There are plenty of flower ideas to bring a flurry of colour into your garden. With the power to transform urban spaces, create entertainment areas, and provide a little help to bees, planting flowers in your garden provide unique textures to the eye for a profound sense of calm.
The best part about planting flowers around your home is they don’t take up a lot of space and can even be planted on a petite balcony. So make the space you have brimming with blushing petals, hardy leaves, and vibrant palettes of colour.
How To Grow Flowers in Your Garden?
When deciding on what flowers to plant, it’s imperative to keep in mind the timing of your planting. In South African gardens, planting your spring bulbs should ideally be in autumn (from April to May), whereas roses are best planted in winter. In the spring, plant flowers like tulips, peonies, and or generous reams of wisteria, so plant these in autumn. Tulips for example, grow really well when packed together in a container, making them great for smaller outdoor spaces.
What are Easy Flowers to Grow for Beginners?
While not everyone has the delicate touch of a green thumb, nor a plethora of time to get their hands dirty in their garden, there are plenty of flowers that require minimum care. Perennial plants like Cat Mint (or Nepeta ‘Walkers Low’) flower wonderfully throughout spring and summer and grow well along gravel paths. The only maintenance is to trim them in autumn to help them flower again in the following season.
Erigeron karvinskianus or ‘Mexican Fleabane’ flowers masses of small daisies that will naturally spread. These little daisies can be planted any time during spring and needs very little care and attention.
Flower Garden Ideas
These colourful dahlias are the product of dynamic duo Susie Harris Leblond and Tarryn Martin, of Flourish Urban Flower Farm, who connected through a shared love for flowers and growing. These ‘urban flower farmers’, met virtually while searching for small-scale flower growers on Instagram. It was not long before the property was brimming with oversized blooms of Café au Lait, tall stems of coral-pink ‘Salmon Runner’, orange, copper and bronze-coloured pom-pom varieties such as favourites ‘Cornel Bronze’, blush-pink ‘Sweet Nathalie’ with soft buttery coloured centres, and many, many others, writes Heidi Bertish, House & Garden SA Gardens Editor.
The garden of Philippa Berrington-Blew’s Cape Town home is a well-curated courtyard of natural wonders, laced with both flowering and hardy plants. Berrington-Blew fancies herself as ‘nursery agnostic’ in that “I have a favourite nursery in practically every port or town I visit,” she tells House & Garden SA.
"A car already full of suitcases becomes a cuttings delivery vehicle. One notable nursery is Fyntwa Nursery in Oudtshoorn, run by a succulent enthusiast. The Green House at Montebello in Newlands, with its marvellously derelict glasshouse, and resident Siamese, is another favourite of mine,“ she adds.
For your flower garden, consider finding out which local nurseries have the best of the bunch for the kinds of flowers you want to grow.
