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With the proper selection of perennials, you can enjoy color and beauty beginning in spring and continuing all summer long, right up to the first killing frost. Annuals give quick, abundant color and can be excellent cut flowers for striking bouquets throughout your home. Don't forget bulbs. Many of spring's earliest flowers are from bulbs, but bulbs can produce georgeous blooms all summer long. Light, temperature, soil content and moisture all play vital roles in the success of your garden. Choose plants carefully by their color, mature size, and hardiness in the conditions in which they will grow.

What are Annuals?

Plants classed as annuals are those that complete their life cycle within the space of a year. They are indispensible in the cutting garden, giving a wealth of bloom through the summer and early autumn months. Many are best grown from seed.

What are Perennials?

Plants classed as perennials are those that grow and spread in your garden year after year. Selecting too many of these plants can limit the variety in your garden. Design and arrangement in the garden is equally as important as selection. Plan for the mature size of the plant. Perennials can provide an important background for annuals and minimize the yearly planting routine.

Planting Bulbs

Bulbs are for all seasons. They are so predictable that we can chart them on timetables. In general one could say that the season starts with snowbells and goes from crocuses to daffodils and then from the early tulips to the late flowering species. Then it is time for the summer bulbs to show their colorful flowers. The summer season starts with calla lillies and goes from gladiolus to lily and dahlia. The year closes with autumn flowering crocuses and colchicums.

U.S. Hardiness Zones

Plant hardiness zones are a guide to help you know which plants will grow where you live. Plants vary in temperature extremes they can endure.

zone 2 zone 3 zone 4 zone 5 zone 6 zone 7 zone 8 zone 9 zone 10

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Coloring Your Garden

Choosing color schemes for your garden is not different from choosing color schemes for your home or clothing. The same rules apply. In fact, the garden can be seen as an extension of your interior.

There are cool and warm colors. All hues have different impact. The Dutch Masters knew that warm colors tend to "move" toward the viewer and are thus the first things we see, while cool colors move away. To generate contrast, combine cool and warm colors and to create harmonies, combine colors that are close to each other in tone and intensity. In your garden, of course, green will always be part of your color scheme, and white is another color that is hard to avoid. Repeat colors in all parts of your garden to make it a whole and to create some rest.

Professional garden designer's general rule:
Limit the number of colors in a display to three; one should take up 70% and the others 15% each.

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