Summerthyme Garden Bedding Plant Ideas

IT’S SUMMERTHYME IN THE GARDEN!!!

Ready to add some instant color to your garden? I’d love to share my favorite garden bedding plant ideas for Summer with you!

With summer just around the corner, I am sharing my favorite garden bedding plant ideas today!  Bedding plants are a easy way to create a colorful garden in almost no thyme!

What is a bedding plant?

If you are like me, as soon as the first warm day hits you are ready to race to the garden center and purchase a cart full of blooming plants!

Many blooming plants are considered bedding plants.  Using bedding plants is a quick way to add some instant color and texture to your garden.

Bedding plants are normally sold in individual pots or in flats.  They are quite often started from seeds during the winter in a greenhouse. Once the danger of frost has passed, the plants are taken outside and added to the garden for an instant splash of color.

My personal favorite flowering bedding plants include petunias, geraniums, dianthus, snapdragons and salvia.  Another bedding plant I like to use is dusty miller.

Bedding plants are so versatile.  They can be grown right in the soil in a flower bed, a window box, a hanging basket or a combo pot.

PIctured below are some hanging baskets, planter baskets and containers that I sold when I had my flower shop.  I often say my interests range from flowers (a former florist) to flour (a former pizzeria owner) and many things in between!  My entrepreneurial journey is highlighted here:

On this blog, I may sometimes use affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission if you purchase via the link. The price will be the same whether you use the affiliate link or go directly to the vendor’s website using a non-affiliate link.  By using my affiliate links to shop, it helps me to be able to continue bringing you fresh new ideas and projects!  Thank you! 

Some Things to Consider Before Grabbing your Trowel

Be ” In Your Zone”

What Does the Plant Need?

How Much Time & Space Do You Have?

Salvia

Dianthus

Geraniums

Dusty Miller

How I Use Bedding Plants in My Garden

One of my very favorite things to do is to design combinations of blooming and green plants.  When these combinations are for outdoors, they are called patio pots or color pots.  Pictured below is a pink themed color pot perched on an old grindstone.

In preparation, I added potting mix to a 12″ terra cotta pot.  A little white chalked paint sprayed on the outside gave it a quick makeover.

When designing a patio pot, I try to use the thriller, spiller, filler technique.  The thriller is the focal point.  The spiller is a plant that will grow or spill over the edge and filler is the plant or plants that fills in the empty spots.  For my pot, the petunias are actually filling both the filler and the spiller category.

In order to get a full look right away, I used quart sized containers of snapdragons and petunias.  The dusty miller was in a 4-inch pot and I also used another annual called bacopa which is also a spiller.  Because I used larger plants to start with and I live in Florida, I will probably have to transplant this color pot into a larger pot in about a month.

I placed the snapdragon to the back of the container. Then I added the petunias to the front.  These petunias are the Proven Winners Bubble Gum Vista petunias.  To learn a little more about Proven Winners and their petunias, please check out this blog post.

After adding the dusty miller and the bacopa, I filled in around the plants with extra potting soil.  To finish the color pot, I added sheet moss on top in order to help keep the moisture in.  Not only does the sheet moss help keep moisture in the soil, it dresses up your combo pot and makes it look more finished.  I use it quite often.

One More Look at the Finished Pink Color Pot

A Few More Garden Bedding Plant Ideas

Black Cherry Petunias and Proven Winners Diamond Frost.  

Hot Pink Dianthus in a twig basket. 

Dianthus is such a hardy plant.  Learn more about it here: How to Divide Dianthus

A trio of dusty miller plants adds texture and interest to the summer patio pot.  More about it can be found here: Blue & White Summer European Dish Garden

These salmon pink geraniums made a beautiful hanging basket.  I often design hanging baskets for Mother’s Day gifts.  For ideas on how to make a geranium hanging basket, please see this post: Create a Geranium Hanging Basket

Thanks for joining me today!