Many people in the United States are avid gardeners. If you haven’t planted a garden before, you can start anytime. Planting a garden is not difficult. You can either plant a vegetable or a flower garden, or both. Planting a flower garden is definitely easy, but there are things you can do in order to increase the likelihood that your plants will thrive once you’ve planted them.

The first step to helping your plants to thrive is to pick the right plants in the first place. When you are looking at plants to buy at your local nursery, try to look for the plants that are short and stocky and only have a few flowers. This is where many flower buyers make mistakes. They want to buy the plants that have a lot of flowers on them, because they’re the prettiest. However, if a plant has a lot of flowers on it when you buy it at the store, it is probably at its prime or even a little bit past its prime. You want to pick a plant that hasn’t bloomed in full yet, so it will bloom in full once you have planted it in your garden.

Make sure that the flowers you choose at the nursery do not look sickly or unhealthy. If they are unhealthy now, you will probably have quite a time trying to revive them and get them back to a healthy place in your garden. You may be able to do it, but it will probably be a lot of work, probably more work than you were planning on putting into your garden. If the flowers look wilted, or the leaves are eaten by bugs, you should also try not to pick those plants. Picking the healthiest plants that look like they have a lot of potential is going to be a wise decision.

Photo Credit: Galina-NB