When you decide to cultivate a garden, you have to make a floor plan about how your garden should look. It would be best if you consider many things, including what variety of plants to grow and where you must propagate them in the area. You also have to consider the gardening accessories and fixtures that can beautify your garden if you organize them accordingly. With many types of plants and flowers that you can quickly grow with your green hands, you have to be selective and opt only for the best ones that fit your preference. Some of the best ornamental plants you may consider growing in your garden include:
Tradescantia
One of the best ornamental plants you may consider growing in your garden is the tradescantia or spiderwort. This plant is a herbaceous perennial wildflower that can grow up to 60 cm tall. It has long and thin leaves with three-petaled flowers that can be white, purple, pink, and blue. Tradescantia can be a houseplant, which can also thrive indoors as a hanging basket plant.
When growing a tradescantia in your garden, you must consider its environment to grow healthily and beautifully. Tradescantia thrives well in any soil, but it will need a good amount of bright, indirect light. Avoid exposing this plant to direct sunlight as it can scorch its leaves. When working with a tradescantia, it is recommended that you wear gardening gloves to avoid skin irritation and allergies.
Sunflowers
If you want to have bright, attractive, and yellow flowers in your garden, you may grow some beautiful sunflowers in the areas of your place where there is direct sunlight every day and well-drained soil. Sunflowers have rough hairy stems, broad and rough leaves, yellow heads of flowers that can be used as a yellow dye, and edible seeds that contain oil used for food.
To cultivate a sunflower, you have to use its seeds. Plant some sunflower seeds into a shallow trench 6 inches apart from each other. Then, keep it watered every day until some seeds start sprouting. When they began to grow and reach 6 inches tall, remove the weaker ones and make sure that what was left were 12 inches apart from each other. If you want to have continuous blooms, plant a new row of seeds every two to three weeks.
Like any plants that need care, sunflowers also need maintenance to grow abundantly. If the sunflowers are still small and in their growing phase, you have to ensure that you keep the area around the roots watered until it grows to become an established plant. Once the plant becomes mature, it is recommended that you only water it every once a week, depending on the weather.
Dahlia
Dahlias are ornamental flowering plants that come in various colors, ranging from orange, pink, purple, red, white, and yellow. They usually bloom through midsummer until autumn and are typically put into a vase by homeowners as a home decoration. When cultivating dahlias in your garden, you need to have loamy or sandy soil and an area where there is direct sunlight.
There are three ways on how to propagate a dahlia–cuttings, seeds, or tubers. If you plan to grow dahlias in your garden, propagation through cuttings is the best and most recommended way to do it.
Coleus
Coleus is one of those plants that are easy to propagate and maintain. It has colorful and velvety leaves and can preferably grow in moist, rich soil in partial shade. Coleus can be propagated through cuttings and seed germination, which is the gardening process of developing a plant through planting a seed. Coleus can be a houseplant, which means that it can thrive both indoors and outdoors.
Lavender
To make your place smell good and look attractive, you may consider cultivating some lavenders in your garden. Lavenders are small shrubs that have gray-green leaves and shoots that produce lilac or blue flowers. This plant’s flowers and oil are used in making medicine for depression, dementia, pain after surgery, and many other conditions.
If you plan to cultivate lavenders in your home garden, you will need lavender cuttings. Choose a parent plant and cut lavender stems that have good color and no buds. Remove the leaves and scrape off the skin of the bottom part of the stems. Stick this skinned lower end on the prepared soil and cover it with plastic to form a greenhouse-like environment for the plant.
Takeaway
Cultivating a garden makes your home look attractive to the eyes of passersby and visitors. The plants, if you choose the right ones, also make your place seem fresh and cool. The list of best plants mentioned above is some of the most recommended ones to cultivate in your home garden. When considering propagating these plants, be sure that you can sustain and maintain taking care of them.
