Planning for Summer Color

Start with a diagram of your garden. Landscaping kits with graph paper and colored plant cut-outs are available by mail or from various home-gardening retailers, but most gardeners just make a rough, aerial-view sketch of the shape of the yard and the location of planting areas. It is not absolutely necessary to have everything drawn-to-scale with specific measurements.

On your layout, include existing trees, shrubs, and other perennials, noting the blooming season and color. Then comes the creative part. Look through garden magazines and catalogs for pictures of bulbs, annuals, and bedding plants that appeal to you. Cut them out and arrange on your layout. Experiment with different groupings on various sites in your yard before making your "shopping list". This can inspire creative combinations you might otherwise have missed, plus it can help avoid mistakes. This is also a good time to review any photographs or notes you made when evaluating last summer's flower beds.

Contact mail-order companies and visit local garden centers early in the season. The selection of colorful, summer-flowering bulbs, such as gladiolus, dahlia, and tuberous begonia, tend to be sold quickly.

You may also want to get a jump on the season by starting some summer annuals and tubers indoors. There are usually ready-to-plant dahlia tubers (a summer garden staple) available in early spring. Or, if you stored your own dahlia tubers from last year, divide the clumps into individual tubers and pot them up. Water the soil thoroughly, and set the pots in a warm spot until they start to grow and can be transplanted.

Annuals and bedding plants grown from seed take more time than bulbs before they are ready to transplant, so be sure to start them indoors six to eight weeks before it is time to plant them outside.