Gardening: Best Flowers for Spring Planting

Cary, NC – Wednesday, March 20 was the official start of Spring for the year. If you are a gardener, you will want to start planting flowers for the season. Here are some tips on what to plant and how to take care of your new flowers.

Best Flowers for Spring

If you are a gardener, you will likely know the most common Spring flowers for a garden. Daffodils are an obvious pick as they not only grow quickly in the Spring but they have very attention-grabbing colors and shapes. Tulips are another common Spring flower but since we have had a cool Spring so far, this may not be the best year for them, but time will tell.

But you can also consider some other, less common options. Crocus flowers grow quickly in the Spring and are very resilient to weather, particularly the ruby giant variety.

Hyacinths look different from most flowers and give off a more prominent pleasant smell. They also come in darker colors that you rarely see in Spring gardens. Another benefit of hyacinths and crocuses are they provide lots of nectar and pollen to bees and other pollinating insects, so you can keep your garden buzzing with life and help spread pollinators around the community.

Other good pollinating Spring plants include the winter aconite flower, which has a bright buttercup color, English bluebells, which are able to grow in hot, drought climates as the Spring heats up, and Russian snowdrops, which do very well in the hot sunlight and also have a stark white color that stands out in the garden.

Caring for your Flowers in the Spring

As detailed above, each flower has its own particular needs so make sure you learn about what you are planting.

But in general, the best way to start planting Spring flowers is to make sure your soil is ready. Dig through your garden and mix in organic material that can break down and naturally fertilize the soil. During this process, you can also pick out rocks and other inorganic pieces that will impede the roots.

Pay attention to your flowers’ needs for water, sunlight and nutrients. For water, one quick tip is to drain off water you use for cooking and use that in your garden. This will retain nutrients and minerals from your meals. Similarly, consider saving any eggshells you use in cooking and mix that into the soil. Flowers often do not get enough calcium and this is an easy way to get it to them, as long as you grind the eggshells up into a fine powder first.

In the Spring, make sure you have your flower groups spread out. You can create planters if you want, as this makes it easier to spread the flowers, but you can also accomplish this in your yard or garden with some careful planning. Also, keeping the flowers spread out is better for pollinators.