There are certain types of plant that are invaluable in any garden, because of the qualities they bring to a bed or border, such as movement, focus and colour. Identifying these helpful heroes and what they can do for you will take your planting schemes to the next level and solve some common issues too.
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Is your garden boring?
The fine romantics
These are the tall, see-through, gauzy plants that give any planting a romantic feel. They add a delicate misty layer to gardens, balancing out bulkier species and larger leaves. Erigeron annuus is the perfect annual for this purpose. At 1.5m tall, it works well mid-border, where you can see through its skinny vertical silhouette of white daisy-topped stems. These blooms appear throughout summer and autumn, giving rise to gentle seeding in self-selected sunny spots.
Patrinia scabiosifolia behaves in a similar way and attains a comparable height. In contrast, however, its floral structures are flat-topped umbels composed of hundreds of tiny yellow flowers that ultimately give way to chartreuse seeds, which extend the season of display by several months. Scattered through a border, it provides continuity and its lofty stems reveal the view behind them. Other interesting see-through plants include Eryngium pandanifolium, Anethum graveolens (dill) and Pastinaca sylvestris (wild parsnip), as well as the ubiquitous Verbena bonariensis.
The front runners
These front-of-border stars ensure you don’t have any eye-catching patches of bare soil on immediate view, and should perform across many seasons. Bistorta affinis ‘Donald Lowndes’ blooms for nearly eight months. It has a succession of short flower spikes that fade from red through pink, held above a spreading semi-evergreen mat of foliage little more than 10cm high.
Grow bulbs, such as Colchicum autumnale ‘Album’, through it to complement its ruddy autumnal foliage tones. Equally charming and of a similar scale is the ornamental strawberry Fragaria x ananassa Pink Panda (= ‘Frel’), which flowers all summer long. Lopezia racemosa ‘Pretty Rose’ (often sold as Lopezia cordata ‘Pretty Rose’) blooms from May until the frosts, with floaty, pink, mosquito-like flowers.
The movers and shakers
These are the plants that offer movement, ensuring your planting doesn’t look rigid and static. Wafting, lofty ornamental grasses such as Panicum virgatum ‘Northwind’ animate the garden. This super-vertical cultivar is a true column of foliage in mid-green through summer, taking on golden tones in autumn. At 2m tall, it can work as a sentinel, dotted through a border or as a seasonal hedge.
Its diminutive cousin Briza maxima is also a grass, but it’s a very different proposition. At little more than 35cm high, it’s the pendulous heart-shaped seedpods of this grass that provide the movement as they dance and bobble about in the breeze. Alternatively, for a hugely different look, try Datisca cannabina. Bearing apple-green arched stems arranged in a fountain form, and reaching 3m tall, its flowers are borne in long tassel strands that hang and sway alluringly in the wind.
The drama queens
Every garden needs some wow plants that draw the eye and create a bit of drama. Bold form, scale, texture and colour are key when creating a focal point and my three picks all have these qualities in droves. Melanoselinum decipiens is a giant monocarpic umbel originating in Madeira. Aloft a clear stem,
it creates an umbrella of foliage, with flowers that reach up to 3m. Sow the seeds fresh and grow a few as backups. Equally dramatic is Puya chilensis. Forming huge rosettes of eye-catching, spiny, silver foliage, it has the added benefit of occasionally throwing up tall, chartreuse flower spikes. Finally, there’s a real diva: Canna x ehemanii. Reaching up to 3m in height, its leaves are heading towards banana status, while its flowers are unusually pendulous and an intense neon pink.
The gloom lifters
Lots of our go-to evergreen shrubs and conifers carry a dark, heavy green, which can feel oppressive without the balance of paler evergreens to lift the winter gloom. Hailing from New Zealand, Pittosporum tenuifolium is an upright oval shrub that bears small, rippled, rounded, glossy pale-green leaves all year round. It can be topiarised or clipped and retained under 2m, or left to its natural form to reach up to 7m.
It produces tiny dark flowers with a delicious scent, as does its pale-leaved rival Elaeagnus x submacrophylla. Often dismissed as basic, this landscape shrub makes a perfect pale hedge of 1-3m high, or a free-form shrub up to 5m. Alternatively, for a distinctive pale blue-grey tone, and the unusual texture of its tiny, scalpel-shaped leaves, grow Acacia pravissima. At just 3m tall, this small tree makes a statement with its quirky leaves and prolific, yellow pompom flowers in winter.
The fast growers
It’s good to have some height at the back of a border, but achieving that sense of maturity at pace calls for speedy shrubs and perennials. Growing to 2m with ease in its first year, Anisodontea ‘El Rayo’ is a true marvel, blooming year-round with deep-pink, dark-centred blooms. It will reach 3.5m but starts to fade away in year four, so requires propagation.
Impatiens tinctoria is almost as fast. Its succulent stems hit 2m in year one, with scented, white, butterfly-like blooms. Grow it in dappled shade and provide a dry mulch over winter. Or, for a truly tough option, Kitaibela vitifolia grows to 2m in its first year, with grape-like leaves and elegant hibiscus-like blooms.
The evergreen perennials
Perennial plants that retain their compact, delicate foliage throughout the year are extremely useful for providing colour and structure in the depths of winter. One hugely underused perennial is London pride, Saxifraga x urbium, which produces rosettes of spatula-shaped leaves that have a serrated edge, and just keep looking good. Top that with a flurry of floaty flowers in white with a pink centre and, to my mind, you have a near-perfect plant.
More unusual is Chrysosplenium macrophyllum. Creating tight ground cover, it has bergenia-like leaves and umbelliferous blooms with a hydrangea vibe. It’s the duck-billed platypus of the plant world, and all the more wonderful for it. Expect 20cm height and a metre or more of spread in sun or dappled shade. In contrast, the spiny, pale-green leaves of Helleborus lividus form a glorious hummock that provides mid-height structure of 60-70cm to borders in winter, and a delicious backdrop to bulbs in spring.
The gap fillers
Foliage plants can give the eye a rest and fill any gaps with textural interest. Trochodendron aralioides is a substantial tree, which can be maintained as a shrub and has a weighty quality and a dark neutrality to its dark, glossy foliage that flatters paler foliage in front of it. Grow it for its bulk and dark backdrop, which is also the perfect foil to its clusters of zingy chartreuse flowers.
Better suited to paler plantings, Mediterranean borders or gravel gardens, the stunning Melianthus major from South Africa creates a substantial mound of blue-grey foliage. It is ideal in mixed and herbaceous borders, where it sets off nearly every colour you place next to it. The flowers don’t always appear, but when they do the brick-red tone sparkles. Alternatively, try Corokia cotoneaster from New Zealand for a very different textural quality. Its zig-zagging branches layer to form geometric patterns with a smattering of tiny leaves and a flurry of yellow, star-shaped flowers in summer.
The bridge builders
These are the magical mid-level plants that bridge the gap between low stuff at the front and the tall grasses, shrubs or perennials at the back of the border. These transition plants are essential to lift your eye from the ground-level showstoppers up to the loftier species providing backing to the border. To do their job, this set of plants needs to have a bulky, blocky quality to them, and Phlox paniculata ‘Blue Paradise’, Clematis recta ‘Purpurea’ and Lepechinia hastata provide just that.
The phlox is one of the stronger cultivars of this genus and carries mauve-blue blooms on its 1m-high stems in midsummer, with the foliage transitioning from green to a not-too-shabby gold as autumn arrives. The clematis will require some pea sticks for support, but creates a solid block up to 1.3m mid-border, topped with small, white, four-petalled blooms. The texture of the foliage and its plumby-brown tone makes a great backdrop to a wide range of pink hues. Finally, for a true ‘what’s-that?’ plant, grow Lepechinia hastata. It is a real one-off, to 1.3m tall, with near-upright, open-mouthed tubular flowers in a slightly dusty, deep magenta, set off against delightfully crinkly foliage with the texture of cracked earth.
