Growing a garden with brilliantly colored, fragrant flowers is a point of pride for many homeowners. As you look down the street and see everyone’s nice handiwork, it doesn’t take long before you begin to desire a garden of your own. How do they stay so beautiful all year long? How much work is involved? How do you know which flowers to choose and whether your soil is healthy or not? There are many points to consider, but don’t feel overwhelmed. There are many sources of gardening advice available on the web.

Before you begin growing a garden, you’ll need to learn about the growing zone you live in. A good place to start is the National Gardening Association’s site, which will inform you which hardiness zone you reside in, along with what plants are most appropriate for your specific weather conditions. In the bottom left-hand corner, you’ll see an area for “Local Guides,” where it is possible to indicate your state and your city to find out which flowers and veggies it is possible to grow, about caring for your garden and cooking from your garden. These guidelines can make it easier to start considering which types of flowers you want to grow.

Those with not much gardening experience will frequently prefer to transplant annuals that have previously been grown at a nursery. You may also try experimenting with a container garden grown from seeds. Some people garden almost entirely with pots and put them all beside each other, so you see a complete garden and not just the individual vessels. Be sure to learn which annuals will survive in hot or cold conditions, grow in poor soil, have a brief bloom period, can be sown in the fall and are ideal for your type of soil.

Some people enjoy growing a garden that will magically come back each year, without replanting. This is called a perennial garden. Backyard Gardener is a great site where you’ll learn about perennials for backgrounds, for edging, for hardy environments, for long blooming seasons, for old-fashioned gardens and for semi-shade gardens. Some popular perennials include peonies, bleeding hearts, columbine, daffodils, crocuses, irises, asters, chrysanthemums, daisies, violets and black eyed Susan. You’ll need to pay special attention to color, height and bloom period are all equally important when dealing with perennials.

An important part of growing a garden successfully is also growing the right flowers in the right places. There are sun flowers, shade flowers and partial sun/shade flowers to consider. For a shade garden, consider begonias, hellebore, violets, hostas, bleeding hearts, columbine, impatiens, violas and torenias. For full sun, consider perennial salvias, threadleaf coreopsis, cosmos, dahlias, petunias, sweet peas, zinnias, geraniums and daylilies. For part-sun or part-shade, include pansies, sapphire flowers, creeping zinnias, lobelia, browallia, coleus or floss flowers. By understanding garden design, you should be able to put together a wonderful assortment of color and variety.

Everyone wants their property to look its best and one of the ways to do that is to enhance your landscaping. For some great suggestions on lawns, gardens and even outdoor garden lighting, visit our landscape ideas site.