Top 2023 Trends for Your Flower Beds

Do you wish you could grow your own cut flowers? You can!

If you live in Central PA, you’re fortunate to plant the best flowers for bouquets and floral arrangements, such as brown-eye Susans, dahlias, zinnias, coneflowers, sunflowers, and snapdragons. You can even grow baby’s breath to add delicacy to your bouquets.

You can go one step further by creating a cottage garden. It’s a bit wild, but you can add more cut flowers. Consider planting foxgloves, lupines, climbing roses, alliums, dianthus, and yarrow.

Mediterranean gardening is a type of drought-tolerant garden. You can plant herbs, such as oregano, rosemary, lavender, and sage, that can handle hot, dry summers.

Plus, you can add exotic plants to have a unique Mediterranean garden. The following plants grow in zones 6-7:

• Agave
• Artemisia
• Blue fescue
• Cat mint
• Globe thistle
• Jerusalem sage
• Lamb’s ear
• Mediterranean spurge.

Texture offers a place to touch, whether walking on moss or other ground covers that can handle foot traffic. Texture also uses light to its advantage with shinier leaves and adds visual interest.

Foliage isn’t static in plain green. Instead, foliage comes with variegated leaves, multiple colors, or plants that change color throughout the season. Here are foliage examples to consider for your garden:

• Boxwood
• Caladium
• Coleus
• Coral bells
• Dusty miller
• Elephant ear
• Ferns
• Hosta
• Lamb’s ear
• Lilyturf
• Ornamental grasses

Growing up, also known as vertical gardening, has been popular with urban gardeners for years. But it’s not just for urban backyards. Indeed, homeowners with larger backyards can also grow up by installing plants on garden structures:

• Install arbors, trellises, and pergolas for vines
• Use hanging baskets, planter boxes, and containers
• Build fence shelving and other mounted containers
• Use walls to train plants to grow upward
• Install a living wall.

Since two-career families include running your children to sports, music lessons, and other after-school activities, you don’t have time to spend in the garden pruning, weeding, or other chores.

Instead, invest in low-maintenance gardening where the plants don’t need much love to stay alive. Again, native plants, bulbs, shrubs, and trees can save you time but still provide color to your outdoor spaces.

Over the past decade, Central Pennsylvania summers have been getting hotter and drier. And while we can’t save the planet alone, we can make a difference, one landscape at a time.
Here are these tips for improving your corner of the world:

• Test your soil before you plant
• Amend the soil so that it can house healthy plants
• Compost all organic waste, including leaves, chopped grass clippings, and produce peelings
• Use mulch in your landscapes to protect plant roots, hold in water, and suppress weeds
• Focus on drought-tolerant plants
• Use moisture sensors in your in-ground sprinkler systems
• Only water deeply … a daily spritz won’t help your plants develop deep root systems and the ability to withstand drought