Mix-Up Your Borders!

The Holy Grail of gardening seems to be the perennial border. Everyone wants an "English" border, full of blooming goodies. We all want something that looks like it is part of a Thomas Kincaid painting. That is the ideal. The reality is usually radically different from what we envision.

Gertrude Jekyll was one of the driving forces in garden design, moving the concept of garden style away from the stiffly formal gardens of her day. She designed borders to flow freely, and to blend with the elements in their settings. Her influence continues to this day.

We will definitely not be able to recreate the scenery of pastoral England. The climate and our setting will not allow for that to happen. I am sure that Gertrude Jekyll never designed a border for anyone living in a subdivision! But, some of her principles of garden design can be incorporated and expanded upon in our contemporary American setting. The result might not be a "traditional English border", whatever that means, but it can reflect those ideals.

First of all, we need to change the way we think about flower borders...

Have you ever looked at some of those mail order fliers or inserts that come in the Sunday morning newspaper and seen those (usually painted) pictures of flowerbeds that are an explosion of blooming plants? You see daisies, daylilies, mums, roses, lavender, tulips, you name it, all blooming in sync, all vividly colored, every plant swathed in flowers galore? Usually the promo goes something like this: "Sunny Perennial All Season Border for only $xx.xx!" Wonderful concept, often disappointing results. They aren't exactly telling a lie. Every one of the plants listed has its season of bloom, from the tulips to the mums. It is an all season border, technically speaking. The only problem is that the picture seems to give the impression that the stuff listed is going to bloom all at the same glorious moment in time. There is no way that this is going to happen. Yet, how many of us expect something like this to happen in our own flower borders?

Perennials do give the home gardener a great measure of return for the investment. They can average anywhere from two to three seasons of bloom, such as with some of the short-lived perennials, to beyond a lieftiime of blooms, for instance in plants such as peonies. Unlike annuals, they usually have a bloom time that lasts anywhere from a couple of weeks to several months. Another thing to consider: Very few long blooming perennials bloom non-stop throughout a whole growing season. Even that legendary powerhouse perennial, the 'Stella de Oro' daylily, has periods of bloom and rest. Stella will have flushes of blooms followed by periods when there are only a few scattered flowers. It will bloom even less spectacularly if the seed pods aren't kept picked off the plant.

Why we expect an annuals's performance from perennial plants is beyond me. If you are intent on having an all-season perennial border, you will need to accept the fact that the border will be in a constant state of flux. There will be plants that overlap in their seasons of bloom. Most will bloom, and then become essentially foliage plants for the remainder of the season or start out as foliage plants, bloom, and then return to the foliage state. If you pick from every season, something will always be in bloom.

You need to consider the appearance of the plants when they are not blooming. Foliage will be a point of interest. The plants will be providing texture and different shades of green, silver, variegation, or even colors such as purple. The foliage of these non-blooming plants will provide a foil for the plants that are blooming.

If you want something that is a riot of color, you may want to opt for an all-annual border. You will need to replant every year, however. Also, in Winter, the border will not have much structural interest. Structure is found when sturdy perennials plants like sedum and ornamental grasses are allowed to stay on in the garden after frost.

Why not mix perennials, annuals, ornamental grasses, lower growing flower shrubs, and a few flowering or ornamental trees together? This would become a mixed border.

In my opinion, a mixed border offers the best of all worlds. There are the stalwart perennials, the bloom until they exhaust themselves annuals, biennials, the blooming shrubs such as roses and spirea. Ornamental grasses give tremendous structure to the border, and when left all winter, offer great visual interest. A few trellised clematis or honeysuckle, some well-behaved ground covers, some herbs, some flowering trees, vegetables that have pretty blooms such as okra...there are limitedless choices!

If you pick an adequate number of plants, a minimum of three to five, from different categories, instead of one of this and one of that, your border will have enough "fullness" to have a real impact. Repeat the choices throughout the border at intervals, and it should look really good, very tied together.

Choose colors that please you. Go from cool to warm, throw in silver-toned plants to soften the more vivid colors, add white to tie cool to warrm and to act as a buffer. It can really look spectacular!

Planting in drifts instead of soldierly rows is a must. We all have heard that Nature doesn't do anything in a straight line, why should we? Have the lines of the borders flow, curving in and out, and it will really look great. In between two deep curves, you can add a garden bench. In a smaller stretch, add a birdbath. From a tree, add some windchimes. Are you starting to get enthusiastic about all this? I am! As a backdrop, you can add a fence, a mixed shrub border, or lower growing evergreens. Now you are getting the concept! You are becoming a gardening artist!

Try to do this somewhere in your yard. I think if you do, you will be pleasantly surprised. You will never walk along the border and be bored, I guarantee!