Flowerbed Designs for Words Made of Flowers

A Victorian Garden Fashion

• Victorian gardeners were passionate about carpet bedding, inspired by the tropical annuals imported from faraway countries, with their vivid colors and long-blooming habit. They organized them in patterns as intricate as Persian carpets. A popular fashion was to arrange plants to form elaborate images, such as clocks, crowns, heraldic crests and stars. Eventually, the artificial design character that carpet beds embody began to fall from favor with gardeners, as they turned to a more natural and regionally based garden design ethic.

Contemporary Carpet Beds

• The traditional Victorian carpet beds relied on bold contrasts in foliage color and texture. Gardeners rigorously kept plants at the same height. Contemporary carpet bedding combines the traditional carpet bed technique with mass planting of flowers and plants of different heights. Colored stone or mulches can be used in the background. Hundreds, even thousands, of plants are still required for the desired effect, and maintenance is still labor-intensive.

Celebration

• The showy effect of carpet bedding is still enjoyed through the efforts of municipalities, public buildings and special destination spots. Disney World, for example, uses carpet bedding extensively, including images of cartoon characters. Waddesdon Manor, in England, is devoting its annual carpet bed theme this year to the royal wedding. The initials "C" and "W" will be spelled out in silver --- Sedum --- and gold --- Antennaria --- plantings, with images of doves carrying wedding rings threaded onto ribbons on either side. Orange marigolds, blue verbena and heliotrope will complete the Royal Wedding display.

Flower Clocks

• Carpet bedding techniques are used to shape flower clocks, a signature contemporary display of the the garden fashion. These flower clocks showcase flowers in the form of a clock face. A botanically correct floral clock was suggested by Carolus Linnaeus, the influential 18th-century botanist. Many flowers are regulated by a biological clock that fixes the time of day they open and close. Linnaeus proposed planting such plants, in order of flowering, to form a clock that could tell you the time within half an hour.