If you love beautiful flowers in the spring and summer, autumn is the time to prepare those flower beds for the upcoming winter. There are several things that you can do to help protect the plants through the cold winter months and keep the soil healthy. The more care you show your flower beds in the fall means less work for you in the spring.

Steps for preparing your flower beds for winter:

• Remove any weeds from the beds along with dead flowers and any other debris they may have collected.
• Trim up and shape the plants to make them fuller and thicker when they begin growing again in the spring.
• Continue to water the soil until the weather becomes cold enough to make it freeze. It’s recommended that you provide the soil with a deep soaking about an inch deep at least once a week.
• Put down a bedding mat and then apply mulch about two inches thick to help insulate the soil and prevent weeds from taking over.
• Young plants are tender and fragile so they can be damaged very easily. Therefore, it’s recommended that you wrap the trunk of these plants to protect them from the cold
• Autumn is an excellent time to apply fertilizer to the soil to replenish the nutrients and keep it healthy.

The steps above will help you prepare your flower beds for the winter so you can enjoy beautiful healthy flowers in the spring. It may take a little time and effort to prepare the plants and soil for the upcoming winter but it’s time well spent. The more effort you put into keeping them protected and healthy now, will reduce the amount of work that you’ll need to do come spring because they’ll already have a head start.

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Planting your plants in the wrong areas – Even when you know for sure the new plant will grow in your garden zone, you may have problems with it if you plant it in the wrong area of your yard. In fact, one of the reasons some of your plants may get too much water while others are getting too little, is because you planted them into the same container or flower bed even though they had different watering requirements.

When you buy new plants, be sure to pay attention to it’s particular requirements. If it needs a lot of sun, don’t choose a shady spot to plant it and vice versa. Sometimes this exercise is more of a trial and error process too though. You may plant something in an area that you feel fits the description of "partial shade", only to find that there’s too much sun for it.

There are many other common mistakes gardeners can make without knowing it too. Not keeping the weeds under control for instance. Most gardeners are unaware that the weeds can sap water and nutrients from the soil, and this effectively starves your plants and flowers. Some weeds can even grow quite tall and steal sunlight from your plants too. So keeping these under control goes a long way towards making sure your garden is able to thrive.

Not deadheading or pruning - Some gardeners are afraid to do anything which they feel may hurt their plants and flowers. So when they see a dead flower or dead branch, they hesitate to snip it off because they worry they’ll hurt the plant somehow, and make it start dying. The truth of the matter is though, that getting rid of dead flowers and branches actually makes your plants and flowers healthier.

In fact, getting rid of live and healthy plants and branches can help make your plants healthier too. And this is why you’re advised to deadhead and prune your plants regularly.

Deadheading is the act of removing dead or dying flowers from your plants. In most cases, new flower buds are trying to develop beneath the old ones. So when you remove the old ones, you’re making it easier for the new flower buds to appear. This causes your plants to bloom much more often and in much more volume.

Pruning your plants is the act of trimming off dead or dying areas – even when it means cutting off whole branches of the plant. Sometimes pruning is also done to help the plant grow better too. So branches are cut even when they’re still alive and healthy.

Pruning off healthy branches of a plant or bush can often help it to grow fuller. If the plant or bush is growing almost straight up, and looks a bit thin, then you can selectively prune areas of it that will force it to start branching outwards, and creating a more filled out look.