Annuals on Your Walkway
Annuals on Your Walkway
You can create gorgeous garden color almost instantly, simply by planting some annual flowers. And one of the best places to plant these, is along the walkway or sidewalk that leads up to your home’s front door.
My favorite annuals to put on the walkway are Vincas. These survive and thrive quite well in very hot, direct sunlight. They also have gorgeous, large, showy and colorful flower blooms, which helps spruce up my yard from the drab and dreary winter look quickly.
Another very colorful, showy and popular annual flower to use for bordering your walkways is the Pansy. These don’t seem to do quite as well for me in direct hot sunlight, but they’re quite beautiful and like the Vinca, they come in a variety of colors.
Both Vinca and Pansy flowers don’t grow overly large, so they won’t take over your walkway or become a nuisance later in the season.
When planting your annuals, you’ll want to consider color combinations first. You might decide to plant flowers which match the color of your house, or the color of your houses trim. Alternatively you could do both: Plant some which match the main color of your house, and some which match the trim.
Another option of course is to plant annuals in colors that compliment your house colors without matching. And of course you could simply plant a myriad of different colors for an eclectic look too.
You might also want to consider planting in color patterns. Alternate one color with another for instance, or plant three flowers of one color, then three of another and so on.
Now you could of course, simply buy annuals which have multiple colors on each flower instead of buying only solid colored ones. The point is: There are so many colors and color combinations to choose from, and that’s one of the biggest reasons these should be your top choice for planting in the spring. Colorful annuals bloom early, and provide almost instant beauty anywhere you put them.
Once you’ve decided which colors you’ll plant, you’ll want to decide how many to plant too. You could choose to create one row of colorful flowers on each side of your walkway, or fill it in a bit with two to four rows instead. The more rows you intend to plant of course, the more flowers you’ll need to buy. And if you’re bordering a long walkway, that will increase the number of starter plants you’ll need too.
Once you’ve chosen your color scheme and decided how many plants you’ll need, go buy them. You can buy these beautiful annuals at any local nursery, or even KMart and Walmart. They tend to come as small starter plants in little six packs, and cost just $1-$3 per pack.
Planting these is easy too. Just dig a small hole a few inches from your walkway, coax one of the starter plants from the six pack, loosen the roots a bit, then put the plant into the hole. Your hole only needs to be deep enough to contain the roots you’ve loosened, and this is generally just a few inches at most.
Make your holes at least six to twelve inches apart if you’d like the plants to have a bit of room to grow. If you’d rather have it look a little more developed and “filled in” from the start, you can plant the flowers three to five inches apart instead.
If you’re planting multiple rows, be sure to stagger your plantings. In other words, in row two you’ll want to dig your hole halfway between two plants in the first row, and out another six to twelve inches. This will help your flower area look fuller, and fill in any “blank” dirt spots you might have.
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