Constant Color: Designing a 4-Season Garden

Whether in a flowerbed or sprinkled throughout the garden, it’s possible to have blooms year-round.

With proper consideration and care, the garden can look stunning year-round. Now's a great time to start planning.Krawczyk-A-Foto/Shutterstock

The ideal garden is a showcase every day of the year, highlighting the best of spring, summer, fall, and even winter. The first step is to work with seasonal conditions, not against them.

Spring is an exciting time when existing perennials burst to life and is one of the easiest seasons to plant for newbie gardeners because of April showers and its gentle, nurturing temperatures. Summer brings heat and more watering; one can plant container plants to fill bare spots or for fall color, but transplanting will cause plants distress from which they may not recover. Fall is also the time to plant bulbs that need to overwinter to bloom in the spring. Most gardeners hibernate during winter, but with a little planning, everyone can enjoy looking out the window to see pops of reds, yellows, whites, pinks, and blues year-round.

Basics for Becoming Your Own Landscape Designer

As with any garden project, it all starts with the planning. In this case, it’s important to not only plan for the current season but also to consider what should be planted now that will bloom in the following season. This is even more relevant in the spring, when the gardener’s focus should be on early spring bloomers and late spring bloomers (more on that in a minute), as well as some flowers that will bloom over the summer that can be planted now to become established before the temperatures rise into the red.