Because flowers bloom at varying times of the year, and some plants are annual, dying each winter, the design of flower gardens can take into consideration maintaining a sequence of bloom and consistent color combinations through varying seasons. Besides organizing the flowers in bedding -out schemes limited to annual and perennial flower beds, careful design also takes the labour time, and the color pattern of the flowers into account.
The labour time can be decreased by using techniques such as mulching, companion planting, use of specific flowers / plants suppressing grass,... in the vicinity (i.e. Rhinanthus,...)
Flower color is another important feature of both the herbaceous border and the mixed border that includes shrubs as well as herbaceous plants. Flower gardens are sometimes tied in function to other kinds of gardens, like knot gardens or herb gardens, many herbs also having decorative function, and some decorative flowers being edible.
A simpler alternative to the designed flower garden is the " wildflower " seed mix, with assortments of seeds which will create a bed that contains flowers of various blooming seasons, so that some portion of them should always be in bloom. The best mixtures even include combinations of perennial and biennials, which may not bloom until the following year, and also annuals that are " self -seeding", so they will return, creating a permanent flowerbed.
Another, even more recent trend is the " flower garden in a box ", where the entire design of a flower garden is pre-packaged, with separate packets of each kind of flower, and a careful layout to be followed to create the proposed pattern of color in the garden -to-be.
