Hmmm. Gardening takes a lot of patience. Instant gratification is not for gardeners, unless you have oodles of $ to have it tailored and prefabricated. But what fun is that?

It is good to plan well from the beginning, but many factors such as soil condition, climate and the change of weather play important roles as well.

I don't think you are too cheap. If you want your garden to look full while waiting for perennials and shrubs to grow, (you have shrubs, don't you? If not add a few for structure and winter interest.) scatter annuals seeds among them, then watch them grow. I am not familiar with your climate, but I use these easy and self sowing annuals to fill in the gaps:

-Larkspur
-Snow-on-the mountain - Euphorbia marginata
-Feverfew
-Rudbeckia hirta
-Cosmos

I also stuff all kinds of bulbs among perennials & shrubs. It took me years before I am satisfied with my garden.

I like to vary shapes, forms and colors. I have also added more evergreens, shrubs and ornamental grass to keep me happy in winter.

Don't forget to have fun while you are in the garden. :-)

Check out the Winter Sowing forum. My mother does nearly all her plants from seed using this method and has for a few years now. You get big, healthy plants and can tell who has already germinated so you aren't left holding your breath waiting for something that has gone to garden heaven. For the most part, her garden explodes. She has no problems with gaps, only problems with not making beds fast enough.

Good luck,
Tiff

P.S.-beware, winter sowing can become an all-consuming addiction. Don't say I didn't warn you ;)

If you are growing from seed it is very important that the plantlings keep growing on instead of getting a 'culture shock' when they move from the seedling environment to the Big Garden World.

If your weather/climate means you have to hold plants for a while before you can put them in the ground then it helps to pot them on so the roots 'never' reach the limits of the pot and start to curl round. When you do get to plant them they'll be growing outward all the time.

Ensure you have more than enough plants for an area to be planted. Gardeners who open their gardens to the public usually have potted up plants for tucking into bare patches later. They might even plunge the plant pot and all into the ground to ensure the garden picture looks great. And a small serving of slow release pellets in the bottom of the planting hole doesn't come amiss either.

Each spring and autumn do be sure to add a good helping of organic material well-composted. It will really help your plants to flourish.

Well, other than annuals you don't say what kind of plants you are growing. While most annuals are relatively carefree once established and until they die in the frost, they force you to restart every year.

I used to do this and had dozens of flats under HID lighting each spring. I no longer do this (although I start plenty from seed each year) because it simply got overwhelming.

I strongly suggest you get some graph paper and roughly sketch out the dimensions of your garden areas on it and use this for planning. This is a great thing to do in the winter.

The first thing that should go into the plan are trees and shrubs. These are the backbone of any garden area. You don't have to have any, but having some means a little work and money upfront for many years of (relatively) carefree enjoyment.

Next are perennials. Perennials are terrific because they come back every year and many can be divided every couple years and you have 'free' plants. Many can also be propagated from stem cuttings so this can give you your winter 'fix'.

Then come the annuals. One strategy for using annuals to avoid large bare spots where something else didn't work out is to keep some in pots. This way the pots can be moved to wherever they are needed.

Garden decorations/statues can also be used. Simple things like an old wheelbarrow turned into a planter add a tremendous amount of interest and personality to the garden.

Relax though, gardening is a process and I don't know any gardeners who ever look at their garden and say "It is done, I will never change anything about this garden because it is perfect."

Enjoy the process.

Four years ago, we moved to a much larger piece of property, and in the first year I felt the frustration which you express. I had gardens on top of rock walls over 130 feet long and 5 feet deep, shade gardens 1/2 as big, and other multiple gardens other than those. The soil was so poor it was doubly frustrating!

Today, I find myself looking for space to put new plants grown from seed into. I don't like to spend an arm and a leg for the gardens, and so I began to compost and create my own mulch to amend the soil. Feed the soil = feeding the plant. After a even a year, the seeds which I sowed directly were coming up much more willingly and stronger than the year before.
Then I began Winter Sowing as per the Winter Sowing Forum here at GW. For the last two years, I've had so many plants when spring has arrived that I've had to give a LOT away!! And it's so inexpensive it's not funny!! You have to check it out. I have hundreds of dollars worth of plants which I paid literally nothing for - both annuals and perennials. Many I cannot find in my local nurseries.
The other thing about winter sowing is that you won't have an empty space you're waiting on in the garden...
I also incorporated some 'bones' in the gardens by propagating stems from schrubs which I liked.
If a plant did well here, I'd look for variations of it, and start filling with that. My mother's unknown Phlox Paniculatas did extremely well, and there are tons of them blooming right now. This year I was giving footings of them to friends.
I also plant closer than recommended - if I need to move it later because it's getting too big, then so be it. For now I need to fil that space!

Just wanted to wish you all the best with your garden YellowBell...I think it's the (constant) process of working on the garden that makes it satisfying...like if it's all complete now you'd probably not find it fun :)

I'm actually in the weeding process....very mundane but needs to be done - not even that, I'm also still *identifying* weeds from plants. When I get the weeds sorted out then I can get to your stage. How many years might that take me though.... %-)

I also enjoy looking at other garden areas and telling myself I should really follow that when I'm ready... :)

I don't grow anything but nasturtiums from seed, myself- but I do an afwul lot of propagating from cuttings, so I know about starting small ;)

but it sounds like you're trying to experiment at the same time you're trying to maintain a 'proper' garden, and the two often don't mix. I have one bed that's for test plants, a border of established perennials and favorites, and then the bed in the front of the house is for 'invasives' that I like, but don't want popping up everywhere...

oddly enough, that's the bed that's consistently un-groomed looking, and people are a little surprised to find more balance in the back yard than what shows on the street ;)

you might want to start with paper and crayons- survey the beds, and then draft out your perennials and drifts of come-again annuals, and attack those gaps with a plan for next year- you can get really elaborate with overlays that show what blooms when, but I like to start with a 'floor plan' that shows me how wide a plant spreads, and then just a month to indicate when it flowers/puts on its show.

yellowbell, I have the same problem only I've just started gardening this year!! I too want to start most of my plants from seed because if I let myself I will spend my whole paycheck on plants!!! Plus it's more fun to watch them grow.

So for now, I mulch the beds really well with pretty mulch and instead of thinking..."It's so bare!" I think, "wow, look at all that room for new plants!!!"

:)

Good luck, may we both have beautiful gardens busting with beautiful plants.

I have a similar problem with lots and lots of empty space. I have some new garden areas (we took out some lawn), and last fall and this spring I planted many of the shrubs and big plants that are eventually supposed to fill the space, and they're coming along, but there's lots of bare dirt, so the garden (when it's weeded) has a sort of prim and proper, low-key look that isn't what I'm after. And since these plants are going to eventually fill the space, I don't want to put a bunch of other full-size perennials in between them, knowing they'll be doomed in the long run.

So this fall I intend to focus almost entirely on ground covers and ground-covering annuals, in the hope that flattish green space will give me a lusher feel than flat mulched space. This theory does seem to work well in one of my shadier areas that's been invaded by violets from one side and lamium (I think) from the neighbors' side. If you sketched a plant-height skyline of the area, it's almost all violet and lamium foliage and a pocket of pachysandra, with just a few taller plants, but it has a good, green, lush feel to it. Very few flowers, but I'm still pleased with it.

So I'm going to move some of the extra violets and lamium to other shady areas, and plant ridiculous quantities of sweet alyssum seed and nasturtium seed and maybe a few other inexpensive fast-growing seeds in sunny and half-sunny areas, and spring for a few flats of woolly thyme and maybe ajuga and maybe sweet woodruff and some moss phlox and pachysandra plants. (And, yep, I'll do the research before it's too late to find out if any of those really shouldn't be planted in the fall. :)) The ground covers will just amble along slowly, but I'm hoping that the alyssum and nasturtiums will do some nice temporary filling in.

In case the nasturtiums don't do the job, next spring and summer I may focus on Big And Goofy Annuals to temporarily fill blank space and to try to get a lush and whacky feel. I'm picturing dahlias, zinnias, sunflowers, pumpkin vines, annual vines, maybe a few tomatoes filling the space the roses and shrubs haven't claimed yet.

Looking at what I've written, I guess my strategy here is to never leave a piece of ground idle - if a plant's going to need it, but not for a year or two or a month or two, insert something that will only live there for that time, or that you can bear to yank out when you want something else there. And also insert something that will live there permanently, but doesn't need the same space, like a ground cover under a rose or shrub.

Burnet

The Winter Sowing forum here rocks, but heed the warning it is addictive. One advantage of w/s is the hardening off happens quite naturally.
I also found planting baby's breath w/s of course fills in until your other annuals come to life.
Cosmos and ornamental grasses also fill in quite quickly, and my other favourite hostas will take a year or two to really make an impact but they are so easy to care for.

I have been checking out the winter sowing forum, and I'm really excited about trying it this year. Thanks to Tiffy for telling me to consider it. However, I'm kind of skeptical about it, because it seems like most of the people who do it are in cooler climates. I'm so afraid that I won't vent my container enough, and my seedlings will die from too much heat. Hopefully it will work out for me!

YellowBell,
I see you are in my neck of the woods.
Here's another option:
Cutting and starts from other gardeners.
Tell us more about what you are trying to grow from seed. Many wildflowers, for example, just don't transplant well.
Also, start thinking about the garden in other seasons. For example, I try to space evergreens, such as Salvia Greggi, rosemary and lavendar, to help the winter "blank space" priblem.
Give us some more info and we can help more.

Yellowbell,

I can see your concern about the heat getting to your seedlings in terms of winter sowing.

A lot of times I have a lot of tiny seedlingss by the time the warm weather arrives. In my first year winter sowing, I discovered that if the temperature outside is 15C (60F) and the sun is shining on them, then the inside of the container is going over the 30C (85F) mark. Especially if they are still covered. In this case I just start cutting more openings in the containers to vent them.

If the seeds haven't germinated yet, I use a blue tarp to cover them and cool things off.

A lot of it is experimental. Many winter sowers are actually from more temperate climates than mine, and I've had to make some adjustments too. We get temperatures of -27C with windchills of -40C at times and that definitely needs adjustments!! LOL!!

Gardenspice also has a great suggestion of cuttings and starts from other gardeners. And if there are any, join a gardening club in your area. Soon you'll find your gardens full as there are always gardeners out there who have to divide things and don't know where to put them - your garden as an option would be fantastic!

Thanks for all the info. The perennials that I use so far are rosemary, lantanas, firebush, yaupon hollies, thyme, oregano, butterfly weed, yellow bells, and plumbago, salvia.

The annuals and perennials I want to grow (preferrably from seed) are alyssum, marigolds, snapdragons, bluebonnets, poppies, purple coneflowers, zinnias, mexcian sunflower, moss rose, love lies bleeding, petunia. There might be more, but those are the main ones. I have luck planting zinnias and marigold from seed, but there are always big gaps between them. I hope that wintersowing would work, especially if like Tiffy says, it's 20 degrees warmer in the container. I've had luck rooting lantana cuttings, but I haven't tried much else.

Yellowbell

There is hope and your garden will be beautiful. Here are some of the basic things I do to keep mine lush and full:

a) I always sow five seeds to a pot and then transplant all five seedlings to a bigger pot. I finally plant out all five together spaced in a pyramid in the bed. This way I get a huge clump of the plant.

b) Sow extra seeds in another pot. Should you have any bare patches in summer, just place these extra pots in them, and voila the bed will look full.

c) Try and sow seeds of a similar colour in a pot. That way when you plant them out in the bed, you'll get a huge clump of just one colour.

d) You can then mix and match your plants by colours for a nicer effect.

e) I plant very, very densely and I can assure you that if you do this, even in the very first season your bed will look full and lush and appear to be established.

f) The perennials I have are agapanthus, hebes, hostas, geraniums, osterspermums, crocosmias, azaleas, rhododendrons, alchemilla mollis, bears breaches, knautia macedonica, lamiums, Jacob's Ladder, Poppies, Hollyhocks, Gladioli, Aquilegias, Golden Rod, Hypericum, Houttuynia cordata, Astrantia, Zantedeschia, Weigela, Holly, Mahonia, Siddalcea, Kafir Lillies, Bridal Wreath, Penstemons, Phygelius, Clematis, Pittospermum, Verbena Bonariensis, Acer, Crab Apple, Ornamental Cherry, Astilbes, Ferns, Honeysuckle, Box and several different grasses and ornamental pines. If you could start out with even a few of these, they will give your flower beds a backbone and a frame within which to add your favourite annuals.

g) My favourite annuals are Lavatera, Lantana, Cosmos, Nicandra, Sweet Williams, Dianthus, Dahlias, Lillies, Feverfew, more Poppies, Morning Glories, Angel's Wings, Lobelia and Salvias.

Just follow a few basic rules as given to you by the others and you cannot go wrong.

Most important of all, have fun creating your garden and enjoy it!

Iona

Yellowbells
Iona's suggestion of planting in a pot and then moving the survivors into the bed is a good one, I've used this technique and it is easier and faster than single pots for each plant. This works well for Zinnias and I would guess allysum and Snap Dragons. (Remember in zone 8 Snap Dragons are a cool weather flower)
TBS, Poppies (and Blue bonnets) do not like to be transplanted that much, so you need to get those started in the bed. For the poppies, Mix the seed with sand, so you can see where you are distributing and just plan on using alot more seeds than you will have plants.
Ok, the Poppies and bluebonnets will be gone by about June in Zone 8, so plan for that. Sunflowers do not transplant well at all unless you transplant them very young(long tap root), but they do well in the heat of the summer and grow quickly, so they are a good bet for direct sowing in the Poppy/Bluebonnet area as those flowers start to fade.

You can sow Yellowbell seed. That's one I'd try to germinate in individual pots. I'd do the same with coneflowers, but transplant the coneflowers by the time a 4 inch pot is needed.
Some plants you may want to look into for easy rooting are Shrimp Plant, Coleus and Sweet Potato Vine.
Easy plants to get from Division include Oregano (Just dig up a clump) and you may want to consider Lamb's ears. I have both of these in my front beds and they have filled in nicely.
I hope this helps. BTW, Someday, when you are running out of space for new plants, you will wonder where all your "garden Holes" went.
Best of luck!!!