How to create garden borders

Looking to spruce up your landscape a bit?  A well-designed garden border can add impact and interest to any garden – large or small.  And, by selecting plants that take a minimal amount of care and chemicals to thrive, you can easily create an eco-friendly border.  As a bonus, depending on the plant selection, a well-planned bed or border can also be a magnet for butterflies, beneficial insects and birds. To help, here are some tips on how to create garden borders.

Key Elements
Inter-planting perennials with woody plants is crucial for good design. Woody plants create a framework, providing structure, texture, height and year-long interest. Perennials, on the other hand, come into and out of season from late spring through autumn. To create season-long colour, start with partial-season bloomers.  Then add in perennials and shrubs that bloom for longer periods of time, spacing them throughout the border to create waves of colour. The photo below is a great example of a multi-tiered approach to border gardens.

Partial-Season Bloomers
Depending on your location, early to mid-season bloomers include daffodils, tulips and other bulbs; and shrubs including azaleas, daphnes (such as Daphne Perfume Princess™), lilacs, magnolias, flowering quince, spireas, forsythia and viburnums. Low maintenance perennials such as dicentra (bleeding heart) Siberian iris, Oriental poppies and peonies are good early blooming options. Seen below, the Fairy Magnolias® bloom at the same time as azaleas, and the combination provides top to bottom colour to this border.

Low maintenance mid-to-late summer bloomers include agapanthus, daylilies, phlox paniculata (Volcano phlox is a great option because it reblooms if deadheaded), achillea, Russian sage, lobelia, buddleja, lantana, rudbeckia, campanula and coreopsis; shrubs include spirea, and crape mytles. Asters, hardy mums, sedums, some varieties of hydrangea and carylopteria (Bluebeard shrub) are great for late summer colour.

Season-long Colour and Interest
Another essential element for an eco-friendly, well designed border includes plants that provide colour and interest throughout the season, especially ones that are low maintenance.

For instance, Flower Carpet Amber, Pink, Appleblossom or Yellow/Gold roses inter-planted with one of the long blooming varieties of purple-blue salvias can add impact to any garden for months. Flower Carpet® roses bloom non-stop for long periods of time while salvias send out their purple/blue blooms starting in early spring and continue to bloom all summer long with very little care. Other low maintenance perennials include cranesbill (hardy geranium) and echinacea which is available in a wide variety of colours and sizes.

Foliage plants are also great for adding season-long interest. Phormiums like the Border™ series, hosta, lambs ear, artemesia, astilbe, ferns, heuchera are all low maintenance plants that offer both interesting texture and colour. For instance, with their long, strappy, colourful leaves, Festival™ Burgundy (Red Fountain™) cordylines (seen below) are ideal as front or mid-border plants.

For US West Coast gardeners and those living in Australia and New Zealand, two new coprosmas – Pacific™ Sunset and Pacific™ Sunrise – provide gorgeous colour and interest with their beautiful glossy leaves and compact shape. Both varieties have variegated leaves and the colours on these get deeper in cool weather, providing colour in spring and autumn when other plants are less colourful. As a bonus, these coprosmas are deer resistant!

Other points to consider when creating a perennial border:

• Consider how your border will look from every angle and view (home, street, driveway, etc.).
• Plant in overlapping drifts of colours to give a continual flow to the border design.
• Don’t limit your gardens to 3 seasons of colour. Remember that “winter gardens” containing ornamental grasses, shrubs with colourful or interesting bark and conifers can all add interest (and shelter for birds) even during the darkest days of winter.
• Make it mow-friendly; stay away from sharp angles and tight borders.
• Ornamental grasses are ideal for adding strong impact and year-long interest

Want to see more inspirational ideas click here!