If you love the pop of color from a well-placed flower bed but you live in an area with major water restrictions due to drought, you may think flower gardens are just a dream. Fortunately, there are ways to plant a flower bed that only needs minimal irrigation to thrive. The following guide can help you achieve this goal.
Choose the Right Flowers
The right plants will grow with only minimal or periodic watering. Ideally, you have plenty of native plants available, ones that thrive in drier conditions. Failing this, you can opt for some common landscaping flowers. Blanket flowers, lantana, and portulaca, for example, can all continue to grow and even bloom without the need for too much moisture. For example, portulaca, also called moss rose, has thick succulent leaves and waxy flowers that bloom in a variety of colors. The leaves store moisture between infrequent waterings, so drought is rarely detrimental to these hardy flowers.
Install Drip Irrigation
You will need to water sometimes, and this is when the right irrigation method can save your flower bed. Overhead watering leads to a lot of water loss — the wind disperses some water beyond your watering zone, and evaporation can whisk away a lot more moisture before it ever makes it to the plant roots. Drip irrigation solves both of these problems. Install irrigation lines beneath mulch. It's even better if you lay a piece of landscaping fabric over the lines as a buffer between the lines and the mulch above. The line emitters should be placed near each plant in the garden. When it's time to water, simply run the lines for about 30 minutes or however long it takes to supply 1 to 2 inches of moisture.
Use Mulch Wisely
Mulch is the third key to a drought-resistant flower garden and the main tool for ensuring your drip irrigation practices don't go to waste. Mulch insulates the soil and protects it from the rapid evaporation that can occur when the sun directly hits the soil. When combined with your drip irrigation, mulch ensures that nearly all of the water supplied goes to the flowers in the garden. Use a bark or wood chip mulch. If heat is an issue, opt for a lighter-colored mulch so it can reflect light. Lay mulch to about a 3-inch depth to ensure that the most water possible is conserved in the garden bed. The mulch will also help choke out any weeds that try to grow.
Contact a landscaping mulch service in your area to have what you need delivered to your new flower garden.
Share23 December 2019
About a year ago, I realized that part of the reason the plants in my yard kept dying was the fact that they were planted in the wrong places. I didn't pay much attention to which plants needed certain amounts of light, and it was costing them their lives. Several of the plants were really struggling to live, and it was really hard to see. I realized that if I ever wanted to make things right, I would need to create a landscaping plan that would work well for the natural landscape of my yard. This blog is all about understanding landscaping.
