Table of Contents Introduction to Garden Borders Introduction Planning a Border Preparing Your Border Lime Application Manuring General Cultivation Tips Planting of Shrubs List of Different Color Plants Borders of Just One Color Getting a Period Border Narrow Borders Aspect Borders General Herbaceous Borders Choosing the Right Background Staking and Supports Growing a Shrub Border Using Bulbs in Your Border Bulb Selection Planting Your Bulbs Border Bulbs - Hyacinth and Crocus Management of your Borders Traditional Control of Slugs Conclusion Author Bio Publisher Introduction No one knows which creative gardener decided to line the borders of his flower beds with plants of a different contrasting color and how many millenniums ago. Nevertheless, even unto the 20th century, any well-kept garden which you visit is going to have a number of borders and hedges placed in the garden to add style to the visual appeal. The most important part of choosing a good border is the color scheme. Just imagine your bed is going to be made up of white daisies. You decide to border it with white chrysanthemums. That does not show much about your creativity or color sense, does it? On the other hand, if you aim at having a border looking as natural and possible with a good color scheme and selection, and which is definitely not planted in rows, you are going to have something good-looking and unique. Also, you need to look at the height of a plant. I remember as a child seeing a garden bed bordered with Hollyhocks. The gardener just loved the color and did not have enough of hollyhocks to make up a whole bed. So she just planted the hollyhock plants as a contrasting border for a flower bed of other summer and autumn flowers. The hollyhocks were not of the dwarf variety. They grew and they grew and soon over - shadowed the flowers in the bed. So anyone looking at that bed from a distance of about 10 feet would be confronted with plenty of hollyhock flowers and foliage, and would have to do a little bit of visual searching to look at the flowers growing in the bed. This definitely is not what you would expect a border to do. Imagine a border to be a frame for the real stuff - your choice of flowers in a well-prepared bed.