Flowers Ideas, Tips & Guides

For all those city dwellers, these hanging balcony flowers will add a fresh air of color while taking up absolutely zero floor space—a win for all!

Hollyhocks (Alcea) have long been associated with cottage gardens. Perfect for the back of a border, they grow up to 2m in height. Each stem bears masses of open, bee-friendly flowers measuring up to 10cm in diameter, from July to September. Hollyhocks are biennial or short-lived perennials. In the first year they put on root and foliage growth and in the second they flower, set seed and then die.

Have you ever seen Plants That Are Growing Out Of Some Truly Strange Places? Well, you’re about to see some cool ones growing in places you never could have imagined. Here goes.

Sea hollies (Eryngium) have spiky leaves and thistle-like flowers in colours ranging from grey to intense cobalt blue, surrounded by a characteristic ‘ruff’. They make striking garden plants and have excellent wildlife value, particularly for pollinators. There are over 250 species of Eryngium, including plenty of cultivated varieties. As their name suggests, they grow well in coastal areas. They look wonderful in gravel gardens or mixed herbaceous borders.

Why you need to grow a marigold? Why it has attained the status of the flower to have in your garden? Well, we are going to answer all of it and will give you many more reasons to grow it!

Plants that look like dandelion leaves can be confusing, and it is essential to know how to spot them easily, so you don’t end up picking the wrong one.

We all want easy care routine when it comes to growing houseplants but there are a few of us, who want to grow some out of the box, high maintenance plants just to have a vareity. For those, this list is the answered prayer!

Carson Downing, Annie Schlechter, Adam Albright

Companion plants for roses not only keep them safe from the nasty pests, but also make sure they thrive together in a perfect camaraderie for years to come!

How Much Sun Do Fuchsia Plants Need?

My wife and I are both avid gardeners, but we typically only find time to sit and enjoy the landscape at dusk or after sunset. To maximize the evening appeal of our landscape, we have incorporated many plants that provide visual interest and scent as night sets in. If you’ve considered creating a moon garden for evening relaxation, I’ve compiled a few ideas to get your design wheels turning.

If you’re a sun-loving gardener, finding yourself presented with a woodland garden or an otherwise shaded area of the landscape can feel a little overwhelming, and maybe even disappointing. But as soon as you discover the multitude of wonderful lush and leafy plants that actually prefer to grow in shade here in the Pacific Northwest, you’re going to start wishing you had a few more sun-deficient areas to plant up.

Annual plants are a garden designer’s secret weapon. Endlessly versatile and extremely showy, annuals add nonstop color without a high price or a lot of work. They are perfect for gardeners who crave change—from year to year or from one season to the next. And they offer instant impact for filling in bare spots between slower-growing shrubs and perennials. Summer annuals brighten gardens with flowers and foliage, while cool-season annuals bring interest to the winter landscape.

The kitchen garden at Alison Jenkins' Somerset smallholding

Much like the tradition of birth stones, the origins of birth flowers are shrouded in mystery. But it's likely that since the time of the ancient Romans, people have been assigning seasonal flowers to the months of the year, the better to use them as gifts and decoration for those born in that month. It's a pretty loose tradition, and opinions vary on the correct birth flower for some months; most, in fact, have ended up with two. Some of these work best when planted in a garden, others are spectacular flowers for bouquets and arrangements. Scroll down to find your own birth flowers, and you'll know what flowers to order when your birthday rolls around.

From stunning dahlias to cheerful swamp sunflowers, here are some cheerful Perennials that look like zinnias with their intricate petals and vivid colors!

If the thought of waiting weeks or even months for blooms to appear on plants, well, those days are gone! Here are the ones that flower in no time!

Straddling the seasons, rhododendrons are the buxom queens of spring, leading us into the floriferous summer months without any subtlety. They can grow into vast shrubs that, in bloom, are wondrous clouds of colour formed of handful-sized flowerheads.

Potentillas are hardy garden plants that are divided into two groups: shrubby potentillas and perennial potentillas. Both types are commonly known as cinquefoil. Shrubby cinquefoil (Potentilla fruticosa) has twiggy arching branches and finely divided, deciduous green leaves, from which long-lasting displays of five-petalled, saucer shaped flowers are borne in summer. Perennial potentillas are clump-forming and make a handsome summer display of saucer-shaped flowers on slender stems. Both types make excellent plants for garden borders and are easy to grow, requiring very little maintenance.

When we think cherry blossoms, we picture a large tree full of flowers in the garden. What if you don’t have a yard, but you still dream of having one? Well, it is possible and I’ll tell you how!

It’s unusual to find a shrub or tree with blue flowers, so if you’re looking for a shock of blue to light up your garden, look no further than a ceanothus. When in flower it’s a stunning sight, smothered in flowers in shades that range from powder blue to deep azure.

The basic idea of No Mow May is simple. Just don’t mow your lawn in May, which allows some wildflowers and weeds to bloom. This provides valuable nectar and habitat for emerging pollinators. And they in turn are a food source for birds, bats and other wildlife.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds: “Glittering fragments of a rainbow” John J. Audubon

Here are some out-of-the-box unusual perennials plants you can grow this summer for a stunning display of foliage and flowers in the warm season!

Here, you will find the perfect flowers for the special man in your life! These flowers for guys make for a perfect gift for any occasion! Be it the fiery color of the amaryllis or the bold stance of sunflowers, each one in the list will connect with that special man in your life.

While we’re all used to swapping around our inside decor throughout the year, our outdoor spaces get understandably neglected during the colder months. The upside of this is that it’s often much easier to pull in new trends to enjoy once patio season returns.

This week we’re going to do something a little different on the GPOD: We’re going to be looking back over the years of gardens we have shared and pull out some of our favorites to visit again. And today the posts are all going to be stunning shade gardens. Gardening in shade can feel a bit like a challenge or limitation, but lots of GPOD contributors have turned that challenge into an opportunity and made beautiful gardens.

Flowers that grow from cuttings come with a big advantage—ease of propagation, where you can divide them without spending a dime! You just need a donor plant and you are good to go!

I was trying to avoid tulips for today’s IAVOM, as they could easily become a mainstay for many weeks; however, these creamy tulips were tucked out of the way where they mightn’t otherwise be seen and, like last week’s fiery contribution, they are also a bit of an enigma. They are growing in the cutting beds where they were planted around 10 years ago with the sole purpose of cutting them. Presumably, they flowered in the first year of planting but, although there has been foliage in some of the intervening years, I don’t think there have been any further blooms until now. My guess is that these are mature bulblets from the original bulbs, now large enough to flower: I have only picked the two blooms that were in full flower, but there are others to come. They may be ‘Exotic Emperor’, which I have bought periodically over the years.

A pattern has emerged that I do not understand. On planting a new plum tree, it takes a couple of years to establish and then flowers and bears fruit for several years, whereupon it stops flowering altogether and just puts on growth. The same thing has happened with damsons and greengages, but apples and medlar in the same area are trouble free. My orchard sits on light, sandy, well-drained soil; the ground is manured at planting and a 1m grass-free circle is around each tree for its first five years. Have you any suggestions to get the trees reflowering? NH

The English walnut (Juglans regia) is a non-native deciduous tree that has been grown in the UK since Roman times. Although most trees are planted, self-sown trees do sometimes appear in warmer areas. Originating from southern Europe and parts of Asia, English walnut can now be found growing across the UK.

It doesn’t matter where you live—if you’re deciding what to plant based on weather forecasting, you may as well buy monthly lottery tickets and expect them to pay the rent. While one coast is being warned of a drier summer, the other is being given a heads-up that it’s going to be soggier than normal—and the places in between are being told that things for them could go either way. If we can’t predict and control the weather, we can at least apply our secret superpower—informed plant choices for a sustainable landscape. That’s right, we can assemble our own A-Team of tough plants that will survive and thrive, whatever happens. Here are some tips for choosing the best tough plants for sustainable gardening—using drought-tolerant and low-maintenance plants that offer season-long interest while requiring fewer chemicals and less water.

The biggest advantage that you have with annuals that grow vertically is you can assign them to any small corner of the house and garden, then they will continue to thrive there for an year!

Although winter and early spring flowering plants might have started flowering a little earlier this year than some, they were not unseasonally early; this is not the case with Rhodendron ‘Wine and Roses’ (above) and the large unnamed specimen below, which is light pink in bud but white in boom. Unlike last year, when blooms were sparse on all but ‘Cheers’, all our rhododendrons are smothered in swelling buds.

It’s springtime, and the trees and flowers are finally starting to bloom again. But what if you’ve got a tree or two in your yard that isn’t growing leaves like it normally would? Well, that might mean you have a zombie tree.

5 Reasons Your Clematis May Fail to Bloom