Width of a flower border word problem

Question

A landscape architect has included a rectangular flower bed measuring 9 ft by 5 ft in her plans for a new building. She wants to use two colors of flowers in the bed, one in the center and the other for a border of the same width on all four sides. If she has enough plants to cover 24 ft2 for the border, how wide can the border be?

Answer 1

Holly, if we have a total of 45 ft², then the center must be 21 ft², right?

 

That means the center is 7 x 3 and the border is 2 inches thick around the outside to make it 9 x 5 total.

 

Hope this helps!