Creating the Perfect Lush, Outdoor Space
With the summer season swiftly approaching, we’ll all be spending more time outdoors. In the winter, we may focus more on creating beautiful spaces with indoor plants, but the summer is all about cultivating gorgeous outdoor landscapes. Flower Works is the local florist to help your vision come to life.
Here are some ideas to get you started.
Hanging Baskets
If you have a deck space you’d like to spruce up, consider hanging blooming baskets. Different varieties of ferns can help to shape verdant spaces and bring a little life to what may otherwise be a plain outdoor porch. You can also use hanging baskets in your general landscaping with installable shepherd’s hooks to hang the baskets from. Flowering baskets are an excellent way to incorporate color into your yard.
Herb Garden
With shifting availability of goods in store, now is a great time to consider developing your own herb garden. Herbs grow great here in the Upper Peninsula with the right care. If you’ve got garden space or a planter box for herbs, choose things that can handle cooler and hotter weather, as Michigan weather can change rapidly. Chives are a delicious, and hardy, way to go. With their mild, onion-like flavor, chives are a great addition to any herb garden. Woody stemmed herbs will tolerate UP temperatures well. Think about rosemary, lavender, sage, and bay. Not only are these herbs lovely to look at, but they’re also great for cooking.
Other herbs to consider are thyme, oregano, dill, and fennel. You’ll have beautiful, crisp herbs all season long, and they’re quite easy to care for. If you plant lemon balm, be cautious that bees love lemon balm, and will be likely to frequent your herb garden. Planting a little additional lemon balm and lavender may help give your local bees some extra places to land. Fresh grown herbs from your garden can make the best addition to any of your summer parties, including cookouts and barbeques.
Flower Garden
If you’re trying your hand at cultivating gorgeous floral gardens, perennials are your best bet. Marquette is in zone 5 for flowers, meaning whatever you plant should be relatively hardy to survive the winter. With temperatures that get downright arctic, many tropical plant varieties won’t survive outside. Zone 5 plants will typically survive temperatures as low as 20 below zero.
Perennials are great options because they’ll come back for a few years, so you won’t need to replant them every spring like annuals. Typically, perennials will last for at least two years, while annuals only last for the season. Biennials generally only last for two years, as that’s the end of their biological life cycle.
Because the UP often gets a late frost, flowers need to be able to withstand that. Poppies will add a lot of color to your space as they come in reds, pinks, oranges, yellows, whites, and purples. They also don’t require a lot of water. Remember to deadhead spent flowers, or remove the dead blossoms, so the plant may continue to produce beautiful blooms.
Creeping phlox forms a beautiful violet blanket of low-to-the-ground flowers. They can grow in tough soil, which is great news for those with rocky yards. They’re an easy plant to maintain, requiring full sun to partial shade, and well drained, but moist, soil.
Other perennials that are great for your garden include delphinium, astilbe, foxglove, bleeding heart, and sedum. The best news is that many of these will attract butterflies, so you’ll have the added benefit of extra color.
Contact Flower Works for Your Flower and Plant Needs
Adding special floral elements to your garden is as easy as visiting your favorite, local florist. Flower Works carries a variety of flowers, herbs, and perennials to suit what you are looking for. Contact us today to beautify your outdoor space.