How landscape flowers achieve better results on golf courses
Landscape flowers are recognized and promoted for their rich visual effects, and they truly shine on golf courses, especially spectacular when applied over large areas. However, their relatively short viewing period always leaves people feeling that something is missing. How to extend the viewing period of landscape flowers on golf courses and display the best ornamental effect is worth attention.
Clever combination of multiple varieties. 1. Reasonable pairing to extend the viewing period. The characteristics of each variety determine great differences in the speed of sprouting and growth, the order of first flowering, and the length of the flowering period. By making use of these characteristics and pairing them reasonably, a longer viewing period can be achieved.
Among varieties sown at the same time, the shortest can bloom in just over 40 days, such as buckwheat, garden balsam, and sweet alyssum; the longer ones generally reach full bloom 60-80 days after sowing, such as most varieties like zinnia, tickseed, and candytuft; the longest require more than 3 months, such as China aster and sulfur cosmos. By combining these three types of varieties, the flowering time can be extended from 40 days to around 100 days after sowing.
Perennial herbaceous varieties occupy an important position among landscape flowers. Their outstanding characteristic is that they can continuously provide stable ornamental effects for many years, their flowering period is also relatively long, and many can bloom multiple times. Another characteristic is that germination and early growth are relatively slow, and quite a few varieties cannot bloom in the year of sowing, some even wait until the third year to bloom, and some varieties bloom partially in the same year. Therefore, when selecting products, we should fully consider these characteristics to pair them with annual and biennial varieties.
For example, in a combination, perennial varieties can serve as stable skeleton varieties, while annual and biennial varieties are used to enrich their expression. In this way, the ornamental effect of annual and biennial varieties can be quickly presented in the early stage, gradually transitioning to the stable performance of perennial varieties.
2. Choose varieties with a longer green period. When planting landscape flowers, the ground is easily exposed in the early growth stage. This problem can be solved by planting some fast-germinating varieties to quickly cover the ground. After flowering, they tend to look unsightly. This can be addressed by selecting an appropriate proportion of varieties with a longer green period to pair with them, such as coreopsis, perennial gaillardia, perennial blue flax, and sulfur cosmos, which still provide a green groundcover effect after the flowering period.
3. Combined use with turf and groundcover plants. The mixed use of landscape flowers with turf and some groundcover plants with a longer green period has been widely promoted. Turf and groundcover plants can not only make up for the shortcoming of the relatively short viewing period of landscape flowers, but also play a setting-off role.
Proper manual pruning
After landscape flowers finish blooming, the withered flowers and dry branches and leaves will affect the ornamental effect. Proper removal of spent flowers and pruning of dead branches and leaves is the most direct and effective way. Given the different flowering periods of landscape flowers, removal should be done in batches rather than a one-time pruning. Of course, if the planting area is large, this method requires a great deal of work. After the flowering period is completely over, a comprehensive pruning can be carried out to achieve a neater effect.
For many perennial flower varieties and some annual and biennial varieties, such as perennial gaillardia, coreopsis, black-eyed Susan, and ragged robin, there will be more than two flowering periods in a year. If they are allowed to grow freely, the flowering effect will be greatly reduced, with smaller flowers, residual dead branches and leaves, and abrupt height. Combined with proper pruning, we can obtain good landscape effects during multiple flowering periods.
Adjusting the planting period. 1. Autumn sowing. Regarding the sowing time of landscape flowers, we mostly focus on spring sowing and often overlook autumn sowing. For autumn sowing, the first thing is to choose good varieties. Both biennial and perennial varieties can be sown. In Beijing, it is done in mid-to-late August, especially for biennial varieties. After autumn sowing, a good flowering effect can be obtained in early spring of the following year, greatly advancing the viewing period. The most typical example is the early spring-blooming February orchid, and there are many similar varieties. As for perennial varieties, autumn sowing is equivalent to gaining a growth season ahead of time, laying a good foundation for flowering at the normal time the following year.
2. Sowing in batches. Starting from spring, sow in batches within the same area, with intervals of one week, one month, or even longer, so that a continuous flowering effect can be obtained. In actual operation, the sowing density, the method of the second sowing, and the differences among varieties all need careful consideration.