Synopsis
Book by Phillips Ellen Burrell C Colston
Extrait
1
DESIGNING WITH PERENNIALS
Two things tend to intimidate gardeners when they're thinking about putting in a perennial garden: the number of perennials to choose from, and the mystique that surrounds garden design. You may want to throw up your hands and say, "I'm not an expert! What do I know about designing gardens?" In this chapter, we'll tell you how to decide which perennials will meet your needs, and we'll take the mystery out of garden design. By breaking it down into simple steps that are easy to follow and fun to think about, we'll have you doing garden design in no time--and loving the way your new garden looks!
WAYS TO APPROACH DESIGN
Think of garden design as a series of plant combinations. When you're combining plants, there are two sets of considerations you need to think about. The first set relates to the appearance of the plants: when they bloom, what color they are (flower color and foliage color), how big they get, and what they look like--the form and texture of their foliage and flowers. The second set relates to the habits of the plants: what conditions they prefer (sun or shade, a wet or well-drained site, highly fertile or average soil), how fast they grow, how long they live, and how much ongoing maintenance they require to keep them performing their best.
For a garden design to look good, you have to use plants that grow well together and that will grow well on your site. Stunted, dying, or unkempt plants will ruin a design, no matter how gorgeous it looked on paper. If you have a site in full sun with good drainage, choose classic border perennials like peonies, irises, daylilies, and delphiniums. If you want to put a perennial garden under shade trees, choose woodland wildflowers and shadetolerant plants like hostas. Don't try to force peonies to thrive in deep shade or woodland phlox to flourish in full sun--they won't, and your garden's appearance will suffer as much as the plants you're trying to grow.
This book makes it easy to find out which growing conditions perennials prefer. Each plant entry in the encyclopedia section, beginning on page 265, includes a "How to Grow" section that provides concise information on sun and shade, moisture and fertility, and other preferred conditions.
When you put together lists of plants you'd like to use, check the encyclopedia entries to make sure they'll grow well together. The entries also discuss how fast the plants grow, if they're especially long-or short- lived, and how much maintenance (like staking, division, and deadheading) they need.
What slows down most gardeners is the first set of considerations--when the plants bloom, what color they are, how big they get, and what they look like. In this chapter, we'll deal with each of these in detail so you can choose and combine plants with confidence. If you'd like to use tried-and- true combinations instead of making your own, you'll find combinations galore in Chapter 3, "Perennial Combinations."
DESIGNING BY BLOOM SEASON
One of your first considerations should be bloom season. When do you want your flowers to bloom? If you're home from the last spring frost through the first fall frost, you'll probably want your garden to provide enjoyment during the entire growing season. But there are reasons you might want to focus your garden's show on one or two seasons.
If you love one season best, you could design your garden so the flowers will peak during that season. A lush display in spring, followed by more modest color through summer and fall, might be exactly right for the person for whom "garden" and "spring" are nearly the same word.
If you're at home in spring and fall but gone for part of the summer, you'll want to design a garden that blooms when you're there and requires minimal maintenance when you're not. Or if you live in a climate where summers are searing (or extremely humid), you might not want to be out in the garden until temperatures drop again in fall. On the other hand, a northern or West Coast garden can really come into its glory in summer, and you might want to focus your bloom peak so it falls during the hotter months.
Another reason to focus your attention on one or two seasons is if your garden is small. When you don't have a lot of space, a lush display in one season may look better than one or two plants in bloom at any given time. Remember that there are tricks you can use to extend bloom or color into other seasons, like planting spring-blooming bulbs with later-blooming perennials or adding some ornamental grasses for fall and winter color.
Signs of spring. A drift of 'Frans Purple' creeping phlox (Phlox stolonifera 'Frans Purple') sets off the variegated hosta foliage and draws the eye to this simple combination.
Spring Flowers
Spring is the most welcome season to many gardeners because the garden returns to life after its winter rest. We're eager to see any color--even green looks fresh and new--and the first blooms take on the excitement of an event. Now is the time for the little bulbs--snowdrops, species irises, glory-ofthe-snow, crocuses--and the hellebores, the Christmas and Lenten roses (Helleborus niger and H. x hybridus), with their beautiful deep-green fingered foliage.
After the first flush of color from the bulbs, spring-blooming perennials take over. Some front-of-the-border perennials that bloom as brightly as bulbs are perennial candytuft (Iberis sempervirens), rock cresses (Arabis), basket-of-gold (Aurinia saxatilis), and especially moss phlox (Phlox subulata), with its matlike form and an almost electric range of white, purple, sulfur yellow, pink, blue, and lavender. These plants like full sun and good drainage, making them excellent candidates for growing in rock gardens.
Spring beauty. The jewellike colors of bleeding hearts, primroses, and Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica) light a shady path.
As the larger bulbs--tulips, daffodils, fritillarias, and bulbous irises-- signal the end of late frosts and the start of the vegetable growing season, midspring perennials come into their own. Old-fashioned bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis) bears sprays of pink-and-white or allwhite heart-shaped flowers over equally graceful blue-green foliage. Columbines (Aquilegia) produce ferny foliage and wiry stems that hold trembling clusters of spurred flowers in every color. Alumroots (Heuchera) send up airy sprays of tiny pink, white, green, or red flowers; some, like 'Palace Purple' small-flowered alumroot (H. micrantha var. diversifolia 'Palace Purple'), are grown for their showy foliage alone.
Grecian windflower (Anemoneblanda) and poppy anemone (A. coronaria) start the anemone season with bursts of color in white, pink, blue, violet, and scarlet; other species will bloom in both summer and fall. And ornamental onions (Allium) bear their cheerful globes or flat heads of star-shaped white, pink, lavender, rose, purple, or yellow flowers on sturdy stems over strapshaped or tubular green foliage.
As spring moves toward summer, many of our most-loved perennials come into their own. Bearded, Siberian, and Japanese irises bloom in every color of the rainbow except true red. Their foliage adds structural interest to the garden even when they're not blooming, and Siberian iris (Irissibirica) also has handsome seedpods. Single, semidouble, and double peonies in white, red, pink, and coral bloom on elegant shrubby plants; their foliage often turns an attractive copper or burgundy in fall.
Spring in bloom. Native wildflowers and garden classics--trilliums, hellebores, and purple-flowered corydalis (Corydalis edulis)--mix with seemingly casual abandon in this beautiful combination.
False indigoes (Baptisia) bear sprays of blue, cream, or white pealike flowers and beautiful blue-green foliage, and they also have attractive blue-black seedpods. Late spring is also the beginning of astilbe season. Astilbes (Astilbe xarendsii) are wonderful perennials for partially shaded sites with moist soil; their ferny foliage and red, pink, white, peach, or cream plumes mix well with hostas and true ferns.
The delightful low-growing pinks (Dianthus) produce flat single or double, often fragrant flowers over mats of blue-green or gray-green foliage. Pinks are perfect for the front of the border in a well-drained, sunny site; they're also great for rock gardens. Many have petals with fringed edges as though they had been cut with pinking shears; this gives them their common name, though in fact many are also pink in color (others are white, red, coral, or maroon). And don't forget oriental poppies, with huge papery blooms in shades of red, scarlet, orange, peach, pink, and white. Plant poppies where other plants can fill in when their foliage dies back in summer. Choose any or all of these classic perennials to carry your garden show into early summer.
Summer Splendor
To make sure your garden can take the heat and not look tired after the excitement of spring, include these reliable perennials for nonstop color all summer long.
Daylilies (Hemerocallis) bloom in every color except white and blue. Choose a selection of daylilies to bloom from June through August, or plant reblooming cultivars like 'Happy Returns' and 'Stella de Oro' for bloom from June through October.
Garden phlox (Phlox paniculata) is a mainstay of the summer border, blooming in white, orange, pink, lavender, red, and violet, often with a contrasting eye. Yarrows (Achillea) are also superb summer perennials, with ferny foliage and showy, flat-topped blooms in white, cream, buff, yellow, pink, salmon, and cherry red.
Coneflowers (Rudbeckia and Echinacea) are showy, reliable summer-blooming perennials, bearing big daisy flowers in shades of orange, yellow, mauve, and white. If you want more summer daisies, try sturdy yellow-flowered lance-leaf coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata), feathery yellow Coreopsis verticillata 'Moonbeam', or pink-flowered Coreopsis rosea. Add more white to your daisy palette with Shasta daisies (Leucanthemum) and feverfews (Tanacetum).
For a cooler look, choose common lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), catmints (Nepeta), and Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia). The bushy forms, blue to lavender colors, and spiky flower-stalks of this summer- blooming trio contrast beautifully with daisies. The large, showy Frikart's aster (Aster xfrikartii) continues the lavender-blue theme with its prolific flowering and long bloom period.
Moving toward summer. The delicate, foamy blooms of tiarella complement the bolder forms of 'Yellow Present' tulips, 'Astrosanguineum' ornamental rhubarb (Rheum palmatum 'Astrosanguineum'), great Solomon's seal (Polygonatum biflorum var. commutatum), along with the foliage of black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) and columbine meadow rue (Thalictrum aquilegifolium) in this late-spring combination.
The bold shapes of summer. The globes of flowering alliums play off the spires of foxgloves in this delightful early summer border. The gardeners have used gray foliage (such as artemisias and lamb's ears) and a hot pink color scheme to tie the border together. A rhododendron echoes the bold pink of the perennials.
Give your summer garden some height with the majestic spires of delphiniums and foxgloves (Digitalis). Delphiniums bear blue, white, lavender, and violet flowers, while foxgloves are pink, mauve, yellow, cream, and white. And don't forget the tall, lovable hollyhocks (Alcearosea), synonymous for many gardeners with childhood summers. You can choose single or double- flowering cultivars in every color but blue and green.
Closer to the ground, butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) and crocosmia (Crocosmia xcrocosmiiflora) make a fiery summer show in shades of red, scarlet, orange, and yellow. Two plants that are handsome enough to be grown for their foliage alone--hostas (Hosta) and geraniums (Geranium)--are also summer bloomers. The spires of hostas bear lilac or white bell-shaped flowers, some of which are fragrant, while the geraniums produce numerous single flowers in sometimes startling shades of pink, violet, blueviolet, maroon, and magenta.
Many of the sages (Salvia) also bloom in summer, with showy spikes of blue, white, red, lavender, and violet. And don't neglect the beautiful bellflowers (Campanula), verbenas (Verbena), speedwells (Veronica), and balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus).
There are dozens of others that make summer a glorious season in your perennial garden. Summer bulbs like gladioli (Gladiolus), cannas (Canna xgeneralis), and dahlias (Dahliapinnata hybrids) are garden staples. The problem isn't finding something that will bloom in summer, but choosing from the wealth of summer-blooming perennials that are available.
The colors of summer. The cool blues of 'May Night' salvia and Serbian bellflower (Campanula poscharskyana) balance the orange-and-yellow cones of red-hot poker and the yellow of 'Moonshine' yarrow in this cheerful garden. The low-growing campanulas pool onto the stone edging at the front of the border and set off the upright forms of the salvia and red-hot poker.
An Autumn Blaze
Fall is one of the great highlights of the gardening season. For many gardeners, it is the high point of the year: The air feels crisp and bracing after summer's heat and humidity, and the sky is such a clear blue it looks azure. Other colors seem more intense, too--the beige of grasses and deepgreen of evergreens set off the brilliant reds, scarlets, oranges, and yellows of deciduous trees and shrubs. In the perennial garden, you can echo these colors. Mix in lilac, violet, and blue to cool the blaze.
Summer contrasts. The dark foliage and steel blue flowers of willow blue star (Amsonia tabernaemontana) are a perfect foil for the riot of orange flowers of 'Lady Stratheden' avens (Geum 'Lady Stratheden') and the yellow- variegated foliage of sedum (Sedum alboroseum var. mediovariegatum) in this border.
The autumn show really begins in late summer, when the green buds of sedums like 'Autumn Joy' (Sedum 'Autumn Joy') and 'Vera Jameson' (S. 'Vera Jameson') open to reveal cotton candypink flowers. Boltonias (Boltonia asteroides) are covered with hundreds of tiny white or pink daisies. Garden mums (Chrysanthemum xmorifolium) begin their long bloom season, presenting a wealth of single, semidouble, and double daisylike flowers in every color but blue and green. Joe-Pye weeds (Eupatorium spp.) bear large, airy clusters of red-violet flowers on bold shrubby plants that can reach 7 feet tall. And many species of aster join Frikart's aster (Aster xfrikartii) in a collage of lilac, violet, pink, white, and cherry red.
As temperatures drop, fall-blooming anemones produce bright but delicatelooking white, pink, rose, or mauve flowers on tall, wiry stems. Choose Japanese anemones (Anemone xhybrida and A. tomentosa) for autumn bloom; their foliage is unusually handsome, holding its own in the garden in spring and summer. (This is also true of chrysanthemum foliage--mums make beautiful green cushions, competing with peonies for the "Best Perennial Foliage Award.")
Fall bloom continues with the goldenrods (Solidago), which add bright yellow flames to the garden. Their height and upright blooms contrast nicely with the daisy flowers and mounded forms of mums and asters. There are also low-growing cultivars for the front of the border: Calamint (Calamintha nepeta) covers itself with tiny bluish white flowers and has minty foliage as a bonus.
Don't overlook the pleasure of foliage in the autumn garden. As the season progresses, many peony cultivars turn bronze or wine-red; the foliage of evening primroses (Oenothera) also turns brilliant colors...
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