Last week, in this series devoted to planting in that inhospitable environment under mature deciduous trees, I talked about some tough groundcovers that grow well with little effort on your part. But, what if you want more than that? In parts of my USDA zone 7 garden, I wanted more, too. This week I'll tell you about one of my mixed borders. There are several photos, so please be patient while they load.
A Little History First
Before owning this property, I was a renter and grew vegetables, not ornamental plants. The first thing I did here, even before the house was finished and we moved in, was plant a vegetable garden and start a compost heap. The property was wild woods and we'd disturbed as little as possible in building. I thought we'd just leave Nature to take her course.
A couple of things happened to change this. First, I got tired of the messy jumble that Mother Nature provides when left to her own devices. Second, we took a couple of trips to England. Like most people who visit this garden paradise, I fell in love with the magnificent flower borders and wanted one for myself.
One of the first "landscaping" acts we performed at this house was to lay out a path going from our studio door to our front door, terminating at what was then the driveway. The path curves around the clump of trees (a maple [unidentified], two black locusts [Robinia pseudoacacia] and a dogwood [Cornus florida]). Here you see the slender dogwood trunks in front of the two locusts - the maple isn't visible. This seemed the ideal spot to put a border since it was prominent and partially cleared from construction activity. The photo shows this area in very early spring so you can get an idea of the size and the location of the trees..
In this shot, taken from the opposite side, the tree in front with the slightly curving trunk is the unknown maple; the two large trunks behind it belong to the locusts and the slender double trunk on the left is the dogwood. That light gray line in the background is the gravel parking area; once the driveway. The paving in the lower right corner belongs to my Circle Garden - a much later addition.
As I said, I wasn't familiar with perennial plants. I'd seen them in the English gardens and had started visiting display gardens in the area, but I knew few by name. I wanted to do this right and I knew I needed to do some research. So, I started buying magazines and garden books. From the magazines, I learned the names of some mailorder nurseries and sent for their catalogs. Of course, the books I had were purchased on those same trips to England and most of the plants pictured simply weren't available here, plus the botanical names meant little to me. But, the catalogs were full of glossy color photographs of gorgeous flowers that would bloom all summer
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