How many bedding plants per square meter

Login Sign Up. Pages Messages Updates Hi! These calculators will tell you how many plants you need to fill a given area. Save Print Email Tweet. Plants Per Square Feet Calculations Plant calculation charts come in particularly handy when planting groundcover plants, annual bedding plants and other plants that you intend on planting over a large area spaced a certain distance apart. NOTE: Before you can calculate how many plants will be required to fill a given area you'll need to determine the total square feet of the planting bed.

Plant Spacing Multiplier Chart In the chart below, the column on the left indicates how far apart you intend to space your plants groundcovers, annual bedding plants, etc. Bulbs can be mixed with biennial bedding plants will give combinations of colour in the early spring months.

Try planting allium, Anemone blanda , crocus, hyacinth, early-flowering Iris reticulata and tulips. Fashionable since Victorian times, the latest plant introductions and creative planting designs help to keep them popular. However, the highest-maintenance displays require late spring, mid- to late summer and autumn plantings.

Whichever regime you choose, this can be done in small gardens too. For winter, plant perennials such as bergenia, cyclamen, hellebores and viola to give interesting foliage as well as flower colour during mild spells.

If you are replanting three times a year : plant en masse with tulips and polyanthus for spring; replacing them with nemesia and alyssum for early summer, then cannas and dahlia for late-summer colour. This generally requires well-developed larger plants as they have less time to grow and develop in the ground; but can give a fuller display.

Formal bedding: Mostly for bold displays in public gardens and sometimes used in smaller ornamental parterre gardens, formal beds usually consist of neat, symmetrical patterns. Formal planting should be used for entire beds, in closely planted blocks of colour often in association with orderly edging plants such as lobelia or even clipped box.

Dahlias , geraniums bedding lobelias, salvias Salvia splendens cultivars are some of the plants frequently used. Informal bedding: Bedding plants can be used less formally in the garden, perhaps to brighten up the front of a border or fill bare soil under roses.

Carpet bedding: Carpet bedding is the most intensive form of bedding and uses plants that are so compact and tightly knitted that the appearance is akin to a woven carpet. Designs are often technically complex and can include highly intricate displays such as floral clocks, lettering or coats-of-arms. For the home gardener, designs can be much less elaborate, but still effective. To create the look the design, they should first be sketched on graph paper then executed using contrasting, low-growing, foliage plants such as alternanthera, echeveria, saxifraga, sedum and sempervivum.

Some public gardens use thousands of plants in carpet bedding and obtain computerised plans detailing how many plants are required and what colour and type of plant. You can transfer this idea to a small scale planting scheme. RHS Britain in Bloom for more details of award-winning local displays. Sow seed under glass with or without heat from January to early April.

Additionally, as soil conditions allow, you can sow seed directly into the soil outdoors from March onwards. Many hardy annuals can be sown in September and overwintered in mild areas. Cuttings of tender perennials can be taken from late summer to early autumn. If you do not have suitable conditions for raising your own bedding plants, many mail order suppliers offer a wide range of bedding plants, sold as young plants or plugs. Grow on somewhere warm and well lit, such as a greenhouse or windowsill, until the roots have nicely filled but not crowded the container.

Where the bedding design is made up of large square or rectangular blocks, a simple calculation can be made to determine the number of plants required. We recommend that you: Place taller plants, such as ornamental tobacco Nicotiana or cosmos at the back of beds and borders, graduating to shorter bedding plants at the front such as petunias, marigolds and pansies.

Plant in groups for a statement block of colour or drifts between perennials and shrubs, rather than as individuals. You will need: Your chosen bedding plants Multi-purpose compost Soil improver or manure Garden spade Garden fork Garden hoe Garden hand trowel Watering can Bucket Gardening gloves Kneeler or knee pads. How to plant up bedding plants in beds and borders Step 1 Water the bedding plants well while still in their original tray or container.

Step 2 Prepare the site by turning over the soil with a garden fork or spade. Remove weeds by hand as you go, or with a hoe, and take out any large stones. Step 3 Mix in a generous load of multi-purpose compost about a bucket per square metre and a soil improver or manure. Step 4 Use a trowel to dig a hole a little bigger than the pot or container the plant will be removed from.

Step 5 Carefully push the plant up out from its tray or pot and handle by its root ball or leaves. Lower the plant into the prepared plot. Step 6 Use your hands to gently fill any gaps around the plant using more compost or surrounding soil, so that the plant is well supported whilst roots remain below the surface of the soil. Complete cover of the ground should be created using either the higher or lower suggested planting densities; the higher density, by using more plants, taking less time to achieve cover than the lower density.

For specimen style planting, for example in Gravel gardens, where more space is required around each plant then the density can be reduced still further from that shown below. Acorus 7 to 9 Anemanthele 1 to 3 Andropogon 3 to 5 Ampeledesmos 1 to 3 Arundo 1 to 3 Bothriochloa 3 to 5 Briza 7 to 9 Calamagrostis 1 to 5 Carex smaller forms such as C.