27 Eye-Catching Flower Garden Ideas and Layouts (2024)

Gardening

Landscaping

If you are looking to add seasonal color to your landscape, some creative flower garden ideas will come in handy. Choosing the right flowers for your space is important, whether you are planting in the ground, containers, or raised beds. And a good flower garden design always encourages beginners to get their hands dirty, and it never gets boring for those who are seasoned gardeners. Explore 27 beautiful flower gardens that will beckon you with blooms.

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  Bold and Colorful Flower Garden

  

  It's easy to let a large flower garden get out of hand, but some editing can bring order to the chaos. Use healthy trees and shrubs as the backbone of the garden. Choose two contrasting colors, or one color family (like purple and pink). Add perennial flowering plants like the purple Culver's root here in groups of three to five; the repetition is pleasing to the eye. Finally, focus on regular weeding, because today's weed is tomorrow's weed patch.

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  Potted Garden

  

  This flower garden from My 100 Year Old Home consists of 26 terracotta pots with a DIY distressed finish set in a vintage plant pot holder and filled with pink flowers like poppies. The freestanding flower garden can work as part of a larger garden, or as an easy small space solution for those without much outdoor room.

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  Edible Garden

  

  Potager gardens play up the symbiotic relationship between vegetables and flowers. Veggies get a huge boost in productivity when pollinators that are drawn to nectar-rich plantings like these pink coneflowers get busy swapping pollen on tomato, squash, and cucumber blossoms too. What's more, the beneficial insects that rely on floral nectaries (think parasitic wasps and ladybugs for starters) help keep vegetable pests under control, allowing a reduction in pesticide use.

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  English Flower Garden

  

  This backyard flower garden from My 100 Year Old Home is inspired by the organized chaos of an English garden with a jumble of plants like white roses on the ground, suspended in hanging baskets, and climbing the walls of the home that give it a romantic feel with pops of pink and purple.

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  Tiered Garden

  

  See Also

  Vegetable Garden Layout Planning | Bonnie PlantsThe most beautiful flowers in the world - VerdissimoThe elements of garden design and basic garden patterns

  Afro Bohemian Living planted the retaining wall of this tiered backyard and patio with a multitude of green plants and white, pink, and purple perennials like irises for an energizing and effortless feel.

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  Soothing-Hued Flowers

  

  The tiered stone retaining walls and galvanized metal pergola in this allium-filled and white wisteria-draped Seattle backyard patio and outdoor entertaining space from KG Designs are softened with a multi-level flower garden planted in shades of purple and white.

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  Textural Flower Garden

  

  Fuzzy, glossy, silky, waxy, puckered, and prickly blooms and leaves contribute a subtle interest to the garden that contributes to the overall design. Here, the spiky blue flowers of globe thistle contrast with the waxy petals of the tiger lily, creating a lovely but low maintenance partnership in the sunny flower garden. You can discover other fun flowering textures with the fuzzy lamb's ear, the ruffled fringed tulip, the frizzy liatris, or the velvety co*ckscomb.

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  Trellis Flowers

  

  Every garden should host a flowering vine, as the small footprint of a vine takes up no more space than a small container plant. You can grow a trellis-filling vine in one season from seed with a morning glory or moon vine, or you can invest in a perennial vine that will return for many years when you plant a clematis, honeysuckle, pinky roses like these, or climbing hydrangea.

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  Raised Garden Beds

  

  My 100 Year Old Home planted a spring flower garden in a series of DIY raised garden beds on the side of the backyard driveway, an ideal solution for amateur gardeners who want to keep things simple. A few sprigs of pink delphinium add height to the orange and pink ruffled blooms in the garden.

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  Rain Garden

  

  When planning a bog garden, consider plants that love both full sun and wet soil, like the stunning candelabra primrosepictured here. Flowering plants that thrive in bog gardens also include cardinal flower, yellow iris, and leopard plants. A fun and funky addition to the wet garden is the carnivorous pitcher plant. These look like something out of a jungle, but are hardy down to zone 5. A natural bog garden will be replenished by rainfall, but if a dry spell hits, you will have to help out with the hose. Some standing water indicates a healthy bog garden. The presence of frogs, salamanders, or even turtles also tells you a bog environment is present. If you wish to cultivate bog plants but don't have a natural depression that collects water, create one by sinking a plastic kiddie pool into the ground. A pond liner can also serve as a bog garden beginning. Disguise the edges with rocks, and fill the bottom with peat moss and sand.

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  Lush Garden With Path

  

  A flower garden path provides the garden a sense of place, and also defines borders against which to plant flowers of varying heights, like these purple dahlias set against red, white, and yellow blooms. How wide should you make your path? A comfortable path can accommodate a wheelbarrow or garden cart with room to turn around.

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  Butterfly Flower Garden

  

  Have you ever noticed that some of the most beautiful flowers fall flat when it comes to attracting butterflies and hummingbirds? The anatomy of the butterfly proboscis is designed to extract nectar from particular flower shapes, which means that some blooms sound the dinner bell, while others miss the mark. Although butterflies do appreciate bright colors, it's also important to include flowers that have rich nectar stores that are easily accessible in shallow flowers. This garden full of bee balm and verbena bonariensis is busy with butterflies and other pollinators throughout summer. Add some butterfly weed, or milkweed to nourish Monarch butterflies, which have declined by 90 percent since the early 1990's.

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  Wildflower Garden

  

  If the thought of all that fertilizing and deadheading takes the wind out of your gardening sails, consider the merits of the wildflower garden. Native flowers developed with Mother Nature to thrive in your region, meaning they are ready to grow in your soil type and with your typical rainfall.Don't discount wildflowers as less showythan hybrid flowers; the exuberant hues of standout varieties like blanket flowers, tiger lilies, pink cosmos (like those shown here) and coneflowers will make the butterflies and bees wonder why they went anywhere else. For exceptional height, grow the perennial sunflower Helianthus, which can grow up to eight feet tall by the time autumn arrives.

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  Monotone Perennials

  

  Finding Lovely lined the flagstone path leading to the gated vegetable garden with two generous rows of white tulips that echo the farmhouse feel of the property. A flower garden doesn't have to be multi-colored to make a bold statement; committing to a choice and going big will have an outsize impact.

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  Formal Garden

  

  The clean lines and tidy layout of a formal garden are pleasing, but the addition of flowers is a welcome counterpoint to grass and carefully trimmed boxwood shrubs. Stick to one or two flower varieties in the formal garden; those with neat growing habits will complement your scheme the best. Lavender, rose topiaries, tulips, hydrangeas, and salvia are a few flowers that have been used to great effect in the formal garden as well as the lily of the valley seen here sprinkled with blue, yellow, and purple flowers. You can mass these flowers around a central fountain, use them to edge paths, or fill in geometric hedge plantings with blooms.

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  Cottage-Style Flower Garden

  

  The free-form nature of cottage gardening is an invitation to try many classic flowers in the landscape. Cottage garden design values fragrant or heirloom varieties, like old English roses, lavender, Shasta daisies, foxgloves, and hollyhocks. To make sure there's a method to your madness, repeat plant varieties throughout the border or bed and stick to a simple color palette, like this garden's pink, white, and yellow one.

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  Cactus Garden

  

  Cacti are flowering plants that thrive in desert settings like this sloping backyard Palm Springs pool area from Michelle Boudreau Design that uses short plants like a small barrel cactus to contrast with other taller, textural desert varieties.

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  Space-Saving Garden

  

  You can plant a flower garden anywhere that you have enough sunlight. This dense flower garden filled with orange and pink flowers as well as white and yellow blooms covers a steep tiered slice of land off to the side of the driveway of this Southern California home from Home Consultant.

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  Topiary Garden

  

  A flower garden hugs the curved boxwood hedge and manicured topiaries of this German villa backyard with formal landscaping that matches the elegant setting with its varied green tones and light pops of purple.

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  Warm-Colored Garden

  

  A a retaining wall is planted with pink, red, and purple roses to add warmth and color to the cool neutral stone and glass stairway leading to the backyard in this property from Fantastic Frank.

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  Path-Lining Perennials

  

  The path to the outdoor play space in this backyard from Emily Henderson Design is planted with a casual arrangement of flowers like red poppies and plants like pampas grass to make it feel special on the way to and from the

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  DIY Flower Beds

  

  These DIY flower beds from A Beautiful Mess line the front and sides of the home, a simple way to boost curb appeal with seasonal flowers without breaking the budget. These orange and purple mums suit the autumn perfectly.

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  Pink and Purple Perennial Garden

  

  Planting a generous and colorful front yard garden, like this one from Lady Landscape filled with purple hyssop, fluffy pink roses, and tiny orange flowers, will boost your home's curb appeal and make guests feel welcome before you even open the door. And with no grass, there's no need to mow.

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  DIY Hanging Basket Garden

  

  This DIY hanging basket garden from A Beautiful Mess mixes herbs like basil and flowers like pink impatiens, a simple way to add a mini garden to a small space that was designed to be toddler- and puppy-safe.

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  Vertical Flower Vine Garden

  

  A vertical garden with climbing vines and flowering plants like pale-blue leadworts this Spanish island home from Fantastic Frank is a space-saving solution that will make your outdoor space feel cozy and inviting.

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  Contemporary Atrium Garden

  

  A minimalist dose of flowers can soften a contemporary space, like this four-story Lisbon home from Fantastic Frank that includes a minimalist garden in the central courtyard with what appears to be feather grass, and vibrant purple flowers that climb the walls all the way up to the rooftop pool deck.

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  Bucolic Birdhouse

  

  Becca Interiors used this bucolic backyard flower garden featuring ornamental grasses in the backyard of a Victorian Colonial Revivalist house in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY as inspiration for the nature-inspired color palette of the interiors.