My Favorite Things For The Flower Garden

For flower gardening, I like to use handheld tools with sharp edges. Flower gardening involves everything from container gardening to in-ground gardening in flower beds. The sharp edges come in handy if you come across roots in the garden and for digging deeper holes for large flower bulbs.

The DeWit Forged Hand Trowel is my favorite tool for flower gardening. The edges and tip are nicely sharpened and the wood handle is beautiful. The matching DeWit Handheld Cultivator is perfect for weeding and top-dressing the garden soil with compost.

A great flower garden starts with high-quality flower seeds. I don’t grow as many flower from seed anymore as I do vegetables, but I still grow annual flowers from seed every year. As with vegetable seeds, I look for freshly-harvested seeds from a reputable company.

Botanical Interests Seeds is my top pick for gardeners in the USA. They offer many of my favorite varieties of popular flowers, including annuals and perennials. The packaging is both beautiful and informative.

In Canada, my favorite seed company is West Coast Seeds. I’ve grown all kinds of their flower seeds over the years and am always happy with germination rates (and the lovely seed packets).

Annual flower plants are the perfect way to grow masses of blooms all summer long. While perennials are wonderful year after year, annual flowers tend to bloom for longer time periods. I love growing cosmos, pansies, calibrachoa, sunflowers, celosia, petunias, and snapdragons.

I buy most of my annual flowers and bedding plants at the Home Depot Garden Center and local family-run plant nurseries. Proven Winners is my favorite brand as they offer some unique varieties that make it easier to create fun container gardens.

Flowering bulbs are an investment that can pay dividends for years. Whether you’d like to grow tulips or daffodils, allium or snowdrops, there are more flowers to choose from than I can count. I especially love tulips. Here are some of the best tulip varieties to choose from.

My favorite bulb suppliers are Blooming Bulb, Plant Gem, and Breck’s Bulbs. I usually order most of my bulbs in the spring while online stock is good, and the bulbs themselves tend to ship mainly in autumn for fall planting. Most bulb companies also sell roots for peonies, daylilies, and hostas, which tend to ship in the spring.

Already have your bulbs and want to know the next steps? Here’s a post on how to store and plant tulip bulbs!

Fertilizer is an important input in most gardens, especially if a soil test shows nutrient deficiencies. Most flower fertilizers have a moderately-high phosphorus level (the P in the NPK ratio) to support the plants in creating the biggest, brightest blooms possible.

Dr. Earth Flower Girl Organic Fertilizer is a slow-release natural fertilizer for the flower garden. This made-in-the-USA fertilizer is approved for organic gardening by the Organic Material Review Institute (OMRI).

Flower garden snips are slender pointed scissors used for clipping off flowers for bouquets, trimming plants in the garden, and cleaning bottom leaves off of flower stems.

Plant Gem’s Flower Garden Snips are handmade in Japan. These snips have a steel blade, red handles (for visibility in the garden), and a classic Japanese spring hinge.

Whether you garden in flower gardens or in containers on the patio, drip lines can keep plants perfectly watered even when you’re too busy to hand water. They also water right at the soil surface, which avoids getting plant leaves wet (which can invite disease).

My favorite brand is Rain Bird Drip Irrigation. They offer a number of kits and parts so you can make your own custom configuration without repeated trips to the hardware store. I like to use 1/2-inch emitter tubing for my flower gardens.

Gentle hand watering is very important in the flower garden in the weeks after seeds are planted. Avoid using the spray nozzle you use for other yard work and opt instead for a gentle-flow watering wand that won’t dislodge the tiny seeds as they germinate and sprout.

Dramm Watering Wands are the industry standard. These long-handled wands have a water breaker at the nozzle end for a soft flow that is minimally disruptive to the soil, seeds, and small plants. Dramm Wands come standard with a shower nozzle, but you can also buy a mist nozzle attachment for exceptionally gentle watering.

Building up a flower garden bed with high-quality soil before planting can be done to increase the elevation or to amend the existing soil to improve drainage, tilth, organic matter, and mineral nutrients.

Kellogg Organic Garden Soil is a high-quality garden soil mix perfect for amending and improving flower gardens. This mix is made of composted plant matter (rice hulls, wood), composted manure, and organic soil amendments like gypsum and feather meal. Kellogg garden soil is approved for organic gardening by the Organic Material Review Institute (OMRI).

Vining flowers like sweet peas, morning glory, cardinal vine, and clematis grow best with vertical support. I like wood and metal supports, especially free-standing obelisks.

My favorite option is the Plow & Hearth Steel Garden Obelisk Collection. These free-standing towers can be used in large containers or in flower beds. The powder-coated metal lasts for years and years in the garden.

There is SO much to learn about flower gardening. While there are lots of excellent options for in-person and online learning, my top pick is this offering from Learning with Experts:

The Cutting Garden with Charlie Ryrie is a gardening class for those who’d like to grow their own flowers for bouquets. This course is perfect for those with some general gardening experience who are looking to learn specialty methods of growing ornamental flowers.

A good soil thermometer is another one of those tools that’ll make you wonder how you ever did without it. This is especially true in cooler climates where soil can be quite cold in the early spring. A soil thermometer is a perfect way to monitor how soil temperatures are warming in the springtime so you can time your outdoor seed planting for optimal germination.

Taylor Precision’s Soil Thermometer is a purpose-made thermometer for checking soil temperatures for seed germination. It has a 4″-long probe which is a nice depth for testing the temperature as it’s not too deep (in comparison to some other products). It also highlights optimal germination temperatures for common seeds right on the dial.