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Help with new border plants!
Purpleandpinks
Posts: 78
in Plants
Hi everyone,
This is our new border - the garden is mostly cottage style with loads of roses, lupins, allium, dahlia, penstemon but I'm struggling with this new space and how to lay it out so it doesn't look too messy. Colour scheme is white, pink, purple.
So far planted we have a prunus snow showers and a magnolia genie. On order are 6 roses (3 for fence, 2 for hedge and one for the obelisk) and I've got some potted up dahlias on the go.
What would be your essentials? The new bed is full sun. I love nepeta and lavender but usually grow along paths, would dotting around in groups of 3 look ok? I also love prarie style planting so I'm struggling to separate the two, though I may reinvent to top bed as a purple prairie bed. I'd love to get some ornamental grasses mixed in too. Overall I want it to look like a traditional English lush garden.
Thanks for reading.
Hannah
This is our new border - the garden is mostly cottage style with loads of roses, lupins, allium, dahlia, penstemon but I'm struggling with this new space and how to lay it out so it doesn't look too messy. Colour scheme is white, pink, purple.
So far planted we have a prunus snow showers and a magnolia genie. On order are 6 roses (3 for fence, 2 for hedge and one for the obelisk) and I've got some potted up dahlias on the go.
What would be your essentials? The new bed is full sun. I love nepeta and lavender but usually grow along paths, would dotting around in groups of 3 look ok? I also love prarie style planting so I'm struggling to separate the two, though I may reinvent to top bed as a purple prairie bed. I'd love to get some ornamental grasses mixed in too. Overall I want it to look like a traditional English lush garden.
Thanks for reading.
Hannah
3
Posts
My hints would be:
1. Think about the evergreen and winter planting first. For the effect to come off and work all year, you want to achieve a balance of about 1/3 evergreen. Examples might be winter jasmine, Sarcococca.
2. Keep the fronts of the borders for low-growing plants that, ideally, will look good over a long period--Osteospermum is an example.
3. Consider adding a small but long-flowering shrub on the right, for balance, next to the front of your obelisks. Something like a Hydrangea could be good.
4. The rest, after you've put in your roses, could be for perennials and long-flowering shrubs, and you can create any effect you like, from filmy and transparent (grasses such as Stipa tenuissima, Calamagrostis 'Overdam', Thalictrum, Patrinia, Veronicastrum, Campanula lactiflora, Sanguisorba, Eryngium, Alchemilla mollis) to more solid and striking (Melianthus major, Agapanthus, Acanthus, Helleborus argutifolis, Bergenia) or anything in between.
Nepeta and lavender are great--I have always found the first of these to have rather a long season of looking scruffy. This is easier to regulate with lavender, which only needs a trim annually after flowering, but you'll need to choose small varieties or they will quickly outgrow their space.
5. Make sure you plant according to height, with the tallest at the back, and these will probably need support. In such a narrow garden, you will struggle to follow the prairie-style planting to the letter because plants will collapse in rain, over the path. The above plants are ones less prone to this problem in my experience.
6. For a colour scheme, I'd suggest not a complete mixture of allsorts, but something that accords with the colour of your roses, such as pale lavender blues, greens and greeny-yellows for white or yellow roses, or blues, purples and reds for red or pink ones.
Thank you so so much for taking the time out of your day to help me. This has been so useful. I'm going to note down all of your tips and make sure I take them into consideration. I'm so grateful. Have a lovely weekend and thanks for the kind comments about the current design.
Hannah
Thanks so much Loxley, it's been a long road but it's coming on now. Lots of bits on order (mostly for the area behind where I took this). Looking forward to have new places to sit! X
A few carefully placed stepping stones in a deep border can help.
My East garden is cottagy, also pink, purple and white, predominantly roses and organically shaped. My essential perennials are gaura whirling butterflies, salvias caradonna, mainacht, verticillata, agastache (beelicious purple is a new one this year and meant to be compact), nepeta, rosemary, allium atropurpureum and for low edging verbena bonariensis lollipop and parahebe.
Also geranium Rozanne, but well away from the roses as it’s rather thuggish and competes too much with them. I also found the same with osteospermum - dug up some I planted last year as a filler but decided I didn’t like the combination with roses, and the roots had spread absolutely everywhere!