Planting a flower garden can be a daunting task. You've probably seen pictures online of farms with thousands of flowers and a perfect backdrop. However, you have to start small to achieve your dream - even if it's just a few flowers! At Mousse Hill, we've found that landscaping fabric is the best way to grow a beautiful garden with minimal upkeep - this means much less weeding!
Creating a "template" to know where to plant each flower is an essential first step. Start by measuring the recommended distance between each flower and continue to mark each "burn spot" in your landscape fabric for the distance that you want that species to cover.
Next, you'll want to place your landscaping fabric on the ground of the area where you want to house your flowers. Place the template on top of the fabric and burn holes with a blowtorch following the template pattern. This is an effective way to get perfect circles in the fabric with little mess.
Finally, you want to make sure that you have a way to hold down your landscaping fabric so it doesn't fly away. We've tried sandbags in the past, but they deteriorate eventually, which leaves you with a mess to clean up. We've found that a few cinderblocks along the edges work best for our purposes!
The use of landscaping fabric has saved our family a lot of time and energy. In the beginning, you'll have to weed in the holes you've burned to ensure your sprouting flower has enough room, but after a month or so, it shouldn't require much upkeep. It also means that you don't have to weed in the areas between your flowers, which saves you a lot of time to do other important tasks in your flower patch!