ARE YOU READY FOR SUMMERTHYME IN THE GARDEN?
Ready to add some instant color to your garden? I’d love to share 6 of my favorite Summer garden bedding plants 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. A combo pot is another name for a container garden.
PIctured below are some hanging baskets, planter baskets and containers that I sold when I had Petals & Porch Posts, 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:
Some Things to Consider Before Grabbing your Trowel
Be ” In Your Zone”
What Does the Plant Need?
How Much Time & Space Do You Have?
6 of My Favorite Garden Bedding Plants for Summer:
All of these bedding plants are easy to care for. Adding dusty miller to your flower beds and containers is one way to add interest and texture to your garden. All of my favorite blooming bedding plants are easy to care for. Snapdragons, petunias and geraniums are available in a variety of colors. Dianthus or “pinks” as they are sometimes called come in a range of pink colors as well as white.
With the range of colors available, you are bound to find bedding plants to fit your desired color theme.
Snapdragons
Petunias
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, combo pots or color pots. Pictured below is a pink themed color pot perched on an old grindstone.
Let me show you how I planted it. In preparation, I added potting mix to a 12″ terra cotta pot. I had previously given the pot a bit of a makeover with white chalked spray paint.
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. The dried moss is dampened with water before adding it to the top of the container.
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 to top off my color pots quite often.
Save This Pin for Later!
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!
A trio of dusty miller plants adds texture and interest to a summer patio pot:
Blue & White Summer European Dish Garden
These salmon pink geraniums made a beautiful hanging basket. I gave it as a gift for Mother’s Day.
How To Design A Hanging Basket with Geraniums
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Hi Kimberly, It has been a challenge trying to figure out how to garden in Florida, but I’m like you and am happy that I can have pots out year-round! It looks like most of your flowers are in pots as well! I have not tried to plant anything in the ground yet since it is so sandy here! Let me know if you have any tips for planting flowers in the ground! Thanks, Donna
I haven’t planted much directly into the ground! Just two palm trees, a few bromeliads we got for free and one new hibiscus! You are right, the soil is so sandy!
I wish we could have potted plants out year round here. I love flowers, but I just cannot seem to grow them so I live vicariously though others gardens. You have so many wonderful flowers and plants.
I really love having all the plants outside year round. It really is the best part of living in Florida! Thank you for stopping by!