How do you create flower garden ideas? Let me count the ways.

Take garden tours. There is no substitute for actually seeing gardens in the flesh. I routinely take one or two tours every spring and summer just to see what I dont like.

Read magazines. These dead-tree monthlies are full of pictures of great gardens. How else do you think they market their products ? :-) I go to a bookstore and browse the racks. No, I dont subscribe to any because (quite frankly) I get most of my raw information from the Net. But I do get some interesting design ideas from magazines.

Check out books. If you flip through pages of garden design books, (while youre in the bookstore) youre going to see tons of examples of great gardens. In fact, many of these gardens are unreal they are so perfect but youll get great ideas.

Let me quickly tell you that pictures in magazines and books are often staged. I mean that the magazines hire professional photographers and crews to improve the look of the garden. Extra flowers are brought in and tucked in to make the garden appear fuller. A bit of garden whimsy is added here a potted plant is tucked there and suddenly.. what was a good garden becomes just a little more special in the eyes of the camera. For the next shot, flowers are moved, statuary adjusted and once again, the look of the garden changes. And you get a great looking garden magazine picture.

The internet is a tough place to find pictures of great looking gardens. I tend to write about individual plants (the how-to of plants) but am moving towards design items (I wrote a paper book on Perennial Garden Design) and incorporating more real pictures in my website. One of the practical problems of course is that most of our garden photography is on slides and it takes a lot of work to transfer these to digital images. But this is about getting you good flower garden ideas not about the problems of garden writers.

Sign up for my newsletter. Youll find I routinely talk about design or about parts of design in abstract terms. I cant solve your design problems but I do try to give ideas. Also sign up for my blog at http://doug-greens-gardening.blogspot.com/, youll find I talk more about garden design over there as I run into elements of light and space in my own gardens.