Many new homeowners who show excellent taste in furnishing their houses are at a loss when it comes to planting their grounds. Often, the chief reason for poor landscaping is a lack of experience with the basic materials—plants.
Concentrate On Annuals
One of the best ways to start learning about plants is to concentrate on annuals. Fortunately, these flowers are inexpensive to grow from seed, or the dozen can purchase plants.
Most importantly, they thrive on sunny new lots in poor or mediocre soil. In every part of our country, annuals can be grown in great variety. The chief problem for the beginner is to be selective in his choice.
Good Practice In Ordering Seeds
Good practice in ordering seeds is supplement catalog checking with a garden tour. Record dimensions of planting areas, as well as the approximate heights of plants to be planted in them.
At the same time, choose a general color scheme to blend with the house and any existing outdoor masonry or planting.
Color Schemes
Many color schemes are suitable for a house painted a soft yellow with white trim. For example, bright yellow flowers can predominate, with others in true red, orange, and clear blue for contrast.
Blue and orange are complementary colors, as they are opposite in the color wheel. This scheme is certain to suit a family fond of bright primary colors. Or, if preferred, the combination can be toned down to salmon pink, yellow, blue, and white.
Analog Scheme
Another possible color scheme for this house is an analogous one, using two neighboring colors only, such as yellow and orange, in various tones and tints.
Another analogous scheme, somewhat amplified, might cover a combination of purple, blue and pink, with soft yellow or white for contrast.
Monochromatic Scheme
Possible, but usually less popular, is a monochromatic scheme using one color only, such as all red or all yellow. Perhaps the most successful of this type is an all-white garden.
White flowers show up reasonably well at dusk and later when working couples are free to enjoy their gardens.
It is sensible to use one color scheme throughout a property. However, some people repeat that of the house interior.
For the experiment, however, the new gardener might like to plan on two different schemes: bright primary colors in the backyard and more subtle ones out front.
Guide For Choosing Annuals
When choosing annuals, color should not blind the gardener to other significant factors. Equally important — if not more so — are the heights and widths of plants in the areas they are to occupy.
Often overlooked entirely is the general character of each plant and its habit. Is it upright or sprawly, coarse or dainty, glossy or dull?
These and other points given in catalog descriptions of annuals can help guide the selection of kinds for particular groupings.
Tall Annuals
Starting at the front of the house, bold lemony-yellow African marigolds and blue salvia are good choices to fill in against the house or between small evergreen shrubs.
These two tall annuals “step down,” both in plant size and flower importance, to cut-and-come-again zinnias in pastel and salmon pinks.
To hold this grouping together, an edging of dwarf golden-yellow marigolds and blue ageratum is used to remain effective throughout the season.
Low-growing Annuals
For repetition of the same color scheme on a nearby slope beside the driveway, rely on sprawling and squatty annuals.
They include black eyed-Susan vine, yellow creeping zinnia (Sanvitalia), baby-blue-eyes (nemophila), annual pinks, portulaca in salmon, yellow and white, and petunias and verbenas in blue, pink, and white.
A bold mass of lemon and gold African marigolds introduced toward the top of the slope gives importance to this annual mass planting, which acts as ground covers.
In the sunny backyard, a U-shaped annual border may be planned to follow all or part of the side and rear lines of the property. For this formal treatment, a symmetrically balanced planting makes a good solution.
Annual Burning Bush
Within the lot, the line tries a hedge of the annual burning bush (kochia) as background for the other plants. Purple larkspur and yellow snapdragon make spiky-flower accents to repeat in small groups every 8’ or 10’ feet of the border’s length.
Among these groups can be massed a combination of three or four flowers, such as red and white petunias, blue and white asters, yellow marigolds, or zinnias. As edging, dwarf marigold is a possibility.
Or there can be a combination of blue wishbone flower (torenia) and white and purple sweet alyssum.
Where Color Counts
Where shade is a problem, it is common sense to build the flower border on the sunny side of the yard only. The planting can carry across the back, too, and terminate in a bird bath at the far rear corner.
To lead one’s eye to this focal point, dainty flowers in delicate colors near the house make a gradual transition to larger and brighter ones. Then they end in a splash of bold flowers in brilliant hues around the bird bath.
Rearranging For New Scheme
Using the same list as above but rearranging and amplifying them for this new scheme, flowers start near the house with masses of such dainty kinds as larkspur, French marigolds, blue salvia, and annual phlox, edged with dwarf ageratum and sweet alyssum.
Gradually bolder ones are introduced, including snapdragon, petunia, and aster edged with wishbone-flower, dwarf marigold, and sweet alyssum.
Finally, around the bird bath itself, the planting is climaxed by tall white cleome, African marigold, zinnia, and aster, edged with dwarf lobelia and dwarf dahlia.
Quick Screening Annuals
Sometimes quick screening with annuals near the back door or sitting area is needed. For either of the borders described, two or more castor oil plants may be underplanted with red and yellow celosia or with brightly colored dwarf dahlias edged with blue browallia and dwarf marigolds.
44659 by Alice Dustan