As the very first signs of new garden life are beginning to push into growth in the form of Snowdrops and Witch Hazels, now seems like the ideal time to consider the borders. If yours were disappointing last year, or maybe had a quick blast of wow-zinginess before rapidly fading to bare earth and leafless branches, then some of these ideas might help spruce things up in the coming season and beyond…and since everyone loves a top 10 list, here are my tips on maximising a borders potential.

1. Seasons

The traditional English border was very much a summer fancy, and typically lay dormant or even completely empty for almost half of the year. That’s all very well if you garden on a country-estate, but most gardeners should want their border to provide year round interest. Try to incorporate at least one or two flowering elements for each season, and for trees and shrubs try to choose from those that give the most bang for their buck – not just seasonal flowers but colourful bark, attractive, possibly evergreen foliage, fruit and berries. Smaller herbaceous plants can be multi-season too, with seed heads following flowers and evergreen grasses looking more dramatic when frosted in winter than they do glinting in the summer sun.

2. Wildlife

As I’ve mentioned on my last blog entry, bringing wildlife into a garden adds a whole new dimension of interest, and it’s a year-round thing too. From butterflies, bees and the like in summer, to flocks of feeding birds in winter, they’re all out there waiting for an invitation, you just have to send the right garden signals. Having a garden attractive to wildlife doesn’t mean that you have to have borders filled with nettles and brambles, there are a huge array of highly ornamental plants which will do the job just as well. Top herbaceous bee attracting plants include the likes of Sedum, Ajuga, Echium, & Verbena bonariensis. Butterflies thrive on Lavender, Lunaria annua (Honesty), Hesperis matronalis (Sweet Rocket), Centranthus ruber (Valerian) and of course Buddleja, to name just a few. Birds will initially be attracted into gardens that provide them with shelter, from which they can scope out potential meals. Good seed and fruit bearing plants for birds include Blueberry, Elderberry, Crabapple, and Cotoneaster.

3. Soil

There’s a lot of truth in the maxim that you only get out what you put in, and nowhere more so than in the garden. Borders tend to have a pretty high appetite, and with a mass of plants competing for food and water resources the soil can quickly become leached of nutrients, particularly in gardens where fallen leaves and general garden debris are tidied away. To keep plants performing well for you year in year out it’s crucial to give them something they can sink their roots into. By far the best way to do this is by mulching to a minimum depth of 3 to 4 inches throughout the entire border, ideally in late autumn or early winter. This will provide food and structure to the soil, as well as help reduce watering, and the microbes and worms will do the rest for you.

4. Arrangements

If your border is to have long-lasting and season-round appeal then you’re going to need several different elements. There needs to be a permanent skeleton – these would be the trees and shrubs – some of which should ideally either be evergreen or at least have year-round interest. The smaller growing plants, be they woody or herbaceous, perennials or bulbs, then form the flesh on the bones. Although it’s appealing to buy 1 of everything to try to grow as many different plants as your space allows, this never makes for a very good border arrangement. Much better to plant in 3’s 5’s or 7’s and to plant the groups together rather than spread them around, this way you mimic how plants would be found in the wild, as well as create much a stronger visual impact.

5. Colours

It really is a good idea to have a colour scheme in mind, if not for the whole border then at least for sub-sections of it. Planting a whole variety of colours together can lead to some nasty combinations that do nobody any favours; a little forward planning will see harmony restored. If you do want lots of different colours, or want to grow particular plants that would clash with one another, then use foliage plants in between them to give a green breathing space. Think of the border – including all the foliage – as being like a giant flower arrangement.

It’s often best to go with two or three colours and plant accordingly. These can be contrasting and opposites – orange and blue, yellow and purple etc. – or harmonious – blue and white, yellow, orange and red, and so on. It’s fun to find as many different plants as you can that fit into your colour scheme and then play around with them in your space

6. Hights

The “normal” way to plant a border is to arrange the larger plants at the back, perhaps with a fence or hedge as a backdrop, have the medium sized in the middle and the low growers in the foreground. Personally, I’m not crazy about this arrangement if it’s applied too rigidly; it all looks a bit too much like a still life for my liking. Whilst it’s true that low growing plants do need to be near the front of a border if they’re going to be seen and receive enough light, the same doesn’t apply to other sizes, and it’s much more fun – not to mention more naturalistic – to mix and match. A few tall plants near the front of a border can provide a great foil for ground-huggers beneath them, and tall growing seasonal bulbs like lilies can also work well near the front, particularly if they are scented.

7. Spacings

It’s important to consider the ultimate size of trees and shrubs before using them in the border, something that, in my experience, very few gardeners ever do! These larger beasts of the border need to be arranged to allow room for growth and for their companion plants not to be blocked from view or shaded from light. I’ve come across many older borders where all you can see is a wall of shrubby foliage right at the front, whilst the back is hidden and bare. Perennials, though, should be planted closely to minimise the amount of bare soil on view. This not only looks more attractive, but also helps to reduce evaporation (and so watering) as well as helping to prevent weeds from taking hold. In new borders wildflower seeds can be scattered amongst the plantings to create a quick seasonal fill-in, far better than rows of disposable garden-centre annuals.

8. Senses

It’s a common mistake when planting a border to think primarily in one dimension, and focus entirely on the visual, or even just on the colours. Consider instead how much richer a border can be if you also plant for your nose – fragrant flowers and leaves too; for your ears – grasses, bamboos and other plants that rustle in the breeze; and for your touch – all manner of different textures can be selected, from shiny bark to velvety leaves.

9. Contrasts

The best borders are full of little tensions and visual contrasts. Large leaves look best beside smaller, delicate cut leaves, rather than next to other large leaves, for example, and tall works best against low, rounded beside spiky and lance-shaped etc. Follow this principle and you’ll find that plants compliment one another rather than compete for attention. You can go one step further in you incorporate colour, by having plants with contrasting shapes and textures but with similar colours. Bold, bronzy red foliage can be mirrored by small flowers that draw from the same palette, and the same goes for silver, white, green, and yellow, even blue.

10. Features

Even after you’ve carefully planned your plantings for height, colour and space you might find that there’s a lack of focal point in the border. This is particularly common in cottage garden type plantings, where the emphasis is generally on non-structural herbaceous plants. This doesn’t mean to say that you have to stick an evergreen shrub in the middle of your wallflowers and roses, all sorts of objects can provide a focal feature to draw the eye. Options might include a small pergola or climbing frame, a bird-bath or feeding station, or any wooden/metal/stone object that takes your fancy and around which you can plant. Reclamation yards are great for finding all sorts of inspiration.

Tags: Bee Attracting Plants, Butterflies, Flowers, Garden, Gardening, Seeds, Watering, Wild Flowers, Wildflower Seeds

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Tim's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.