30 flower bed ideas for your garden

It’s quick and easy to grow your own cut flowers from seed. You can choose hardy and half-hardy annuals in a raised bed, or mix annuals with perennials, such as Phlox paniculata 'Purple Eye Flame', Achillea millefolium 'Terracotta' and Verbena bonariensis for a selection that will give you blooms for many years to come.

Bulbs such as tulips, daffodils and alliums work well as cut flowers, and annuals like calendula, Ammi majus, cornflowers and greater quaking grass will self-seed, providing plants in subsequent years with no effort on your part.

• Buy cut flower seeds and plants from Crocus, Dobies and Sarah Raven

Plant up a potager

Planting up an attractive potager – an ornamental vegetable and herb garden – in a raised bed is a fantastic way to maximise the potential of a small space. Choose vibrant crops like purple kohlrabi, rainbow chard, ‘Batavia Red’ lettuce, calabrese ‘Purple Rain’ and yellow ‘All Gold’ raspberries.

Varieties with attractive foliage bring another element to your planting – try ‘Black Magic’ kale, a compact variety with dark green furrowed leaves, or ‘Redbor’, which has masses of gloriously crinkled, burgundy leaves. Edible flowers (provided they’ve been grown organically and don’t contain traces of chemical sprays) such as Viola tricolor, nasturtiums and calendula complete the colourful picture.

• Buy vegetable plugs and plants from Crocus, Dobies and Sarah Raven

Herbal haven

One advantage of growing herbs in a raised bed is that you can suit the soil to the plants. Many herbs originate from the Mediterranean region and grow best in poor soil with good drainage. Provide these conditions in a sunny raised bed and your plants should thrive, with evergreens like sage giving you harvests all year.

In a smaller garden, choose compact varieties of larger herbs such as rosemary ‘Corsican Blue’ with its semi-trailing habit, and lavender ‘Little Lady’, so you can fit in more plants. Annuals such as borage and basil can be sown and planted out in late spring, while lower-growing herbs like thyme and winter savoury make great additions at the edge of beds.

• Buy herbs from Norfolk Herbs, Sarah Raven and YouGarden

Perfect for pollinators

With pollinator populations crashing across the UK and further afield, it's more important than ever to cater for these important insects in our gardens. By growing plants with nectar and pollen, we can enjoy the flowers and encourage wildlife at the same time.

Aim to grow flowers for as long a season as possible, and choose a range of shapes such as tubular (honeywort), bowl-shaped (poppy), lipped (snapdragon) and flat heads (sedum) and to provide for insects with different tongue lengths and feeding habits.

• Buy pollinator plants from Sarah Raven, Van Meuwen and Waitrose Garden

Child-friendly raised bed

Children love seeing plants grow and a raised bed enables even the smallest kids to reach the planting area and experiment with growing their favourite flowers. Many seed companies have special ranges for children with plants that are easy to grow such as sunflowers, snapdragons and nasturtiums.

And while they wait for their plants to grow, there are lots of other projects they can get involved in around the garden, like making bug hotels, making grass bucket seats and making a pond in a pot.

• Buy seeds for children from Johnsons, Suttons and Thompson & Morgan

Flower bed edging ideas

Fragrant edging

Add your favourite fragrant plants to the edges of your flower beds and they’ll release their scent as you brush past. Lavender is the classic aromatic herb for hedges and border edges. There are many varieties to choose from – with pink and white, as well as the more usual range of purples. Try pretty pink Lavandula angustifolia ‘Rosea’ or the pure white flowers of Lavandula angustifolia ‘Arctic Snow’.

We love lemon verbena which has leaves with a zingy sherbet-lemon scent. It needs protection over winter, but can be planted out after the last risk of frost. Or why not edge your flower bed with golden marjoram – Origanum vulgare 'Aureum'. When crushed, its vivid chartreuse leaves release fragrant oils, instantly transporting you to the sunny slopes of the Mediterranean.

• Buy lavender from Crocus, Dobies and Thompson & Morgan

Stepover apples

For a fruity border edge, plant step-over apples which create a low barrier with spring blossom and fruit in the autumn. You can buy trees with one tier of horizontal branches already trained – all you need to do is provide a supporting framework with wires. Popular in Victorian gardens, stepovers offer a winning combination of beauty and utility, ideal for any small garden.

• Buy step-over apples from Blackmoor Nurseries, Brogdale and Pomona Fruits

Weave with willow

Natural edging made out of woven willow creates a rural feel perfect for an informal flower bed. You can buy panels, but it’s not difficult to make if you have leftover willow prunings – or you could use colourful dogwood stems or any other pliable twigs. Another benefit of this type of edging is its sustainability. It's easily replaced with new edging and old material can be composted or left in a pile in a secluded part of the garden as a habitat for insects and other wildlife.

• Buy natural edging from Dobies, Thompson & Morgan and Woven Wood

Use reclaimed materials

Rather than buying new materials to edge your flower beds, why not use reclaimed bricks or Victorian terracotta tiles for a sustainable vintage look? Salvage and reclamation yards are good sources of material – have a look online or give your local yard a ring to ask what’s in stock. You can suit the colour of bricks or tiles (often blue, buff or red) to your house and hard landscaping elsewhere in the garden. Avoid using more than two or three different materials as this can create a rather busy and fragmented feel to the space.

• Buy reclaimed edging materials from Ace Reclamation, Gardiners and Watling Reclamation

Soften border edges

The margins between beds and paths or lawns can look rather stark and unappealing, especially if there’s bare soil at the edge of borders. Ground cover plants come into their own in these situations to soften harsh boundaries and add some trailing colour and interest. In shady areas, try the adding the deep purple and cream variegated foliage of a bugle such as Ajuga reptans ‘Burgundy Glow’.

Some of our favourite sun-loving trailing plants include Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus), which will self-seed in later years, and the cheerful purple flowers of Aubrietia 'Purple Cascade', which looks fantastic planted alongside a lavender hedge.

• Buy groundcover plants from Sarah Raven, Van Meuwen and Waitrose Garden

Front garden flower bed ideas

Classic cottage garden

If you’d like to greet visitors with a charming riot of colour, then a cottage garden could be the ideal style for you. With a wealth of plants to choose from, you can opt for a pastel palette or add brighter tones too. Quintessential cottage garden plants include roses, hollyhocks, lavender, aquilegia, campanula, geraniums and many more.

Create a calm atmosphere in a small front garden with softly curving paths and borders planted compact perennials such as Geranium ‘Lilac Ice’, Lavandula ‘Munstead’, Nepeta x faassenii 'Crystal Cloud' and Anemone x hybrida ‘September Charm’, and to fill any bare patches, sow annuals like Nigella damascena ‘Persian Jewels’ and Calendula ‘Snow Princess’. For a hotter look, add bursts of orange and red with Geum ‘Prinses Juliana’ and Achillea ‘Summerwine’.

• Buy cottage garden plants from Crocus, J.Parker's and Sarah Raven

Plan for year-round colour

Front gardens are visible to passersby all year round, which makes planting for all four seasons particularly important. Evergreens are invaluable to create structure in the colder months, so consider adding compact shrubs such as Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’ or Nandina ‘Fire Power’, or a clipped evergreen like Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Tom Thumb’ or Lonicera nitida ‘Elegans’.

Add colour to your front garden in spring with bulbs such as crocus, narcissi, scilla and tulips. And make the most of foliage in autumn with a shrub or tree like Cotinus ‘Grace’, Sorbus ‘Copper Kettle’ or Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Little Devil’.

• Buy plants for year-round colour from Gardenersdream, Roots and Thompson & Morgan

Move to the Mediterranean

A south-facing front garden with free-draining soil is the perfect spot to add a sunny slice of the Mediterranean to the UK. There are lots of plants that thrive in these conditions and many have flowers which are great for pollinators too. Create height with Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Blue Spire’, which grows to 1.2m, or a tall shrub such as Yucca gloriosa ‘Variegata’ whose creamy flower spikes can reach up to 2m in height in late summer.

Choose perennials with varied flower shapes to create visual interest, like the spherical heads of globe thistle, the open flowers of Anthemis tinctoria and more the unusual tiered blooms of Phlomis russeliana. And for ground cover plants, creeping thyme, rock rose (Helianthemum) and Potentilla x tonguei will flourish in full sun and provide foliage and flowers at the front of your border.

• Buy drought-resistant, Mediterranean plants from Crocus, J.Parker's and Beth Chatto

Plant a specimen tree

Trees provide a fantastic way of creating height, offering habitats for wildlife and creating a focal point in your front garden. There are many compact trees with long seasons of interest for even a small space. Weeping varieties like Malus ‘Royal Beauty’, Salix caprea ‘Kilmarnock’ and Cercis canadensis ‘Ruby Falls’ are elegant specimen trees, and none of them reach a height and spread of more than 3m x 3m over a 20-year period.

Alternatively, choose a tree that can be grown in a pot, such as Prunus incisa ‘Kojo-no-mai’ or Acer palmatum ‘Crimson Queen’. Then, provided you water and feed it regularly, you’ll have added structure to your front garden even if you aren’t able to plant in the ground.

• Buy small trees from Crocus, Suttons and Thompson & Morgan

Rewild your space

Without plants, front gardens can look sterile and unloved, not to mention the flooding difficulties caused by garden upon garden of impermeable paving. Growing greener is a positive way to make your front garden more wildlife-friendly, as well as providing a place where you and passersby can enjoy the calm evoked by foliage and flowers.

Rewilding can simply involve adding plants in containers or a new flower bed, but you could go further and sow or plant an area of mini-meadow where grasshoppers can shelter and butterflies feed. If you have bare earth, sowing seeds is likely to be successful, but in grassy areas it’s better to plant wild flowers grown on from plugs to avoid the grass outcompeting your flowers.

• Buy wild flower seeds and plants from Naturescape, Sarah Raven and Thompson & Morgan

Small flower bed ideas

Impact with annuals

Sowing annuals generates maximum summer colour, enables you to change your planting each year, and creates big impact in a small space. Seed choice is almost endless, but we love to grow zinnias, Californian poppies, torch flowers, cornflowers and cosmos. Zinnias pack a vibrant punch of colour (try ‘Benary’s Giant’ series of Zinnia elegans), while Mexican sunflower Tithonia rotundifolia ‘Torch’ adds an orange blaze to rival the midday sun.

Californian poppy Eschscholzia californica ‘Apricot Chiffon’ forms elegant coral drifts through a border, and cornflowers provide the cooler end of the spectrum with the blues and whites of Centaurea cyanus ‘Classic Fantastic’ and ‘Snowman’. Finally, you can’t go wrong with any cosmos, but our favourites include Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Rubenza’ and ‘Apricotta’.

• Buy annual seeds from and Chiltern Seeds, Dobies, and Sarah Raven

Think vertically

When you run out of horizontal space, an ideal solution is to grow upwards. If your growing space backs onto a wall or fence, simply use trellis or wires as support. With an island bed, try growing up an obelisk. For more permanent planting, add a compact clematis like red-flowered Issey (‘Evipo081’) or a small climbing rose like Open Arms (‘Chewpixel’). If you’d rather experiment with new plants each year, go for eye-catching climbers grown as annuals such as Thunbergia alata, morning glory or sweet peas.

• Buy climbers from J.Parker's, YouGarden and Waitrose Garden

Choose cool colours

For an ultra-cool flower bed, stick to white flowers, or combine them with light purple, blue and pink blooms. Use a range of variegated, silver and purple foliage too and ensure there’s no bare soil showing. Try the classic white rose ‘Iceberg’, Salvia x sylvestris ‘Schneehϋgel’, Echinacea purpurea ‘White Swan’, Centaurea montana ‘Amethyst in Snow’ or Lathyrus latifolia ‘White’ – each with a different flower shape – to create extra interest.

Alternatively, add muted tones with perennials such as Iris germanica ‘Harriette Halloway’, Thalictrum ichangense ‘Purple Marble’ or Geranium maculatum ‘Espresso’.

• Buy cool perennials from Claire Austin, Crocus, and Sarah Raven

Evening scent for moths

Many of our gardens now include planting for bees, butterflies and other day-flying pollinators, but it’s important to cater for their night-flying relatives too. Studies have shown that moths have larger and more complex pollination networks than butterflies, and they are drawn to flowers that open in the evening.

Climbers like honeysuckle are particularly favoured, and they love evening primrose, night-scented stocks and sweet rocket. Tobacco plants are good sources of nectar too, but only Nicotiana alata, as as some modern varieties don’t have scent and Nicotiana sylvestris has longer flower tubes in which nectar can only be reached by one long-tongued moth – the convolvulus hawk-moth – a rare migrant in the UK.

• Buy moth-friendly plants from Dobies, Naturescape, and Thompson & Morgan

Grow compact varieties

Don’t dismiss plants that you assume to be large for your space without checking if new compact varieties are available – you might be able to grow more than you think. Some of our favourite small shrubs include the Buddleja ‘Buzz’ series, Azalea ‘Dwarf White’ and tiny Berberis buxifolia ‘Nana’. Even fruit like raspberries and blueberries can be grown in restricted spaces with varieties such as raspberry ‘Summer Lovers Patio Red’ and blueberry ‘Sunshine Blue’.

• Buy compact plant varieties from Crocus, Dobies and Thompson & Morgan

Modern flower bed ideas

Bold borders

Create immediate impact with bold foliage and flowers. In areas of partial shade, try Fatsia japonica ‘Tsumugi-shibori’, which has green palmate leaves with white-speckled variegation on the margins, underplanted with giant hostas like ‘T-Rex’ and ‘Eliator’. For a warm, sunny flower bed, tender cannas and Colocasia esculenta provide dramatic, colourful foliage as a backdrop for dramatic accent perennials such as Dahlia ‘Vulcan’ and Hedychium densiflorum ‘Assam Orange’.

• Buy bold plants from J.Parker's, Gardenersdream and Sarah Raven,

Plan for resilience

Planning for the future means considering how conditions are likely to change as the climate warms. In some cases that involves selecting drought-resilient plants and collecting as much rain water as you can. In others, you'll be planting with floods and wet winters in mind. Of course, adapting to the effects of climate breakdown goes hand-in-hand with mitigating emissions of harmful gases in the first place. Avoid using peat in the garden to protect peatland (a vast carbon store when maintained in a healthy condition) and consider your use of other resources too – many of which have a significant carbon footprint in their production, transportation and usage.

• Buy water butts from YouGarden, Waitrose Garden and Watt Butts Direct

Enjoy sensory grasses

Grasses are often underused in gardens. They can add layers of sensory delight to a flower bed with their tactile leaves and the gentle sounds they make when the wind blows. Try planting an ornamental grass like Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ alongside late-flowering summer perennials. Even small gardens can accommodate some compact grasses such as Mexican feather grass (Stipa tennuissima), delicate Melica uniflora and low-growing blue fescue (Festuca glauca).

• Buy grasses from Crocus, Knoll Gardens and Thompson & Morgan

Grow green

Choose a range of green flowers for an ultra-modern look. In shady areas, try Tellima grandiflora with its greeny-white flower spikes, and the lime green bracts of Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae. In a sunny spot, Dianthus barbatus ‘Green Wicky’, Echinacea ‘Green Jewel’, Angelica archangelica, Phlox ’Green Lion’ and Nicotiana langsdorfii will all intrigue visitors with their unusual flowers.

• Buy green flower seeds and plants from Chiltern Seeds, Crocus and Sarah Raven

Bring in the birds

Plant up a border with our feathered friends in mind by choosing trees, shrubs, climbers and perennials that provide berries, fruits, seeds and places for insects to shelter. Rowan, hawthorn and crab apple are suitable for smaller gardens. Not only do they offer food for birds with their berries, apples and plentiful invertebrate populations (provided you avoid pesticides), they also have wonderful blossom to attract pollinators. Some birds, such as blue tits, will also feast on the nectar of plants like willow, flowering currant and mahonia.

• Buy bird-friendly plants from Crocus, Suttons and Thompson & Morgan

Shady flower bed ideas

Victorian stumpery

From the mid-nineteenth century, gardeners began to make stumperies with old tree trunks and logs to create planting areas for the ferns that were all the rage in Victorian times. Stumperies provide a range of micro-habitats, so many species can be planted close together. They also create places for wildlife to live, especially insects.

Use different shapes and sizes of logs to provide as many micro-habitats as possible, including deep shade, damp areas and pockets where mosses and epiphytic ferns – species that grow on other plants – can become established. Create year-round interest by adding both evergreen and deciduous plants.

• Buy ferns from J.Parker's, Penlan Perennials and Waitrose Garden

Woodland flower bed

Shady areas around deciduous trees and shrubs with light canopies are perfect for planting up as woodland borders. Many woodland species flower early in the year making the most of the sunlight before the leaves develop overhead. For winter colour, snowdrops, winter aconites and Cyclamen coum create carpets of white, yellow and pink. Add spring-flowering bulbs, along with primroses, lungwort and wood anemone. Woodland stalwarts like foxgloves will give colour later in the season, with evergreens like Asarum europaeum and Epimedium davidii completing the year-round picture.

• Buy woodland plants from Crocus, Roots Plants and Sarah Raven

Light up the dark

Plants with variegated foliage are invaluable to invigorate dark shady spots. Silvery variegation lightens the colour palette – try Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’, Athyrium niponicum var. pictum ‘Silver Falls’ or Lamium maculatum ‘Beacon Silver’. For more colourful variegation with splashes of gold, Hosta ‘June’, Euonymus fortunei ‘Emerald Gold’ and Heuchera ‘Solar Eclipse’ are great choices.

• Buy plants with variegated foliage from Gardenersdream, Jacksons and J.Parker's

Sow a shady meadow

If you would like to create a meadow but only have shade in the garden, don’t give up, there are many wild flowers that thrive out of full sun in both dry and damp shady areas. Honesty, bugle, common figwort, harts tongue fern, wood avens and red campion all tolerate moist (but not permanently waterlogged) soils in dappled shade. For a dry area in partial shade, try wood spurge, wood sage, wild carrot or hedge bedstraw.

• Buy shady meadow seeds mixes from Emorsgate Seeds, Naturescape and Thompson & Morgan

Plant up a north-facing wall

Add interest to a north-facing wall with climbers and wall shrubs. Flowering quince copes well with dry shade – we love Chaenomeles speciosa ‘Geisha Girl’ with its semi-double apricot flowers, and the popular Chaenomeles x superba ‘Crimson and Gold’ with its vivid scarlet blooms. There are several clematis varieties that tolerate growing up a shady wall, including spring-flowering Clematis montana. For fantastic foliage, try variegated ivies like Hedera helix ‘White Ripple’ or the autumn splendour of Parthenocissus henryana.

• Buy shade-tolerant climbers and wall shrubs from Crocus, Jacksons and Roots Plants