Business & Tech

How to Start Your Summer Garden

Summer is here and if you're looking for a new hobby, starting a garden could be a colorful solution.

Patch caught up with Annie Stanley, the owner of Sappington Gardens, and asked how to start a simple flower garden.

First, Stanley said, decide on what type of garden: how big, what type of light it will receive, and how high you want plants to grow.

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For a typical, 8x8-foot garden in full yard sunlight, start removing grass by watering the ground and digging it up with a flat shovel.

“Good soil equals a good garden,” Stanley said. “It determines so much and you want to give it a nice, textured soil.”

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Most yards contain clay, which can hold in moisture and nutrients, she said. Tilling the clay with five bags of manure, two bags of cotton blossom compost and sphagnum peat moss produces a base soil for flowers.

For full sunlight, Stanley recommends a mixture of annuals and perennials. Annuals grow their entire life span in one season, while perennials last for several seasons.

Lay flowers out at the nursery while purchasing to visualize the entire space, starting with the front and back and filling in between.

For our hypothetical garden, we chose Speedwells, a purple border plant to line the garden. The Speedwell is a perennial, and will grow taller and to the side.

Always read the tag to see how the plant will expand before planting it in your garden, Stanley said. We placed the Speedwells 18 inches apart from our next flower, the Phlox.

The tallest flower came next, a butterfly bush that can be the center in gardens.

After a few Day Lilies and Hydrangeas, our garden started to fill out.

If you’re starting a garden later in the summer, a quick way to get color is to buy a few hanging baskets and plant them in the ground, pot and all.

When all of your flowers are planted at ground level, water and then mulch the next day to prevent weeds.

Under normal temperatures, Stanley said plants need about an inch of water a week, but the best test is to stick a finger in the soil and check for dampness.

Maintenance also includes ‘deadheading’ plants, which just means trimming off the dead or old flowers.

Our hypothetical garden cost just under $200 with several plants coming back next season.

If you get in a pickle, Stanley said Sappington Gardens offers help for plants that look strange or sickly. Just trim off the odd part and taken it in.


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