choosing the right flowers for your olathe landscape
By Lisa Allen Landscape • • • • • • • 0 Comments

Picking the Right Flowers for Your Home Landscape

choosing the right flowers for your olathe landscape

Choosing the right flowers for your home landscape design entails more than just choosing your favorite flowers.

Aesthetics is only one element of planning the perfect flower garden. You also have to consider growing conditions, space considerations, the characteristics of each plant, your ability to maintain the growth year to year, and much more.

To learn a bit about how to choose the best flowers for your home landscape, keep reading. You might also want to read this post about annuals, biennials, and perennials to help you decide which flowers will work best for you.

Assess Your Space

Once you have an idea of how often you want to plant, take an honest assessment of your space. How much sun does it get? Plants can thrive in all conditions—from full-shade to full-sun—but only if you plant the right plants in the right place.

To properly assess which plants will thrive in your space, you need to know how many hours of direct sunlight the space receives every day. Then, choose flowers that will love that spot and the sun it gets.

Like most landscapes, your space likely has spots with varying amounts of sun exposure. And that’s a good thing! The most interesting landscapes are often those with variety: both shade and sun plants, different heights and colors.

Size Matters

The best landscapers in Olathe will tell you that scale matters. That doesn’t mean you have to plant only small flowers in a small space or large flowers in a sprawling landscape. But it does mean that considering how large a flower plant will grow is an important part of planning the perfect-for-you landscape.

Another thing to speak to your landscape expert about is plant spread. Some flowers will grow more than others and overtake a space. Think about sunflowers and how tall they can grow; if you plant only sunflowers and marigolds, the space might not look as nice as you’d hoped. You need something more proportionate, or additional flowers to fill that middle space.

Get Help

Knowing when and what to plant for a gorgeous landscape can be a fun DIY project, for sure. But working with a knowledgeable expert can help expedite the creation of a garden, flower bed, lawn, or landscape.  If you’re ready to work together to create the landscape you’ve always wanted, contact us to learn more.

choosing the right annuals and perennials for your olathe garden
By Lisa Allen Landscape • • • • • • • • • • • • 0 Comments

Olathe Flowers: the Difference Between Annuals and Perennials and Choosing the Right Ones

choosing the right annuals and perennials for your olathe garden

Start with Basics

It’s ok if choosing flowers for your landscape is overwhelming. There are so many choices, a rainbow of colors, and considerations that reach beyond picking what you think is pretty—like budget, the amount of time you have to tend your landscape, the composition of your soil, and what grows well in your climate.

So let’s start with the basics. First, flowers are typically organized in one of three categories at the nursery: annuals, biennials, and perennials. Here’s the difference: annuals live for one season only. Biennials live for two years. And perennials come back year after year.

Knowing this can help you decide which flowers best fit your current goals and lifestyle. For instance, if you’re planning to move soon or want to experiment with flower type and placement, annuals or biennials might be a good choice. Or, if you have settled into your dream home and know exactly how you want your landscape to look, perennials will continue to flower every year.

Remember that annuals will flower in one season, but biennials won’t. Instead, a biennial grows and stems, but doesn’t bloom. This means the flowering doesn’t happen until year two. Choosing these means you have to have patience, but the results are so often breathtaking: think of a field of poppies or Black-Eyed Susans!

Should I Plant Annuals or Perennials?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question other than to say that rarely does one have to choose one over the other. There are so many considerations when it comes to choosing the right flowers for your Olathe landscape, only one of which is how often you want to replant those plants.

If you’re looking solely at how long plants will last, think about this: planting annuals has to be done more often (every year) than choosing perennials. If you’ll be in your home for more than a year or two, and you’re most concerned with not planting every year, then planting perennials might be your best option.

However, choosing annuals means you can vary your plants year to year. This means the overall look of your landscape can change more often. Weighing these considerations: the time that must be invested vs. the ability to change how your landscape looks can help you determine which plan to implement.

Why Pick Just One Flower Type?

If you aren’t steadfastly set on either planting only once (as might be the case with perennials) or being able to completely change your garden every year (as might be the case with annuals), your best option might be to plant a combination of annuals, biennials, and perennials.

Employ the Olathe Flower and Landscape Experts

No one knows what grows best in Olathe gardens like local landscape experts. Curious about which flowers grow well in the Johnson County area? Give us a call; we’d love to talk to you about your landscaping projects.