Flower Garden Ideas for Your Landscape

Get planting with these flower garden ideas in every color of the rainbow. Use these ideas to inspire your creativity, including blooms, hardscape, decorative objects, and flower selections.

Spring Flower Garden

A welcome burst of post-winter flower garden ideas comes courtesy of early-season flowers. When designing a flowerbed, plant in waves of color. These pink and yellow tulips provide early blooms in the spring.

Not all plants in a flower garden need be in the ground—here, the pretty blooms of Endless Summer hydrangeas fill a row of containers. As a bonus, the containers can be moved to add color to other sections of the garden.

A short row of boxwood, planted in the middle of a flowerbed, offers visual relief. If your bed is large, paths will make maintenance easier and enable visitors to wander through. In lighter tones, pastel hues—pink, yellow, lavender—blend well in this composition.

Charming Curves

Undulating borders contain beautiful blooms in this flower garden. Here, the flowerbed’s curving edges repeat alongside the lawn. Plants in similar hues—lavender, light purple, and fuchsia—offer a soothing palette. Access to, around, and through the garden is via round paving stones. Use geometry to contrast or complement.

Hardscape structures—such as this garden’s tall birdhouse—add whimsy to function. Mulch is essential; it keeps the weeds down and conserves moisture.

Rule of Three

Blooms add brightness to this flower garden idea. In place of a more formal material, gravel paths meander through the casual plantings. Meadow rue, planted at regular intervals along the back of the bed, provides vertical interest. A large decorative urn provides a segue between planted and paved areas.

Remember the rule of three: Group three of each plant to create visual consistency. Here, black-eyed Susans offer a cheery base for other plantings. Low-growing catmint gently transitions between the path and the flowerbed.

Room to Relax

Here, a spot for relaxing and dozing or enjoying an afternoon glass of lemonade is surrounded by a lush bed of blooms. Prolific, sun-loving flowers surround a table and chairs that blend seamlessly into the landscape in this welcoming flower garden idea. If trees and shrubs aren’t used to define a back border, use another hardscape structure, such as this purple trellis.

Planting one flower in various colors can make an impact, like these charming masses of pink, yellow, and white daylilies. Densely planted flowerbeds help to keep down weeds and conserve moisture; decrease the recommended spacing by half for growth that fills in quickly.

Around the Bend

Pretty plants become a boundary for a walkway, where a comfortable garden bench under a pergola is a scenic, relaxing spot in this garden. When choosing plants for a flowerbed, include vivid hues—the yellow of black-eyed Susan, for example—to attract butterflies and birds. Annuals, such as lavender and fuchsia petunias, fill bare spots in a perennial garden.

A dramatic tree gives height to a bed planted mostly in flowers. This Japanese maple, for instance, offers both color and seasonal foliage.