filled in around the plants with extra potting soil. To finish the color pot, I added sheet moss on top in order to help keep the moisture in. Not only does the sheet moss help keep moisture in the soil, it dresses up your combo pot and makes it look more finished. I use it quite often.
One More Look at the Finished Pink Color Pot
A Few More Garden Bedding Plant Ideas
Black Cherry Petunias and Proven Winners Diamond Frost. To learn more about how I potted these containers, please read Gardening In The Tropics
Hot Pink Dianthus in a twig basket. Dianthus is such a hardy plant. Learn more about it here: How to Divide Dianthus
A trio of dusty miller plants adds texture and interest to the summer patio pot. More about it can be found here:
These salmon pink geraniums made a beautiful hanging basket that I gave as a gift last Mother’s Day. See how I made it here: How To Design A Hanging Basket with Geraniums
Thanks for joining me today!
Please scroll down and join me on the Garden Blog Hop for more gardening inspiration!
Are You Ready to Hop?
My friend Kippi is sharing her post about how to plant flowers in a raised bed. The post is linked here: Planting Flowers A Step by Step Guide
Are you craving some vibrant color and beautiful texture in your yard or outdoor space this Spring? It is so easy to create a stunning flower garden in a container that will bloom throughout the summer months. Follow this step by step tutorial for planting a simply sensational flower garden container from my friend, Lynne.
Sonya is sharing ideas for creating a flower garden in a small space. Isn’t her clematis gorgeous? You can find her ideas here: Ideas for creating a flower bed for small spaces
Leslie from Feet Under My Table is sharing how to create a garden that will attract butterflies. Flower Bed Garden Ideas
Disclosure: Affiliate links are used in this post. Please see my disclosure page for more information
