When considering a garden beneath a tree, it is important to keep a few rules in mind. Otherwise, your garden may not flourish and you could injure the tree. So what plants or flowers grow well under a tree? Read on to learn more about growing gardens under trees. Below are some of the basic guidelines to keep in mind when planting under trees. Do trim away lower branches -Trimming away a few of the lower branches will give you more space for planting and allow light to come under the tree. Even if the plants you want to use are shade tolerant, they too need a little light to survive. Don’t build a raised bed – Most gardeners make a mistake of building a raised bed around the base of the tree in an attempt to create better soil for the flowers. Unfortunately, when doing this they can harm or even kill the tree. Most all trees have surface roots that require oxygen to survive. When compost, soil, and mulch are piled up thick around a tree, it suffocates the roots and allows no oxygen to get to them.
This can also cause the roots and lower trunk of the tree to decay. Although you will have a nice flower bed, in a few years the tree will be nearly dead. Do plant in holes – When planting under trees, give each plant its own hole. Carefully dug holes will avoid damage to the tree’s shallow root system. Each hole can be filled with composted organic matter to help benefit the plant. A thin layer of mulch (no more than 3 inches) can then be spread around the base of the tree and plants. Don’t plant large plants – Large and spreading plants can easily take over a garden under the tree. Tall plants will grow too high for the area and start trying to grow through the tree’s lower branches while large plants will also block the sunlight and view of other smaller plants in the garden. Stick with small, low growing plants for best results. Do water the flowers after planting – When just planted, flowers do not have established roots, which make it difficult to get water, especially when competing with the tree’s roots.
For the first couple of weeks after planting, water daily on days it does not rain. Don’t damage the roots when planting – When digging new holes for plants, don’t damage the roots of the tree. Try to make holes for small plants just large enough to fit them in between roots. If you hit a large root while digging, fill the hole back in and dig in a new location. Be very careful not to split major roots up. Using small plants and a hand shovel is best to cause as little disturbance as possible to the tree. Do plant the right plants – Certain flowers and plants do better than others when planted under a tree. Also, be sure to plant flowers that will grow in your planting zone. Here is a list of some common flowers to plant under trees.Rip out the grass and start a bed of shrubs and perennials; have plenty of mulch on hand. In this tutorial, I'll walk you through the strategic thinking and work steps I used to plant one flower bed. The photo above demonstrates just how important it is to visualize the future when planning a flower bed.
Though it doesn't look like much now, in a few months, this will be a full, colorful bed. The key is anticipating the heights, colors, textures and mass of all the various plants. My flower bed planting consists of two rows of annuals and perennials in the front and a staggered row... Picture of a variegated iris. Unless you're striving for the sort of wild, chaotic look that typifies English cottage gardens, it's a good idea to have a color scheme in mind when planting flower beds. If you need help with plant selection, this discussion of color families might help. My color scheme in planting this flower bed was blue, purple and gold. And I am considering the color of the plants' foliage, too, not just its flowers. For example, I am killing two birds with one stone in using the iris shown here (Iris... Picture of Emerald 'n Gold euonymus. To add some complementary yellow/gold tones, I started with the background shrubs. Emerald 'n Gold euonymus shrub has the colors of gold and green on the same leaf;
that is, like the iris on the prior page, it is a variegated plant. Similarly, Moonshadow euonymus would work here, as well. Other touches of gold color are offered by golden moneywort, Angelina stonecrop plants, and a King's Gold false cypress shrub. But enough of the fun considerations involving color for now. There is some hard work... At this stage of the project, it's time to play "sodbuster.". Are you creating your flower bed from scratch, in an area currently covered with grass? If so, as preparation for planting the flower bed, you must remove the sod. The way I remove sod is different from what you may see on TV gardening shows, which may recommend using a flat-blade shovel to skim off and removed the grass, soil and all. Instead, I use a common, everyday, pointed shovel, cutting the sod out in chunks (about 4 inches deep x 10 inches wide x 10 inches long). Then I lay the shovel on... Garden staples are used to secure weed barriers. Weed barriers are meant to be used in conjunction with garden mulch.
The latter not only helps hold weed barriers in place but also shields them from harmful UV rays. Like the sheets of black plastic commonly used in weed control, a weed barrier (or "landscape fabric") hampers weeds in their efforts to take over your flower bed. Both are clean and reasonably durable. But unlike black plastic, weed barriers permit air, water, and nutrients to penetrate down to the soil. Besides garden mulch, use... Picture showing how to make incisions in weed barriers. After laying down the weed barrier, the plants are installed simply by cutting X-shaped slits in the fabric. Just lay your plants down on the fabric, mark their location, then use a utility knife or garden shears to cut slits. The photo above explains the concept. After temporarily removing the mulch from the desired planting spot, I sliced through the weed barrier without actually cutting any of it off. It is simple enough at this point to separate the flaps and lower the plant's root-ball...
Picture of the front row of the planting bed: blue fescue grass and Angelina stonecrop. Seeking low plants for the front row of my flower bed, I chose 'Festuca Blue' fescue grass (Festuca ovina 'Glauca'), also known as 'Elijah Blue' fescue grass (Festuca [ovina var.] glauca 'Elijah Blue'), and 'Angelina' stonecrop. These plants work nicely with my blue-purple-gold color scheme. The blue fescue grasses bear bluish-gray foliage; Angelina stonecrop has golden-green foliage. Blue fescue grass is an ornamental grass and easy enough to trim, should it outgrow the place I have chosen for... Picture of Victoria Blue salvia. The middle row of my flower bed consists largely of different perennial salvia plants. There are so many kinds of salvia plants that I've always found the precise identification of them difficult. So I decided to grow several different types altogether, giving me a chance to study them closely and compare notes on each one. Although each salvia plant I've selected for this row is different, all conform to my stated color scheme, providing either blue or purple flower.