Plant Gardens 101

Border garden beds are wonderful additions to your landscape when you want to highlight an edge, such as a driveway, fence, walkway, front porch, or patio. They can be used to delineate visual boundaries or create physical compartments in your landscape. When it comes to highlighting permanent features, such as a trellis or gazebo, or dividing spaces in your yard or vegetable garden, border gardens are just the thing. As they often follow an edge, they are usually rectangular in shape, but can also be designed to include gentle curves for less formal gardens.

Most gardeners plant taller annuals and perennials to the back of these beds, placing shorter items towards the front. Border beds can be created to spotlight long seasons of bloom on a continuum or focused around a one-season spectacular show. If you opt for the one-season showcase, be sure to plan the rest of your landscaping to balance out the seasons during which your border bed lies fallow. (more…)

Usually, a long narrow garden bed, backed by shrubs, buildings, walls, fences, or other defining backgrounds. A herbaceous border is composed primarily of perennials, bulbs, and annuals. A mixed border also includes shrubs and possibly trees.

I don’t like petunias. There – my prejudices are out in the open. I won’t try to justify my dislike for the ubiquitous petunia, but if you’re looking for an annual flower that will fill in some space in your flower border, and you’re tired of petunias too, here are three of my favorites.

One of my favorite petunia substitutes is Calibrachoa, which is actually a distant relative of the petunia. Calibrachoa, sold as ‘Million Bells’, is a low-growing plant that spreads and trails over baskets and walls, much like a miniature petunia. The flowers are much smaller, though, and the leaves are finer than the petunia. The plants continue to spread and bloom from late spring to frost in a carefree manner that any busy gardener will enjoy.

The Calibrachoa blooming in my garden has continued to look fantastic in spite of several weeks of weather in the upper 90′s. The blossoms self-clean, so no deadheading is needed. Unfortunately, this also means that the Calibrachoa will not set seed, and new plants will need to be purchased each spring since these hybrid plants are patented. (more…)