Garden Topics:
Designing Your First Perennial Garden
It seems that every few days we have new homeowners /new
gardeners, seeking guidance on the design and establishment of
their first perennial gardens. It is not as difficult as one
would think, but proceeding in an organized manner certainly
helps insure success.
So how does one begin in a few short steps? The first tip is
to draw the general plan out on paper. You don’t have to make it
fancy, and you don’t have to really include every plant but you
should to include the general scheme of what you desire. Drawing
it out really does help you in the long run, using graph paper
and drawing to scale is highly recommended.
- Determine the point from where you’re going to view the
garden. This point-of-view allows you to plan to put the
taller plants at the back of the garden.
- Do you want your garden to bloom heavily in the spring,
in the summer, in the fall or a little bit all season long?
This decision determines which plants you choose, and where
they are to be planted.
- Is your garden a sunny garden or a shady garden? The
rule of thumb here in the Pittsburgh area is if your garden
gets sunshine between 10 am and 2 pm, you have a sunny
garden. That’s a full 4 hours of hot sunshine and it
will likely get sun on either side of that as well. If your
garden doesn’t get sun between those hours then you may have
a part-shade garden (sunshine at either end of those hours
but no mid-day sunshine). Or you might have a
shade-garden with all day dappled sunshine, or sun only in
the early morning before 10 or in the evening after 6. To be
honest, information on this is rather theoretical - there’s
a lot of overlap between the classes of sunny, part-sun, and
shade gardens.
There’s no hard and fast answer because it depends on the
garden, the plants you like, and the conditions in the
garden. Ask us about the new inexpensive “Sun Stick” to
solve this problem. Also, do experiment, try a sun-loving
plant in shady spot; you might be pleasantly surprised.
You’re involved in the “process” of gardening. You get to
change and adjust from year to year seeking the look that’s
“just right” for you.
- Pick the plants that bloom at the time you want
color - and make sure they’re the plants that will survive
in your sun and moisture -conditions.
- The trick to having a garden that blooms
throughout the year is to pick an equal amount of plants
that flower each season. So if your garden is going to have
30 plants in it, you may want 10 from each of the spring,
summer and fall-blooming periods. The second trick here is
to space them equally through the garden. Don’t clump
all your spring bloomers in one spot and your fall bloomers
in another. Mix them all up.
Summation: A perennial garden is constantly changing. Plants
grow up and expand. Some plants die. You keep those you really
like, and remove those you dislike. A perennial garden
doesn’t stay the same from year to year (even weather changes
the way flowers look or how long they last). Perennial gardening
is not a plant- it-and-forget-it proposition, and that’s part of
the enjoyment.
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