Our favorite flower garden ideas for spring

You have at least one flower garden right?

Maybe you have a bed or two as a  dedicated flower garden, maybe you have them in containers or maybe you’ve interspersed them into your landscaping. OR maybe you’ve given up on making a flower garden and switched totally to food producing leaf babies. Which ever your strategy is, flowering plants are essential for tons of reasons… not just curb appeal.  Here are our favorite reasons to make a flower garden.

Top five reasons to plant a flower garden

Flowers are important. Not just for aesthetics, but for pollinators, food production much more. While many beautiful flowering leaf babies are edible … watch out… many are also poisonous too. It’s really important to know what each flower you plant is good for

Aesthetics –  a flower garden is beautiful

Sure you know the value of your home is what it is, but having a beautiful flower garden full of bright colored perennials underneath your picture window or a field of colorful annuals astride your walkway in the summer really does add value to your home. If your’re thinking about making a change, this could be a very easy way to help your real estate agent close the deal. Fact is, if you can put your buyers in a good mood walking up to your home, they will bee in a happy mind set as they walk through it. Sure they might not have a green thumb, but don’t worry, keep a few cards from your local neighborhood landscapers next to the stack of property sheets so they’re not intimidated by your gardening prowess

Save the bees! –   A flower garden can help your local pollinator

For the first time in recorded history there are bees on the endangered species list. Lots of folks argue that without bees we’d starve on account of bees bee-ing the most prolific pollinators. Farmers now, can no longer rely on mother nature to bring the bees to their crops naturally and are calling on bee keepers to hump their nests to orchards and farms all over.  Suburbanites everywhere think a pristine manicured yard free of any winged or

Tiger bee fly

legged insect is bliss, the thought of a stinger makes them shudder and they “get out the spray” every time they see anything non domesticated. Fact is, we NEED to plant more flower gardens and stop “getting out the spray” otherwise the cows and chickens and pigs are going to starve, and we’re going to starve too. It’s either that or we’re going to have to invent a new kind of machine to go and pollinate our corn and our tomatoes and our potatoes… etc.. for us.. and if a machine is going to do that, we’re going to go out on a limb and say it’s just going to make things way more expensive to live… and eat…

Grow your food – A flower garden can help make your salads extra delicious

Some flowers are delicious… but you already knew that. We know you’re not likely to plant a dandelion garden, but dandelions make great salad and even greater wine. But did you know there’s a ton of other flowers that are edible… obvs check with your doctor if you think you might be allergic:

• Begonias
• Carnations
• Chrysanthemums
• Day Lilies
• Fuchsia
• Hibiscus
• Inpatients
• Lilac
• Marigold
• Primrose
• Sunflower
• Tulips
• Violets

Organic gardening – Planting the right kinds of flowers in your garden can help your other crops

Some of the more advanced gardeners talk about companion planting.  That’s really just a fancy way of saying your using some one plant to help you do work for another plant. Some flowers help attract pollinators to your crops and others help ward off pests.  Marigolds are a good example. Mosquitoes, for whatever reason hate marigolds, while bees are just fine with them. If you plant a flower garden of marigolds in with your vegetables, you can have fewer pests and more benefits for your crops.  It is important to note, however, that not everything goes with everything. so an easy web search can help you here.

Learning – Researching and planting new species in your flower garden grows not just leaf babies, it grows YOU too

There are so many beautiful things you can grow in your flower garden and learning which of them work best in your area, and fit your specific needs can be very fun and enlightening. You can be as much or as little of a nerd as you want. You might think bleeding heart is pretty but do you know how to care for it. Columbine flourishes in some areas but might not in others and did you know its seed pods are poisonous to humans?

Best yet if you take care of your flower garden leaf babies, they’ll hook you up

With lots and lots of seeds that is. There’s nothing quite as rewarding as growing plants from seeds, especially for all the reasons above. So, tell us, what kind of flower garden do you grow?