Help! what do i do with my flower beds?

[Melissa]

I am not a gardener by any means, but I really want nice flower beds. I have 2 huge ones in front of my house that I have tried putting things in but everything dies.. ok maybe I forget to water a few days in a row, but I am feeling very dedicated this year and don't know what to put in. The flower bed in the picture is in FULL sun and the soil dries out very quickly in the middle of the summer. I don't know if you can tell from the picture but we just transplanted some rose bushes, which we thought were dead, but are coming back slowly. Off to the left I have 4 lavender plants that are small but doing well and on the side of the porch there, I am probably going to do oriental poppies, shasta daisies and bachelor buttons and use the lavender as the divider between them and the roses. I would love to put some other perennials in around the roses but have no idea what. I have researched endlessly on the internet for types of flowers but still just don't know what to put in there. For this spring I got a box of roll out flowers and hope those will work with the endless weeds and the random phlox, tulips and grape hyacinth.. but this fall, I might just cover the whole thing up with black plastic and just leave space for the roses and group the tulips in between the roses and smother everything out and start fresh! So after much rambling, please help me design something nice that is really low maintenance and will come back every year and be pretty in zone 5b! Thank you soooo much!

 

[DrCase]

with your new found dedication. You will be surprised how well things will grow for you with water and attention

 

[Djbrat]

I really need to give my front yard some much needed attention. I really don't know where to start with creating my flower bed. I don't have the necessary tools to get started, so that is really keeping me from starting. It probably doesn't help that I'm a huge procrastinator!