Rows and rows of glorious flowerbeds greet you. Dew-drenched fragrances soothe a tired soul and waft you away to paradise. Flower gardens thrill people the world over, providing welcome respite from humdrum routines and a special radiance to weather-beaten concrete and steel.

Everybody loves to be surrounded by flowers. Building your own special flower garden can be a terrific challenge. You may have only a tiny patch of dream space or acres of open countryside. Small, medium or king-sized, garden designs must be carefully plotted and labored over for the best results.

Experienced landscape designers can innovatively brainstorm with you for your large garden. Professional guidance in arbor-placements, pathways, flowerbeds, hedges and trees can save you time, money and planting nightmares. The job can be designed into manageable parts so that you can work on it in stages, according to budget, priority and seasons. Designers can even recommend the planting schedule, good suppliers for the seeds and manpower for hire.

Small and medium-sized gardens permit an entrepreneurial approach, provided a mental blueprint has been laid. Your style of home, decides your garden style. Traditional mansions can be formally laid out with straight flowerbeds and lines of trees. Country homes permit more casual curves of blooms and tumbling lush greenery. Modern structures may be more carefully lined in Asian or tropical style, depending on weather and sunshine available.

Sun and shade definitely play decisive parts in your flower garden. Broadly speaking, flower seasons are early, mid and late season. Balance your colors by season of bloom. For perpetual season colors, plant in groups so that one fading bunch greets another just in bloom. Select perennials with attractive leaves so plants still look good after the bloom season. Mix the magic cycles of flowering trees, shrubs and flower beds with great-looking fall trees leading to spring blooms followed by a riot of mid-summer madness.

In the scheme of garden things, don't forget your cat or dog. Bare soil can lead to pet deliriums, so pack shrubs tight, build attractive picket fences and stone pathways, install a dog-digging pit, cat-scratching post and outside litter box. Tall ornamental grass on flowerbed edges doesn't damage so easily and keep frisky pets out. New saplings enclosed with chicken wire save you many futile guarding exercises.

Many enthusiasts are replacing formal gardens with wild flowers or prairie gardens, which are great support systems for the birds and the crawlies. Flower gardens can go white, pastel, hot or contrast. Let each to his. Let the joy of blooms reach out and bless the Giver and the given alike.