How to Replace Summer Flowers With Fall Annuals and Bulbs

Once your summer garden is past its prime, it’s time to change it out for cool season plants. Learn how to replace your summer plants with flowers that will provide color through the fall, winter and spring in this Home Depot video:

Dig out your summer flowers. You’ll need to examine your garden carefully, however, so that you don’t dig out perennials by mistake. Locate the perennial root zone using the pointed edge of your shovel and dig carefully around it. Cut down any summer bulbs, leaving part of the stem so you can identify them.

Once you have removed your summer flowers, add a high quality garden soil to ensure success for the next season. Add a three-inch layer across the top of the bed and work it into the soil down to a depth of six inches. Rake it smooth.

Lay out your flowering plants. A flower bed is more cohesive if you repeat colors throughout the flower bed. Group your taller flowering plants in twos or threes, intersperse medium-height flowers, and then go along the edges with low-growing flowers. Drop bulbs into the open spaces. Now you’re ready to plant.

Plant the flowering plants before the bulbs. Start with the large plants, then the front plants, varying the spacing and location along the entire length of the bed. Once you’ve finished with the flowers, plant the bulbs by digging holes about six inches deep with a dibbler and drop in the bulbs. Remember to orient the bulbs with the pointy end up and the dry root end down. Cover up the bulbs and water the entire bed thoroughly.