You will want flowers for cutting
and flowers for contributing gaiety and charm to your grounds.
The aim of the successful gardener is to have a succession of
flowers from early spring to late fall.
You can plan from the beginning
to have perennials which bloom at different seasons, (for
example, iris, which has the peak of its bloom just as the peony
season begins).
Know accurately when the
perennials bloom and then plan to fill in the gaps left by their
passing with prolific and quick-growing annuals. You can plan to
have a potting bed, perhaps in your vegetable garden or in a
sheltered spot behind your tool house or garage, where you can
grow extra annuals as well as those perennials which do not mind
being transplanted. Then when the tulip season passes, for
example, you can fill in with another tall bulb, a
summer-flowering one, such as, perhaps, the canna lily.
Your plan should be made on
paper, with the shape of the bed or border sketched in, and the
position of the plants indicated. Perhaps one of the most common
and feasible design for the average 60 x 100 foot lot, or even
the half-acre lot is a border running the length and rear wall
of the back yard. This can be a mixed border of summer-flowering
bulbs, perennials and annuals, backed by shrubs.
Other designs can be planned for
the center of the lawn, for the foundation planting, for the
pathways to the house and for the sides of the house.
Semi-formal or formal gardens can have borders or beds laid out
alongside of and divided by walks.
In planning your border, provide
for tall screening plants that will form a background for the
shorter plants. The screening plants may need staking but they
should be sturdy. If you have a wide border, over 6 feet, you
will need a narrow path in front of the screening plants for
cultivating and tending. The centre border plants are of medium
height, and can be chosen for vivid colour. If you are planning
a wide border, relatively tall plants such as iris go here. In
the foreground is your edging, composed of such neat and plainly
visible flowers as: clipped green perennials, or low-growing
petunia, ageratum, pansies, dwarf marigolds or sweet alyssum. It
is wise in planning to have beds or borders that are visible
from your windows and close to your terraces and gathering
places outdoors.
The special planting set close to
the house is called foundation planting and has great importance
since it improves and enhances the proportions of your house as
well as relates the house to the grounds.
Evergreens are widely used for
foundation planting not only because they can thrive in the
shade of the house, but because of their year-round good looks.
If you have not used evergreens
elsewhere, though, it is a mistake to suddenly use them at the
foundation. The contrast will be too sharp; the evergreens are
apt to look forbidding. There remains a wide choice of flowering
shrubs, dwarf fruit trees, roses and cushion chrysanthemums that
will lend colour to your foundation design in spring, summer and
fall. Japanese red leaf barberry, floribunda roses, flowering
quince and forsythia are among the bushes and plants that can be
used.
While it is tempting to try one
of each of the nursery's evergreen specimens in your foundation
planting, this should, of course, be avoided. On the other hand,
contrast tall and low-growing types: use stiff-needled pines
with feathery juniper with broadleaved laurel and rhododendron.
In your preliminary planning,
draw to scale the relationship between your house elevation and
the foundation shrubs and trees as they will look at mature
height. Perhaps some of those you've selected will be too tall
for your house, obscuring your windows and making the house
gloomy inside. In that case, you don't want them.
In general, because your entrance
is the most important feature of your house facade, you start
your planning with it in mind, using shrubs that direct the eye
toward the door. The planting in front of the house is usually
bowl-shaped in its overall outline. This gives the impression of
a broad base to the house. In some places, let the wall show to
the foundation. Put the tallest shrubbery at the corners of your
house.
