8 Easy Steps To A New Shrub and Flower Bed

If you’ve got a couple hours, you can create a new shrub and flower bed using these 8 low-dig steps. Using an easy layered technique that feeds the soil from the top down, you can make a flower bed that gets more beautiful through the years!

I’m excited to share how to make a flower bed from a weedy patch of yard easily! With this technique, you will have a neat and tidy new shrub and flower bed in just eight easy steps – and way less time than you would think.

In fact, Brian and I were able to complete the bed pictured below (roughly a 20 x 8 feet area) in just a couple hours one Saturday!

And not only that, we set it up to be low maintenance using soakers and our paper-and-mulch system.

Update: Scroll to the end to see photos of how great this entire border looked a few years later with nothing more than some pruning and a yearly topping of paper and compost mulch (that feeds the soil, so no need for extra fertilizers).

This is not only a way to prepare a garden bed for planting shrubs, but it also can work to redo an existing flower bed.

You would simply complete the eight steps around the existing shrubs, adding any plants you would like around the existing shrubs.

The older plants will love the new soil and mulch, by the way, and should respond really well by thriving and growing.

How to Prepare a Garden Bed for Planting Shrubs & Perennials

The flower bed we created started out as one of the last, wild areas of our yard, located on the side of our house at the end of a larger shrub and perennial border.

It used to hold a cyclone-fence dog run left by the former owners (yes, it was a beautiful thing to look at…). Since our dog didn’t run away and slept inside, we didn’t need it.

Every time we make a new bed or border in our yard, we take the same eight easy steps, no matter if we’re starting with grass, or weed-filled ground like this area – or if it’s an area that’s planted with neglected older shrubs.

This planting method has worked so well for us that I wanted to share a tutorial so that you can see how easy it can be to make a low maintenance, low dig bed for perennials, shrubs, annuals – or even trees.

The Plants

First, let’s talk plants. For the area we were planting, we needed it to be easy-care, but also look good because it’s seen from the guest bathroom window inside and the gravel patio outside.

I decided to plant mostly shrubs in this corner that will help connect it to the rest of the shrub-perennial border around the yard, but not take much care.

Here are the shrubs we planted:

• 3 Arborvitae (these continue the pattern of an arborvitae at each fence post along the entire length)
• 1 Doublefile Viburnum (rooted from another shrub on our property, yay free plants!)
• 1 Variegated Pieris japonica (continuing the border pattern of one in between the arborvitae)
• 1 pink Escallonia
• 1 hydrangea (rooted from another hydrangea on our property)
• 1 perennial foxglove (also seeded from others on the property)

Choosing a mixture of evergreens as a backdrop or throughout the bed to provide winter interest is a good idea.

Then fill in with larger shrubs to the back, medium shrubs and larger perennials in the middle and smaller perennials in the front.

PRO TIP: It’s best if you can repeat plants rather than have a mass of singles. For us, the arborvitae and pieris japonica repeated from the long border, and the viburnum and foxglove are found in other areas of the backyard.

How to Make a Flower Bed in 8 Easy Steps

1. Remove perennial weeds and any large weeds.

The large weeds were easy to pull in this area and there weren’t too many dandelions, so this step went quickly. If it seems overwhelming, use black plastic to kill the weeds about a month before planting and then just rake them away.

You do not need to worry about annual weeds or small grasses – they will be killed with the smothering layers.

2. Add a two to three-inch layer of good garden soil.

If you’ve got any composted manure, mix it in this layer, though it’s optional and we didn’t use it here.

PRO TIP: We’ve successfully used horse manure in building beds as a first layer, even though it is notoriously full of weed seeds, because it is then covered with more layers.

3. Place the plants, in their pots, where you’d like them to go.

Moving the plants around during this step is much easier than after digging holes, as you  might guess.

Perennials I don’t worry as much about – they often need dividing and fooling with anyway, but shrubs are there to stay, so place them where they can grow fully, preferably without having to prune to keep them in check because…maintenance.

4. Once you’ve decided on where the plants go, dig the holes.

Now, instead of digging the whole bed (which in all honesty, we’ve never done), just make the holes for the plants two times bigger than the container and mix in some of the good soil and compost.

This has worked really well for us – especially with shrubs.

PRO TIP: If the plant has roots circling the pot, use your hands, a trowel, or knife (or even a shovel for really root-bound plants) to pull or cut them apart to give the roots a starting chance. Otherwise they may just continue in the root-bound pattern and never grow healthy.

5. Fill in around the plants with original soil mixed with good soil.

Always make sure there is some original soil in the hole as well as the new soil. Otherwise the roots may get use to the good soil and run into the “wall” of the old soil and stop growing.

Tamp down around the plant to help the roots firm in the soil (I actually use my foot, stepping around the plant gently).

Then give each plant a good soaking with water. If the soil around sinks more after watering, add a bit more soil.

PRO TIP: It’s a good idea with new plants to leave a circle of soil around the plant that’s lower than the surrounding soil to act as a catch for water and help it stay around the roots and not run off.

6. Lay a soaker hose or a drip-type system.

This is for those of us without sprinkler systems, but it’s a key to healthy plants and low maintenance.

Watering deeply less often produces the deepest roots and then the healthiest plants that are more able to resist drought and heat.

Make sure that the hose is next to all the plants, but it doesn’t need to circle them – only if you have enough hose to spare.

7. Cover the entire area with thick layers of newspaper or overlapping cardboard.

You can go here to read more about our newspaper-and-mulching system to keep weeds down.

Since we weren’t planning on planting anything else in this bed soon, we used cardboard which lasts a bit longer than newspaper.

The benefit of using a layer that composts down in a few years is that the top mulch layer then can act as a fertilizer every time it rains or is watered, enriching the soil.

While you can use a professional landscape cloth (very professional – don’t use the basic types or you will create a bigger maintenance mess for yourself in a few years as the weeds just grow into it) if you want, but I’d encourage it to be at least a number of years from creating the bed so that the soil is getting some good feeding.

PRO TIP: Put the paper underneath the soaker hoses. You could switch 6 and 7 and lay the paper first, of course, but I find that the hose helps hold down the paper, though I do have to keep lifting it up.

8. The last step is to cover the paper with a 2 to 3-inch layer of compost.

Cover the hoses if you can, too, to make it look tidier.

What kind of mulch? Does it have to be compost?

I like using a mulch at our local landscape products company that’s labeled “garden compost.” It’s black (instead of orange like bark dust), and feeds the soil as it breaks down, providing all the nutrition these shrubs will need.

Using this I have never needed to fertilize the flower beds and borders around our house in the 12 years we lived there and they flourished (check out the last garden tour here to see them filled out).

However, if the bed is in a shady, moist area, the compost may grow weeds more readily, so you might want to use wood chips after a year or so. See how the compost does, let it feed your soil, and then move to something else if weeds are more of a problem for you.

Other mulches you can use include fir bark, fine or medium wood chips, pine straw, or whatever you want for the top layer that’s easy to find in your area. Some people in hotter climates even use a rock layer as mulch.

If you do use one of these other mulches, just be prepared to fertilize your shrubs once a year.

Before & After of a New Shrub and Flower Bed

As a reminder – our weedy eyesore area before:

And the finished bed just a few hours later:

And that’s it!

No heavy digging, a few hours of work, and our weedy area was gone forever.

Is that awesome, or what?

Flower bed UPDATE:

Here’s more of the border a few years later to show how they plants thrive with this planting method (I did add a few more plants, a-hem):

What areas are you going to tackle?

This tutorial has been updated – it was originally published in July of 2012.