Perennial Landscape Design Takes Planning !
By Nancy Dransfield, Landscape Architect, Landesign of VA, Inc., P.O. Box 15582, Richmond, VA 23227, 804-261-6773,
n.dransfield@verizon.net
Maximize your success when designing with perennials! This perennial landscape design looks free & easy like it happened without any thought! This could not be farther from the truth. Read on to learn about arranging and organizing these wonderful flowering plants!
Perennials are herbaceous, flowering plants that do not die over the winter. The top growth dies back each year, but the roots stay alive. Therefore, they come back the following year and get thicker and stronger. There are some evergreen varieties that keep their foliage up all year.
In this perennial landscape design the tall, white flower is Queen Ann's Lace. It is a native wild flower that loves hot, dry conditions like you would find here. Gracefully interspersed with the Queen Ann's Lace is the yellow, native Coreopsis. These delicate flowers are a similar height and bloom at the same time. Notice how the plants are arranged in sweeps making them look natural and full. A gorgeous show of flowers is enjoyed for three to four weeks!
The flowers in the rest of this perennial landscape design also have a planting order that looks natural and unplanned. The low growing, yellow and orange flower in the foreground is planted in a sweep with a mass of dwarf, yellow daylilies behind it. The orange and yellow flower is gaillardia, also known as blanket flower. It is a plant that is amazingly adapted to hot temperatures and sandy soil. I have seen it blooming in sand dunes. It also blooms all season which is uncommon for a perennial. The dwarf yellow daylily is a bit taller than the gaillardia giving height variation. Tall daylilies are behind the dwarf ones giving another gradation of height and color.
Here is a list of some good performing perennials for the mid-Atlantic region and their sunlight requirement:
All these perennials have many different varieties to choose from. You have different heights and colors. Arrange the plants so that the tallest plants are in the back. Graduate the size of the plants to the front. Think about blooming time, so it will be full of color most of the season.
To keep your perennial landscape design full of color the entire growing season you may add in annuals and bulbs. Annuals do not overwinter, but die after the first hard frost. It is a job in the spring to replant them, but they do have an important role. THEY PROVIDE COLOR ALL OF THE GROWING SEASON! This is a tremendous help. Add sweeps of annuals among the perennials and your garden will have blasts of color all season. Some of my favorite annuals are lantana, annual vinca, globe amaranth and impatiens.
Black-eyed Susan, a perennial that blooms from July-September, is in the back of this perennial landscape design. In the foreground are two annuals, marigold and ageratum, that keep the bed colorful from May to frost. This planting is at the front entrance of their house where it is highly visible and desirable to have it looking its best!
The technique of interplanting a perennial landscape design is a way of making it come alive earlier in the spring. Spring flowering bulbs, such as daffodils, tulips and hyacinths can be planted in the same planting space as your perennials. For example, an area of your perennial garden that is planted in daylilies can be interplanted with daffodil bulbs. The daffodils come up in the early spring. The daylily foliage comes up in the late spring covering the dying foliage of the daffodil and soon produces a beautiful summer flower. Spring flowering bulbs are easily interplanted with most perennials. Notice the newly emerging foliage growing among these daffodils. They are daylilies. There are tufts of other perennial foliage coming up too.
Once the foliage of a plant starts to die and is certainly becoming an eyesore to the perennial landscape design, don’t be afraid to cut it back. The foliage of daylilies and other perennials that bloom early in the season have a tendency to get exhausted by mid season. Cut the foliage back to the ground to encourage a new flush of growth. These plants, in most cases won’t flower again, but will put out pretty new leaves that are now an asset to the garden, not an eyesore.
Perennials are one of my favorite ways of adding color to the landscape. As well as using them in cutting gardens and cottage gardens they add a lot of interest in the foreground of a sweep of evergreen shrubbery dotted with flowering trees. The evergreens are beautiful all year and when the flowers are in bloom they are an added bonus to the landscape. Read books by Pamela Harper for more information about perennials. Designing with Perennials
Questions? I've got answers! Ask me a question about any landscape design issue or concern. I will give you a quick response and a page on this site dedicated to the topic. You can share it with your friends and the readers will appreciate it too. I hope to be hearing from you! Please contact me for further information or to talk to me about my design services. Nancy Dransfield Landesign of Virginia, Inc. P.O. Box 15582 Richmond, Virginia 23227 Office: 804-261-6773 Fax: 804-264-7253 E-mail: n.dransfield@verizon.net 
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is one of my favorite references by this author.
