Stunning summer flowers call for big variety

It is hard to believe anything could be more beautiful than the spring flowers in local gardens.

Cascades of daffodils, tulips, pansies and other striking flowers have painted a stunning panorama of color.

Sadly, it all comes to an end. The spring beauty is fleeting, and the heat will soon take its toll. Petals on the tulips fall, daffodils fade and pansies lose their luster.

Fortunately, the summer blooming annuals and perennials are standing in the wings.

Drive down the street and you can see flowers in almost any garden. What sets apart the stunning from the ordinary is planning. Ordinary gardens have flowers, the best put on a show.

Exciting gardens are dynamic and create beauty as they change each week. Think of the pistons on a gasoline engine. If all of the pistons are up or all of them are down at the same time, the engine will not run.

Likewise, beautiful gardens have flowers that come up and go down in sequence at various stages in the season.

If all your garden flowers are the same height, the same color, the same texture and planted in predictable patterns, the flower beds are boring.

As beautiful as the individual blossoms might be, they always are more attractive if planted with other blossoms in a pleasing design.

The book "Temple Square Gardening" describes four basic elements of designing flower beds by relating them to parts of your body. The four elements are:

skeletal flowers,

tendon flowers,

flesh flowers,

and sparkle flowers.

Start first by selecting a pleasing skyline — or skeleton — for the garden. If all the flowers are the same height, the flower bed won't be very exciting.

Select tall flowers to start. If tall flowers won't fit in your design, you can select dominant flowers that have a large spread, those with large or coarse-textured leaves or those with bright colors. These dominant flowers should comprise 10 percent to 20 percent of the flowers in your beds.

Look for flowers such as amaranth (or Joseph's coat), snapdragon, canna, cleome (or spider flower), cosmos, exhibition dahlias, snow-on-the-mountain, sunflower, nicotiana (or flowering tobacco) and tall forms ofpPenstemon or beards-tongue, salvia, marigold and zinnia.