Planning a Perennial Flower Border

Planning a perennial flower border requires research and planning. You will need to consider plant varieties' bloom times, heights, shapes and special needs before you even begin to plant. You will be rewarded for all that time and effort when your flower border blooms with a spectacular show of color and fragrance for years to come.

Where to Plant the Flower Border

Successful perennial gardens require well-prepared soil and a sunny location. Once you have finalized the garden area for cultivating your perennials, it is important to plan how and where to plant them. For aesthetic value, plant them to be visible from the house. Since they bloom in profusion, it is better to plant them in masses. It would be great to have a dark background to accentuate their color. Hedges, vine-covered walls and fences are some excellent options for backgrounds.

In planning the planting, it is better to work out the details regarding size, shape and composition of plants on paper. Here are some important points to consider when designing a perennial patch.

• Create space. If the bed has a hedge or a wall as a background, keep a gap of three feet between it and the plants. This will prevent competition between the plants and the hedge. It will also facilitate air circulation and provide space to work at the rear and allow sunlight for the hedge.
• Design a large bed. Keep the bed six to eight feet wide. This will provide room for five to six different kinds of plants from front to rear. With a judicious mix of early, mid-season and late-flowering varieties, the bed can be abloom continuously.
• Leave edge space. Leave a short edging of one to two feet in the front of the bed. This will give exuberant perennials space to spill over. This edging could be a garden path, flagstones or bricklayers. The irregular incursions of the plants into this neat border will add to the informality of the garden.

Choosing Plants

Now that you have the bed in place, you can start considering the plants. Choose your plants with caution. If the garden is large, there is room to choose plants that bloom briefly. However, in a small garden every plant must serve its purpose by blooming long and by displaying ornamental foliage after the blooms have faded.

A good way to plan your plants is to envision them as masses of color that appear at various seasons. Use colors in bold groups rather than scattering them randomly. Keep it uncomplicated for success. You can use colored paper or crayons to create a blueprint of the finished product.

• Fall-blooming plants. It is better to plan flowers for fall, spring and summer in that order. You must work from the back of the bed to the front. The majority of the tall plants, which go at the rear, flower in the late summer or fall. There is a wide choice, including asters, chrysanthemums, sunflowers, Japanese anemones and boltonias. Establish a pattern by keeping clumps of these plants at intervals in the rear row.

  Now move to the center of the bed. Select one or two medium-sized fall bloomers that are two to three feet in height to match with those in the back row; repeat these at intervals as well. You can have pompon chrysanthemums and mistflowers.

  The front of the border will have short, fall-blooming flowers that will complement rows two and three.

• Summer-blooming plants. Since most of the summer flowers have medium heights, the middle row will have prominence. Day lilies, foxgloves, calendula, Shasta daisies and lupines are some examples. Fill in the gaps in the bed with clumps of these. The back row can have globe thistle and heliopsis, while lamb's ears and fleabane can live in the front of the bed.
• Spring-blooming plants. The emphasis here will be on the front row, as there are many spring blooms less than two feet in height. Select plants that bloom early and for a long period. Also choose plants having attractive foliage that will add to the beauty of the bed even when they're not flowering. The front of the bed receives the maximum focus, after all. Forget-me-not, catmint, bleeding hearts and pinks are some excellent choices.

After finalizing the front row, fill in the middle and last row with other spring blooming plants of appropriate height.

You will need to experiment a bit on paper to arrive at the most suitable bed design. Mix and match the plants and draw up a master plan. Next, make a list of all the plants you have to purchase. You may not be able to buy all the plants at once, but with the master plan as a guide, your desired bed will evolve in a couple of years. Experiment with colors and textures and fill the bare spots with inexpensive annuals.