Home in the Landscape

Never in the history of gardening have so many kinds of flowering plants been as easy to obtain as they are today. 

The assortment is so rich and varied that it is not always easy for experienced gardeners to decide which plant to use in a particular garden location. 

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Who can imagine the dilemma new gardeners or homeowners face with this question of plant selection? 

The key is knowing what we want a given plant to do and whether it will perform for us in the way we want it to.

A glowing description and a vivid picture of a flower are enticing. But we must know much more about a plant than what its flowers look like—no matter how large and beautiful they may be. 

Needs Of A Plant

The plant cannot produce them unless given the soil, moisture, and exposure to light and air it needs.

If the description at hand does not tell us these things, we must find them out for ourselves, turning to garden books and magazines and consulting gardening friends and nurserymen. 

In doing so, we learn whether a plant is deciduous or evergreen, whether it is a tree, shrub, herbaceous perennial, annual, or vine. 

Perhaps it is a low creeping plant suitable for a ground cover or in the crevice of a rock wall. 

Not until classified by type can we know whether a plant will do the job we have in mind for it.

Where Specific Plants Thrive

For example, herbaceous perennials won’t do much in the way of decorating a doorway during winter because their tops die after the first hard frost in fall.

A flowering evergreen or deciduous shrub might be more effective—attractive in flowers, leaves, or branches interesting throughout the year. 

Similarly, colorful summer annuals, like zinnias, marigolds, and petunias, die in fall, contributing nothing to the landscape picture in winter. 

However, this does not preclude annuals or perennials in the garden, for they play a very important role, as noted later on and indicated in the drawings.

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Flowering Plants

Some flowering plants are with us only for part of the summer, and this should be known before they are assigned a place in a garden. 

Oriental poppies flower brilliantly in late spring but lose their leaves in early summer. 

Leaving bare spots in beds and borders which can be camouflaged by nearby plants, as Mrs. M. M. Graff, a plantswoman of considerable experience, pointed out last month in her article, “Consider Plant Foliage, Too.” 

Spring-Flowering Bulbs

Spring-flowering bulbs, such as tulips and daffodils, are another case in point. When their leaves die down in early summer, annuals may be planted over the bulbs for a summer color display. 

Tuberous begonias and caladiums may be set out to brighten the empty spaces if they get a little sun in the summer.

Obviously, a flowering vine or a climbing rose is the right choice to color a fence or trellis—a ground-cover plant would not be appropriate at all. 

Deciduous Shrubs

Deciduous shrubs with handsome flowers, such as lilacs, forsythias, spireas, and viburnums, are suitable for sunny locations where garden enclosures are. 

The backgrounds are needed for planting at the corner of a building to soften the architectural line. 

Azaleas or any evergreen flowering shrubs, like rhododendrons, Pieris, and mountain laurels, might be used in the shade. 

Camellias In Garden

If you live in the South, camellias probably come to mind first for such garden locations.

Experience is the best teacher in these matters, but the more research was done before planting and the better acquainted we are with plants, the easier it is to have noteworthy plantings. 

But it is consoling to know that a plant that doesn’t work out as anticipated can be moved to a more suitable location in time to come.

The section of the country where your garden is also a vital factor in plant selection. 

Calla Lilies

Some plants are naturally adapted to a given area, while others are not. Take calla lilies, the kind Katharine Hepburn made famous. 

They are excellent garden flowers in southern areas where winters are very mild. 

But in the North, they must be grown indoors or in greenhouses, for they cannot survive freezing soil.

Different Facets Of Plant Hardiness

Good gardening reference books indicate the natural habitat of a plant—a yardstick for judging its adaptability to your climate. 

Some even go so far as to tell in exactly which parts of the country a plant can be grown. 

There are many facets to plant hardiness, and for various reasons, it is not always easy to pinpoint where a plant can or cannot be grown. 

Camellias in Philadelphia

For years, people were convinced camellias would perish if grown outdoors farther north than the nation’s capital. 

Today, they are seen in Philadelphia and even in southern New York State gardens. 

This discovery about them was made by gardeners who got pleasure from experimenting with a plant in an area thought unsuited to it. 

While meritorious, such horticultural ventures rarely contribute to the home grounds’ overall beauty.

Cold-Hardy Plants

On the other side of the hardiness picture are cold-hardy plants that are difficult to grow in areas where winters are warm. 

A climbing rose to flower sparsely year after year on a fence in tropical Florida is an achievement worthy of applause.  

From the point of view of landscape beauty, how much more pleasing is a vigorous, heavy-flowered, and easy-to-grow tropical bougainvillea or allamanda? 

Peonies will grow much farther south than was once believed, but it takes a lot of know-how to flower them in the Deep South, where they don’t have a long-dormant rest period in winter.

How To Know If A Plant Is Suitable In The Climate

If you are at all in doubt about how suitable a plant is for your climate, ask the person from whom you obtained it about its climate preferences.  

Look at gardens in your neighborhood to see if the same or related plants are already being grown successfully. 

Think twice before you take on a plant that must be protected over winter or precooled before planting (as is the case with spring-flowering bulbs in the south) if landscape beauty is your primary reason for gardening.

Rare Plants

Any gardener is rightfully proud of a rare plant—rare not only because it may be a challenge to grow in his climate.  

It is not frequently found in the wild, is difficult to propagate, or is so new that nurserymen haven’t had time to build up a supply. 

But a rare plant does not per se contribute to the general beauty of your garden. True, a rare daylily, rose, or clematis may add a certain éclat. 

Several plants of a readily available variety will go further toward making a pretty landscape than one or two that connoisseurs vie for at sometimes staggering prices.

No one questions the beauty of a rare plant, but for landscape effect, build up your basic planting before casting about for the rare or novel plant.

Landscape Essentials

Have you ever been amazed when talking to a professional landscape architect to find that he doesn’t think first or solely of flowers when he begins to design a home planting? 

They are always in the back of his mind, but before considering specific flowering plants, he works out landscape essentials: 

Location Of Plantings

The location of plantings for privacy and where fences, lamps, and walls are needed. 

I know one who shocks clients out of thinking of their properties only in terms of color by stating flatly during an early interview, “I hate flowers.”

At the same time, gain their confidence by coming up with a solution to a knotty problem, perhaps how to keep soil on a steep bank from washing into their living room window. 

(He might suggest memorial roses or honeysuckle for such a purpose. Both have pretty flowers!) 

Home Planting

Flowers complete a home planting and are used as a chef uses garnish to enliven a basic dish.

In presenting the plantings on these pages, it is assumed that the landscape features for which flowering plants are used as garnish have been purposefully located. 

The post light is close to a path or driveway, and the fence separates an outdoor living room from a street or parking area.

Enclosed Garden

The waterlily pool is a focal point in an enclosed garden or a planting bay formed by flowering shrubs. 

The planting beneath a tree shows how an existing landscape feature (in this case, a tree) can be played up with flowers and, at the same time, proves there are flowering plants for every purpose—even for shade.

Combination Plantings

The most pleasing garden pictures result when several kinds of plants are grown side by side. 

To make such combination plantings, we must know how tall a plant will grow and how wide it will spread. 

Allowing it space to develop without competing for light, air, soil nutrients, and moisture—a competition that can slow growth or stop it completely. 

Select Plants With Size Ideal For A Location

The aim is to select plants that will not grow too big for a given location but will comfortably fill the spaces allotted to them in time. 

It is just as important to know the full size of a little rock garden flower as it is to know the stretch of a vine or the mature height of a flowering tree or shrub.

Plant’s Growing Time

In addition to knowing the size of a plant at maturity, the length of time it will take to reach full growth must be estimated. 

It may be several years for deciduous flowering shrubs and a bit longer for most broadleaved evergreens and flowering trees. 

On the other hand, herbaceous perennials are full-grown a year or two after planting. 

Annuals and bulbous flowers, such as tulips, gladiolus, and lilies, reach full growth mere months after you set them out.

Planning Garden Pictures

When planning garden pictures, visualize not only what they look like when the plants are first set out but how they will look in the years ahead. 

For the first few years after planting, those that reach full growth quickly may be used in quantity between the slower-growing kinds. 

For example, a planting under a picture window may feature quantities of annuals or gladiolus set out between daylilies, iris, and peonies for the first few summers. 

Then, in succeeding years, as the daylilies and iris form clumps and the peonies gain stature, fewer annuals and gladiolus will be required. 

Annuals and gladiolus used this way are called “fillers” by experienced gardeners. 

In the same way, iris and daylilies in front of or between flowering shrubs act as fillers until the shrubs fill out. 

When they do, the iris and daylilies may be lifted, divided, and moved to more open areas where they will have sun and space for continuing growth.

Advantages Of Group Planting

Group planting has many advantages, not the least of which is the interesting contrasts in plant form and texture that result. 

And by selecting plants that flower at different times during the growing season, color is maintained in planting over a long period of time. 

Winter effects are important, especially in the North, so it is smart to include at least a few evergreens in each group planting. Assign plants of like cultural needs to a planting. 

Compatibility Of Plants

If plants are compatible, handsome effects not anticipated at planning and planting time may occur—happy accidents, if you will. 

These are worth noting and passing on to other gardeners. Nature works with gardeners and sometimes even corrects mistakes.

Growth of Dogwoods

I was once forced to plant some shade-loving mountain laurel in full sun, along with some sun-loving red osier dogwood, their only common need being the acid soil I could provide.

The dogwoods grew rapidly, and as they began to shade the laurel, the laurel, which had grown hardly at all, put on new growth and began to flower each spring. 

It won’t be long before the dogwoods will have to be moved, for they are beginning to crowd the laurel too much. 

Fortunately, some 3-foot hemlocks set out 5 years ago near the planting are now so big they will give the laurels the part shade they enjoy.

All gardeners and homeowners have similar experiences, experiences that heighten interest in plants and planting. 

It gives us the confidence to expand our plantings and perhaps even experiment with the rare and unusual. 

Not until the basic plantings around the house are attractive enough to sustain them handsomely.

Observe the Plant’s Growth For Preference

Before or as you begin to investigate a plant’s cultural possibilities, you must decide whether you like its looks or not. 

The best way, of course, is to observe its growth. So you develop your preferences by visiting gardens and looking at garden photographs and drawings. 

Tastes vary, so you can’t accept someone else’s evaluation unless you have found that his taste is quite similar to your own. 

Double Flowers

Some gardeners deplore double flowers—wouldn’t think, for example, of growing double poppies. But, to others, the word “double” has a magic sound. 

Just recently, I was shown a new double poinsettia, which to me, looked like an overblown pink dahlia. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would prefer it to a single poinsettia.

Iris And Daylily Leaves

Some persons wince at the view presented by iris and daylily leaves, while others depend on them for the contrast in form and texture they bring to a garden scene. 

You may discover that a plant looks perfect at home in some situations. In others, it appears completely out of place.

Japanese Iris

Japanese iris is a splendid sight at a pool or stream, unbecoming in a soil pocket in a rock garden. Or the quantity of a plant may influence your opinion concerning its beauty. 

Six or so lilies together make a gratifying picture, while a single lily, regardless of how beautiful its flower spike, is completely unreasonable, shooting up seemingly out of nowhere.

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