ᐅ Topsoil or planting soil: which is better for a new garden?

haydee schrieb:

You wanted to divide your garden into different sections, right?

I’m not sure anymore. In the meantime, we have decided that, at my husband’s request, we want to create a swimming pond. This requires a separate planting trench. Since we plan to have a well dug around August and also want a small stream flowing into the swimming pond, I’m still uncertain about how many sections there will be and what they will look like. The only thing that’s clear so far is that we won’t have a vegetable garden area or a compost garden section. We are not aiming for efficiency and will just plant some edible plants among the other plants.

Tolentino schrieb:

I find large clusters of one color rather artificial; another color (any color) can help break that up and make it look more natural.

The other color is green.

Pinkiponk schrieb:

I use "Flora Incognita" from the Technical University of Ilmenau

Thank you very much. I actually struggle because I’m not really a plant person yet and don’t recognize most things in my garden 😉

I would recommend drawing your plot and house on a sheet of paper (with a pen) and then roughly to scale mark the different areas and zones (with a pencil, so you can easily change it). It doesn’t have to be super precise; graph paper with 0.5cm = 0.5m (0.2 inch = 1.6 feet) is perfectly fine. It’s enough to label the areas conceptually, e.g. flower meadow, shade bed, etc., or in your case yellow bed, pink bed… 😉 Once this has settled a bit, go out to the garden and mark with spray paint where everything should go. This helps to plan the garden in a more structured way, especially if you have many ideas but can only implement part of them.

Dear Pinki, I see yellow is your favorite color 🙂
There are many wonderful plants in that range, and you already have some native ones included.

I would mostly work with native plants, but first, as Wilder Süden says, get to know your site. By the way, wild carrot is a very important insect plant (e.g., the food plant for swallowtail butterfly caterpillars) and grows well in average to nutrient-rich garden soil.

I would recommend naturaDB to you. There, you can filter by your soil conditions, flower colors, etc., and it will suggest plants that should grow well for you. If you also check the native option, local wildlife will benefit even more.

Which region are you in? Then I could suggest some regional seed sources if you’re patient.

Note, for perennials and annuals—native plants are rarely available in garden centers (unless they specialize) or hardware stores. If you tell me roughly where you live (at worst the state; I believe it’s Saxony or Saxony-Anhalt, but I’m not sure), I can recommend good nurseries. Otherwise, I order quite a bit online as well.

Holzhäuschen schrieb:

Dear Pinki, I see yellow is your favorite color 🙂
There are many great plants in that range, and you already have some native ones included.

I would mostly work with native plants, but first, as Wilder Süden says, get to know your location. By the way, wild carrot is a very important insect plant (for example, it serves as a food plant for the caterpillars of the swallowtail butterfly) and grows in normal to nutrient-rich garden soil.

I would highly recommend naturaDB. You can filter there by your soil conditions, flower colors, etc., and it will suggest plants that should grow well for you. If you also check the “native” box, local wildlife will benefit a lot.

Which region are you in? Then I could suggest regional seeds if you’re patient.

Note, for perennials and annuals—native plants are rarely found in garden centers (unless they specialize in them) or hardware stores. If you roughly tell me where you live (at least the state; I think Saxony or Saxony-Anhalt, but I’m not sure), I can gladly recommend good nurseries. Otherwise, I also order quite a bit online.

I live in the Leipzig district, postal code 0457x. 🙂

I will proceed step by step because I am already completely happy with the wild carrots. It doesn’t bother me at all that there’s no carrot growing at the bottom. I’m grateful for suggestions, and native plants are absolutely my priority. Now I feel like browsing Natura DB again right away.

Thank you, so you are in the regional area (VWW) UG 5 – Central German Lowlands and Uplands. At Saaten Zeller, you could, for example, sow the basic seed mix (which I would recommend). Instructions are included. However, this only makes sense in autumn or spring; otherwise, you will need to water a lot.

In Leipzig, there is also NaturGartenSamen on Etsy, which offers many native seeds. I haven't quickly found any perennial plant nurseries nearby.

Strickler, Gaissmayer, and StaudenSpatz offer great perennials; I have already ordered from them and was very satisfied.

The carrots also look great. I have a lot and hope that the eggs I found are from the swallowtail butterfly 🙂.

Holzhäuschen schrieb:

... Wild carrot is, by the way, a very important insect plant (e.g., the food plant for the swallowtail butterfly caterpillars) and grows in normal to nutrient-rich garden soil...

Do you know of a plant that has the same characteristics/benefits as wild carrot but with yellow flowers? I also read in my app that wild carrot shouldn’t be mowed because it will still look good in winter. I’m curious to see.