3 Simple Flower Bed Ideas to Reduce Maintenance Costs

Adding a flower bed to your front or back yard is a smart and quick way to add color and liven things up. However, flower beds require a lot of maintenance and upkeep after the garden is installed. Here are a few tips to add some personality to your lawn and reduce the maintenance costs.

1. Design the Perfect Shape for your Flower Bed

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Once you’ve decided on where to plant your new flower bed, the next step is to figure out what shape you’d like to have. There are tons of forms you can choose from. However, a bed with sharp angles can be challenging to cut and maintain because it’ll be hard to cut with a lawnmower. Granted, you can tackle those angles with a weed whacker, but that will be additional work on your end. Avoid extra work by designing and constructing flower bed ideas that have gradual and smooth curves.

1. Install Weed Prevention Measures

The most common weed prevention method is landscape fabric. The fabric restricts weeds from growing through. However, weed roots can grow down through the material if the weed seeds germinate above the landscape fabric layer. Adding an extra layer of mulch will provide a strong defense against weeds and keep your flower beds healthy. A practical flower bed idea is laying down the fabric before planting and making X pattern slits where you want to plant your flowers. This simple method will keep the weeds at bay. 

1. Select the Overall Theme

There are two types of flower bed ideas, namely:

Formal flower beds – Here, the flowers are usually limited to a few different types. These beds typically have more geometric shapes and straight lines. They often include shrubs and yews that are planted in straight lines to form a border and create designs. 

Informal flower beds – Here, you’ll find many different sizes, textures, and colors of flowers. These flower beds have some structure to the design, but the lines and borders are not as defined. The plants and flowers are left to grow as they wish with a little pruning here and there to promote new growth and maintain their size. 

Flower beds are mostly used as beautiful masterpieces on the lawns of many homes. However, maintaining a flower bed can be time consuming and exhausting. Contact lawn and bed experts to receive a comprehensive range of lawn care and landscaping needs tailor-made for your flower bed ideas.