You don't need a large garden for a lushly blooming flower bed - a small corner is enough, and a planter with colorful flowers can even be easily integrated on the terrace or balcony. We have collected a few nice and practical ideas to build yourself.
Flower beds can be delimited with wooden stakes or wooden slats
Raised beds and planters for flowers
Raised beds or slightly raised planters are extremely practical, as they allow back-friendly work in the flower bed, many design options for the garden and the planting of colorful perennials even where the appropriate soil conditions are not actually available. Such a raised bed does not necessarily have to be rectangular, you can also choose oval, curved, round or L- or U-shaped beds as a patio border. The advantage of the latter forms is that you can easily install a blooming privacy screen with the help of a raised bed and some taller perennials. The raised plant boxes can be built from a wide variety of materials as you wish: from wooden slats, Euro pallets (€29.99) from concrete and natural stones, from metal, plastic or woven willow branches. Building it yourself is very easy if you use Euro pallets or shaft rings, for example. However, there are a few things to keep in mind when using a raised bed for flowers:
- Leave the raised bed open at the bottom to allow excess water to drain.
- Where this is not possible, another drainage option should be found.
- The walls of the raised bed should be waterproofed with pond liner or similar.
- Otherwise, wooden beds in particular will not last very long.
- Do not fill the raised bed with compost and layering material in the classic way!
- This is far too rich for flowers.
- Instead, commercially available potting or planting soil is sufficient.
Another clever idea is to simply let the planting area for the flower bed into the terrace, by not tiling a part or otherwise covering it with a floor and instead letting plant boxes into the cave that has been created there.
Various bed edgings
A raised bed in the garden can be delimited with different materials. This not only looks tidier, but also has a very practical purpose: the planted perennials remain in the bed thanks to the border and do not proliferate beyond it. Very different materials as well as certain hedge plants have proven themselves as bed borders:
- low box hedge: classic bed border from the cottage garden
- braided willow fences: often used in cottage gardens and natural gardens
- Concrete stones: Lawn curbs are well suited, but other shaped stones are also suitable
- Natural stones: loosely arranged or as a low dry stone wall, these many small animals offer shelter
- Herb perennials: a frame of fragrant herbs helps against numerous pests
tips
If you don't want to do it yourself, you can buy ready-made raised beds or kits instead. These are also specially tailored to the needs of balcony and terrace gardeners.