Summer Color -- Perennials Can Give Your Border A Second Wind
Gardens burst into bloom early in the growing season, when peonies, rhododendrons, irises and roses do cartwheels through flower borders. But when August and September roll around, some gardens turn dull and drowsy under the late summer sun.
Drooping shrubs, rank foliage and spent flowers tarnish the looks of a showy garden like a 5 o'clock shadow on a chiseled chin. Then add some apathy. Now even the most dedicated gardeners, most of them by now recovering nicely from their annual spring fever, tend to put less energy and passion into gardening.
But there are at least three Seattle garden designers who stay excited about flower borders even during the dog days of summer. Partly it's their profession - spring and early summer find them too busy with clients' gardens to pay a lot of attention to their own back yards.
So when Rucy Neiman of Paint A Garden, and Glenn Withey and Charles Price of Withey-Price turn attention to their own plots, they use late-season bloomers to give the flower borders a stunning second wind as summer kicks into high gear.
Rucy Neiman's Mercer Island garden is an exuberant tangle of perennials, annuals (many of them self-seeding) and small shrubs. ``I like my whole garden to be solid flowers, with no dirt showing in between. I want the borders to look like huge, sweet-smelling bouquets that you can bury your nose in,'' she says.
Neiman uses tall varieties of dahlias, the long-lasting spears of Siberian irises, and gladiolas for the basic structure of her sun border. Their fresh foliage and soft green tints provide a good backdrop to the poppies she plants in front of them for bloom in early summer. When the poppies fade, Neiman replaces them with zinnias, salvia, coneflowers and self-seeders such as feverfew and larkspurs. Clouds of self-seeding annual candytuft billow through the border, pulling all the plants together in a fragrant mass of blooms.
``Gardens should have vitality and energy - you should feel the energy pulsing as you walk through them,'' Neiman says. She feels much of her garden's exuberance results from its unconventional mix of perennials and annuals, the wide color range and an informal design.
Because Neiman thinks a flower garden should look natural, not overdesigned, she plants in drifts, using blooms in analogous color schemes to unite the design. For instance, in the front of her sun border she plants the soft blue powder puff blooms of ageratum, the pinky-lavender tufts of gayfeather (Liatris spicata), and the pink cotton candy swirls of creeping baby's breath (Gypsophila repens Rosea.)
``When you use analogous colors, in this case blue and pink, with the same intensity of hue, then everything looks good together and you won't have to worry about clashing colors,'' she explains. Her sun border in August features colors from purples, pinks and silvers to blues. Neiman says the late summer sunlight brings out their best qualities.
For the filtered sun borders, Neiman plants Japanese anemones, day lilies, valerian, hollyhocks and impatiens in front of flowering shrubs with interesting foliage, among them hydrangeas and astilbe. Boxes of trailing fuchsias hang from cedar posts, dripping down into maidenhair ferns and sweet woodruff planted below.
Neiman likes an intoxicating garden. So besides serving up a visual feast, she adds the sweet-smelling lilies, verbena, heliotrope and the old-fashioned, strongly scented nicotiana (Nicotiana suaveolens) to her borders.
Although Glenn Withey and Charles Price's garden near Bothell displays the same love of color and texture as Rucy Neiman's, its design is more formal and its emphasis on unusual perennials is more pronounced. Divided into several outdoor ``rooms'' wrapped around the house, the garden has long perennial borders devoted to sun- and shade-loving plants facing each other over grass paths.
Withey and Price value perennials as much for their foliage as for their blooms, and the borders feature finely balanced combinations of broad-leaved cannas and spiky ornamental grasses, juxtaposed with vigorous clumps of purple coneflowers and variegated hostas.
The partners think the classic herbaceous perennial border (one in which all foliage dies back during winter) needs a large site to show to its best advantage. For gardens that can't accommodate at least a 10-by-30-foot border, they suggest creating smaller mixed borders of perennials planted with small trees and shrubs.
Although such a border could feature the occasional evergreen accent shrub, including yew or boxwood, Withey and Price say that full-grown perennials tend to shade out the bottoms of evergreens. That's why they confine evergreens to the margins of the border and use deciduous shrubs - including laceleaf hydrangeas, shrub roses and small varieties of mock orange (such as Philadelphus lemoinei) - to provide most of the structure and background for the perennials.
The designers like deciduous shrubs in borders for two reasons: Before leafing out in spring, they allow light through to the perennials planted beneath them during a crucial time in the growing cycle, and they can be pruned up to allow better light and air circulation later in the growing season.
Although Withey and Price appreciate foliage form and texture, color also plays a role. Price likes to use variegated ornamental grasses in semishade areas. ``They lend a freshness to the border, a visual lightness,'' he explains. He also likes to combine and contrast flower and foliage colors, giving the example of crimson geranium blooms growing over a golden hosta: ``These colors vibrate together.''
Withey and Price create a visual rhythm in their borders through color repetitions and contrasts. For instance, they suggest balancing perennials with gray foliage and creamy yellow blooms in a sunny border against plants with the same-colored flowers but soft green foliage in a shady border lying immediately opposite. Repeating the combinations at strategic points through the length of the borders helps unify them visually.
Neiman, Withey and Price all agree that good, imaginative gardens develop through a process of trial and error. Price thinks it's helpful to think of gardening as an open-ended process. ``Your garden will change as your likes and dislikes change.''
Withey adds that ``it's best to research new plants before adding them to your border. But if you don't like a plant once it goes in, be ruthless and take it out.''
Rucy Neiman says, ``You've got to take chances when you create a garden - and you always hope something wonderful is going to happen.''
JAN KOWALCZEWSKI WHITNER IS A SEATTLE FREE-LANCE WRITER SPECIALIZING IN PLANTS AND GARDENING.
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Border tips
Glenn Withey and Charles Price recommend the following perennials for midsummer to fall borders:
Acanthus spinosus. A 3- to 4-foot foliage plant with deeply cut, glossy leaves and flower spikes of pale purple that linger into fall.
Anemone x hybrida. A 3- to 5-foot late-summer bloomer with elegant pink or white flowers.
Aster x frikartii. A bushy perennial standing 2 to 3 feet high with fragrant lavender flowers.
Echinacea purpurea. A long-stalked, 2- to 4-foot perennial with long-lasting, daisylike purple flowers.
Fuchsia magellanica. A large shrub with small scarlet and blue flowers hanging like pendants from the branches.
Geranium `Mavis Simpson.' A trailer with silvery pink flowers that weaves its way through other plants. Also Geranium wallichianum Buxton's Variety, another delicate weaver with light blue flowers.
Phygelius ssp. Low-maintenance shrubs that flower 3 to 4 months. P. Yellow Trumpet stands 3 to 4 feet high, with clear yellow flowers that blend well with other border colors. P. African Queen is 3 to 8 feet tall with scarlet blooms.
Rudbeckia fulgida `Goldsturm.' A 1 1/2- to 2-foot self-seeder with glowing yellow daisylike flowers that look great with many varieties of ornamental grasses. Plus late-blooming varieties of roses, Asiatic lilies and daylilies.
Many of these perennials are available in local nurseries, including Puget Garden Resources on Vashon Island, 567-4542, and Pat's Perennials near Woodinville, 483-6634. Call for hours and directions.
Withey and Price suggest ordering the more unusual varieties through the mail-order specialty nurseries listed below. Call or write for catalog prices.
Canyon Creek Nursery
3527 Dry Creek Road
Oroville, CA 95965
(916) 533-2166
Lamb Nurseries
E. 101 Sharp Ave.
Spokane, WA 99202
(509) 328-7956
Klehm Nursery
Route 5, 197 Penny Road
South Barrington, IL 60010
(800) 553-3715
B & D Lillies
330 P St.
Port Townsend, WA 98368
(206) 385-1738