In the harsh, unpredictable climate of the Midwest, the goal of “season-long color” in a perennial border seems completely out of reach. The weather is always going to extremes – too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry. Against such odds any dream of pictorial gardening is hardly more than a mirage.
Yet it can be done! In East St. Louis, Illinois, there is an indefatigable green-thumb gardener who regularly achieves such a miracle. Mrs. Thomas E. Harmon has a perennial border that is bright with bloom from the first crocuses of spring until the last chrysanthemum bows to the inevitable November frost. By dint of meticulous planning, supplemented by plenty of hard spadework, Mrs. Harmon produces a succession of beautiful flower pictures throughout each growing season.
Let’s examine the planning. Everything about her garden shows the fine results of a good over-all plan. The foundation planting of broad-leaved evergreens was designed for year-’round effect. The backyard has a wide perennial border that affords a colorful vista equally inviting from the house itself or from the screened living porch. A small but highly productive vegetable garden, with its brick-bordered beds, is almost as decorative as the flowers.
The Harmons’ attractive story-and-a-half house of brown-stained shingles, with white doorway and shutters, faces southwest. The foundation planting contains such fine hollies as Ilex cornuta Burlordi and I. crenata convexa. These aristocrats are undaunted by the hot summer sun, and their glossy leaves are decorative through the lone winter months.
Choice rhododendrons thrive in a shaded area on the north side of the house. On the south are flowering trees – a fine buxom specimen of the starry magnolia (Magnolia stellata) and a white dogwood, underplanted with the vivid rose-red Hinodcgiri azaleas. Clumps of MOUNT TACOMA peony-flowered tulips and twin rows of white NiOON MOTH pansies make handsome edging.
A wide grass path separates this planting from trees and shrubs grouped along the border of the yard. Here there are boxwoods, a pink dogwood tree, and clumps of PINK PEARL azaleas. To enhance the beauty of this garden picture Mrs. Harmon has added the white and blue of MOUNT TACOMA and BLUE PARROT tulips, lilac-blue clumps of wild sweet William (Phlox divaricata) and mounds of snowy white perennial candytuft (Theris sempervirens).
Mrs. Harmon has wisely grouped her perennials in a single big bed to make an eye-splashing concentration of color. It is shaped like a wide U, with one long arm and a broad base forming a border planting on two sides of the property. Using her garden hose to outline the edge of the bed, she made a long, sweeping compass curve that is very pleasing to the eye.
Mrs. Harmon not only has an artist’s eye for striking color combinations, but also she has the gardening know-how necessary to get plants that complement each other to come into bloom at just the proper time. Although her perennial border is abloom through the season, there are four periods of peak color: April, mid-May, mid-June, and September.
For her springtime show, as well as for the flower pictures later in the season, she puts strong emphasis on a few favorite colors, mainly shades of blue, pink, and rose, with highlights of white and gold. She plants enough flowers of each variety to create drifts of bloom that blend in glowing masses of color.
Flowering trees add an interesting dimension to the springtime border. At one corner of the garden, beneath a redhud tree, double EROS tulips are interplanted with Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) in a fine symphony of pink and white. Tulips also bloom beneath the fringe tree (Chionanthus virginica) at the other corner.
Nestled between the fringe tree and the edge of the border is a small pool, which makes a focal point of special interest. Beyond the pool a decorative vase stands beside a springtime planting of white water-lily tulips, faced with a golden band of pansies. Later in the season this same spot will be occupied by clumps of HAPPY DAYS iris. orange-gold Siberian wallflowers, and an edging of dwarf veronica that reflects the blue of the vase.
The last of the early bulbs and perennials are still in bloom at the beginning of the big Maytime show of iris, peonies, columbines, painted daisies, delphiniums, and astilbe. Just a little later come the regal lilies and biennials: stately spires of digitalis; Canterbury bells in pink, blue, and white; and masses of gay, dependable sweet William.
In July, when most perennial gardens in the St. Louis area are looking pretty woebegone, Mrs. Harmon enjoys her favorite color scheme. Drifts of hardy phlox in shades of pink and rose are flanked with the vivid blue of Belladonna, Bellamosum, and Pacific Hybrid delphiniums. Airy clumps of MAJESTIC shasta daisies and HYPERION and GOLDEN BELL hemerocallis provide highlights of white and gold.
Stars of the autumn show are chrysanthemums and hardy asters, supported by the soft pastel shades of annual asters.
She also grows a variety of hardy asters, including dwarf cushion types like LILAC TIME and NIOBE. Two of her favorite tall-growing asters are white MOUNT EVEREST and HARR1NGTON’S PINK. The chrysanthemums which she likes best are: AVALANCHE and MRS. RILEY, in white; CLARA CURTIS, a single pink; and the early-blooming WHITE CACTUS and YELLOW CACTUS.
Worthy of special mention is the effective border planting of dwarf perennials that accentuates the graceful outline of the bed. Planted in units of three or four of a kind are clumps of white iberis, salmon-colored heuchera, and dwarf Veronica rupestris, in blue. Mrs. Harmon has repeated each unit at recurring intervals, to give an effect of continuity. In the springtime this edging is a veritable ribbon of bloom, and through most of the year the plants form tidy mounds of green. To provide June-to-frost color, rosy-red Chinese pinks and blue cups of nierembergia are added.
All of Mrs. Harmon’s perennials are exceptionally robust and floriferous. At the very beginning she gave her bed meticulous soil preparation, working in generous quantities of compost and manure to a depth of at least 15 inches. Each year since then she has added organic matter, and she feeds her flowers systematically.
Peonies, iris and delphiniums receive bonemcal and wood ashes or lime in both spring and fall. Hardy asters and chrysanthemums are fed with superphosphate three times during the growing season, beginning in May, with feedings spaced about six weeks apart. The hardy phlox arc mulched with barnyard manure in June or even earlier if the weather is hot and dry. In late fall, just as the perennials arc settling down for their long winter nap, the soil is mulched with cow manure – a covering that provides an insulation and at the same time adds fertility to the soil. She is careful, however, to keep the manure away from the crowns of the plants, for even in the winter months good aeration and drainage are essential.
Mrs. Harmon’s vegetable garden, which is separated from the perennial bed by a brick-edged walk, also receives careful soil preparation. She adds compost, manure, and fertilizer each year and, as a result, harvests an unbelievable quantity of vegetables from this miniature plot.
Onions, lettuce, radishes, and other salad crops grow in trim, brick-bordered beds, with even a row or two of corn. There are enough green beans and tomatoes for both table and canning, with surpluses for friends and neighbors.
Near the vegetable garden are the brick coldframes, where Mrs. Harmon grows quantities of seedlings, which serve as replacements and fill-ins for her perennial border. Besides a few annuals, she raises such biennials as digitalis, Canterbury bells, sweet William, pansies, and Siberian wallflowers.
Among perennials grown from seed are columbines, painted daisies, pinks, and many types of delphiniums. Since the glamorous Pacific Hybrid delphiniums tend to be short-lived in the Midwest, she treats these plants like biennials and sows fresh seed each summer. By the first of August seedlings are coming up thickly in her frames.
Although Mrs. Harmon is loyal to old favorites, she likes to try out new plants and new color combinations each season. A perfectionist, she is never completely satisfied with her garden, and even after nineteen years she is still planning changes and improvements.
Like many other enthusiasts she says that one of the greatest pleasures is to plan and look forward to the next season. With gardening there’s always a “tomorrow” and “next year.”
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