Ideas for a Flower Bed Next to a Fence

Climbing Plants

• If you are putting a flower bed directly in front of a fence, use the fence to support climbing plants that bloom above and behind the rest of your flower bed. Sweet peas, morning glories and clematis are all beautiful plants that grow up fences enthusiastically. Hanging some string or twine down the face of the fence helps them climb more easily. Plant these climbing plants at the back of your flower bed so that they go directly up the fence; this leaves a lot of room to plant lower-growing flowers in front of them.

Colors

• Spend some time in the winter browsing seed catalogs and deciding what you want your flower beds to look like. Pay close attention to the timing of the blooms, information that is included in most seed catalogs. You can design and plan a flower bed that has one look in spring with the early bloomers and a different look in fall with the more mature flowering plants. Experienced gardeners enjoy experimenting with all-white beds (lilies, sweet peas and hollyhocks), complementary colors such as purple and yellow (echinacea and daisies) or orange and blue (Indian paintbrush and hydrangea) and tiers of flowers that present different colors at different heights.

Beds and Boxes

• If you want more flowers in a limited space, or perhaps if the fence that is behind your flower bed is not particularly attractive, build wooden flower boxes that you can attach to the fence, either halfway up it or on top of it. By planting climbing and hanging flowering plants in these boxes, you can create a riot of color that obscures the fence, replacing it with masses of multicolored blooms.

Raised Bed

• If the area directly in front of your fence is concrete or just has poor soil, the quickest remedy is to install a raised bed. This is easy to do using planks or railroad ties. Create an enclosed area about 12 inches high and fill it with topsoil and compost. Keep the back of the raised bed a few inches away from the bottom of the fence to avoid water getting trapped between the bed edging and the fence and causing rot.