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A Perennial Garden for the New Year - Page 2

© Georgene A. Bramlage

Now on to choosing the invited guests, the most exhilarating and interesting aspect of planning parties and designing perennial plantings.

One of my prerequisites is that plants like guests should be polite. They should watch their behavior and stay where planted. Members of the Mint Family with their capricious seed-sowing manners and vigorous underground stems are hardly ever invited to my parties. I prefer to hang out with them individually, container by container.

Plants should also be fairly low-maintenance, need no excessive pampering and be content with modest amounts of fertilizer and care. Hybrid tea roses, babies' breath, delphiniums, and plants that pull a mid-summer disappearing act, like old-fashioned bleeding hearts and oriental poppies are prima donnas and should be avoided unless time, energy and possible disappointment are not issues.

Finally, which plants contribute to the overall ambiance of a perennial planting? Which have flowers that contribute attention-grabbing shapes, colors and sizes? Which have appealing or even eye-catching shapes when not in bloom? A garden with all round-shaped plants (like peonies) or one with all vertical shapes (think iris) is boring without flowers.

Peonies Massed in a Horizontal Bed Backed by Spikes of Blue Delphinium.

In addition, like guests in an array of fine clothing, the texture and color of leaves are valuable. Choices range from heavy, deep-green leaves with smooth edges (hosta), to finely cut gray or silver leaves (moonbeam achillea), to lance-shaped green and gold variegated ones (yucca).

Hosta in the Midst of an Array of Leaf Colors, Textures, and Shapes.

From many available possibilities, here is a plant palette that can provide a jolly good perennial party from May to September on a site that faces south-west, possesses moderately acidic soil with average drainage, and offers good amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

These are listed loosely in order of flowering sequence from late spring to early summer to autumn in the northeast United States:

• All members of the Iris Family. Various shaped and colored flowers. Spike or lance-shaped leaves.
  
  

• Spurge Family, Euphorbia polychrome, Cushion Spurge. Small flowers with yellow bracts that last. Clump forming with round shape.
  
  

• Buttercup Family, Aquilegia, Columbine Group. Bell-shaped, spurred flowers. Finely cut leaves.
  
  

• Pea Family, Baptisia australis, False Blue Indigo. Pea-like flowers in blue or white. Upright and almost shrubby habit to three feet.
  
  

• Poppy Family, ever blooming cultivars of Dicentra, False Bleeding Heart. Pendulant sprays of nodding heart-shaped flowers cherry-pink to white. Finely cut, blue-green fern-like foliage.
  
  

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