4 Winning Plant Combinations - Year-Round Garden Design

I think that the holy grail of garden design is learning how to create a garden that looks great all season long. By using a mix of hard-working anchor plants, perennials, bulbs, self-sowers, and climbers, we should be able to create a succession of plants that last all season long. The thing is, this is easy to say and not very easy to do. I've spent the last year studying gardens and reading old garden design books to deep dive into what makes a garden truly remarkable. One of the books I read was a book written by Christopher Lloyd called Succession Planting for Year-Round Pleasure. This book unlocks the secrets of how to create a garden that is ever changing and exciting throughout the entire growing season. In today's video, we're covering part two of Christopher Lloyd's wonderful book, and we're going to be focusing on four plant combinations that will grow in our Midwest gardens. If you missed part one of the series, I'll be sure to leave a link in the description below. So let's go ahead and get started. Christopher Lloyd wasn't just any gardener. For decades, he cultivated Great Dixter, one of England's most renowned gardens. A garden that's often described as a place where something magnificent is always happening, no matter the month. The front cover of the book describes what we can expect from its contents, and this is what it says. Week after week, year in, year out, visitors flock to see Christopher Lloyd's exuberant plants at Great Dixter in Sussex, England, wondering how on earth he achieves the continuously exciting and ever-changing displays. In succession planting for year-round pleasure, he reveals the secrets and wily tricks of keeping his celebrated borders lively in every season. The book suggests ways that gardeners can achieve year-round interest in their gardens using a mix of hard-working anchor plants, perennials, bulbs, self-sowers, and climbers. This is an easy thing to say, but getting that combination of plants to work well and grow well together, that requires detailed knowledge of how plants grow. Like all artistic endeavors, there is no substitute for hands-on experience. In the book, Christopher Lloyd provides plant combinations that he used at Great Dixter, and many of these plants I found will actually grow in our Midwest gardens. In the book, he encourages us to find companion plants that can grow well together throughout the entire growing season, first by combining spring-blooming bulbs, spring-flowering woodland plants, and perennials, and then these plants are further enhanced by adding bedding plants, self-sowers, and climbers. The only way to master succession planting is to learn about plants, think about how they'll look during the growing season, and pair plants together that make good neighbors. Again, this is easy to say and not easy to do, but luckily Christopher Lloyd gives us plenty of plant combinations that we can try. In today's video, I'm sharing four plant combinations, combinations of perennials and bulbs, that I think will work well in our Midwest gardens. The first plant combination I want to discuss starts with two spring-blooming bulbs combined with geranium, euphorbia, and hydrangea. The first bulb is here up on the Dutch Grown website, the white-blooming anemone called White Splendor, and you can see here this is a familiar bulb for most people. I grow this in my own garden. This is a gorgeous white little bloom that disappears completely once it's done for the season. And the second spring-blooming bulb is this dwarf iris reticulata. I found a variety here on the BECCS website that is just this gorgeous blue color. Again, this is a dwarf variety of iris, it blooms in the spring, and it's great for underneath plants. So the book recommends some geraniums to pair our spring-blooming bulbs with, one of which is this geranium, Ann Folkert. I was able to find a source on the Bluestone Perennial website, and I see this geranium in many gardening books, and it's easy to see why. It's got these deep magenta blooms with dark centers, making for a very striking color combination. And you can see here that the bloom time is early summer to early fall, so I think that this geranium, Ann Folkert, would be a great combination to add to our gardens in the Midwest. So the book recommends Euphorbia Schlingii, which is actually not cold tolerant, so I did locate a couple other varieties of wood spurge, one on the Bluestone Perennial website. You can see here it's just got this great foliage, and this is an early summer bloomer, from mid-spring to early summer. And there's also a variety, this gets about 18 inches tall, there's a variety that gets about 20 inches tall on the White Flower Farms website, and you can see a picture of it here. So again, for the Midwest, we would have to find a more appropriate cold hardy wood spurge, and you also need to make sure that the variety that you choose is not invasive in your area. The last plant in combination one is the Hydrangea arborescens, the variety Annabelle. This is a native to North America, and this plant grows great in my own garden. I do need to provide some support for the blooms, they get very large and have a tendency to flop if it gets pretty rainy during the season. But this plant starts blooming in June and looks great the whole garden season. That brings us to the second plant combination, which is a simple one, that's the combination of Winter Aconites and Hosta. And Christopher Lloyd says in the book that the combination of Winter Aconites and Hosta make the perfect combination, because once the Aconites are finished blooming, the Hosta forms a protective umbrella around the bulbs so that you don't accidentally disturb them. Lloyd mentions that his favorite Hosta is Crosa Regal, and I can see why. I was able to find a source for this Hosta on the White Flower Farm website. This is a 20 to 28 inch tall Hosta with blue upright foliage. It's just gorgeous indeed. I have to say that my own experience is that Hostas make great companions with spring blooming bulbs in general. Because of the timing of the leaves of the Hosta opening up once the bulbs are done, the Hosta can act to hide a lot of the dying foliage. The third plant combination consists of an Allium, a Tulip, and a Japanese Anemone. The book describes that Japanese Anemones are protagonists that offer opportunities for succession planting before they flower in late summer, and their favorite variety is a single white Anemone, Anorine Jaubert. This is a super tall white flowering variety of Anemone. It grows about three to four feet tall. I found this white Anemone on the White Flower Farm website. I also found the second variety of Anemone that's mentioned, and that's September Charm. I would like to point out, however, that Japanese Anemones do have a tendency to become thugs in the garden, so that's something that you want to keep in mind. So one of the Alliums that's mentioned to pair with the Japanese Anemones is the Allium variety Christophi. I actually grow this Allium in my own garden, and you can see it here on the Bluestone Perennials website. This is a shorter Allium. It's 14 inches tall, but it gets an incredibly huge softball-sized bloom, and it makes a wonderful dried flower. And this third combination of plants mentions a Darwin Tulip. I'm not 100% certain how to pronounce this variety's name, but you can see it here. I located this Tulip on the Brecks website. So this is described as a It gets 22 inches tall, and it's got red and bright yellow petals. And the fourth plant combination that I want to discuss consists of a Daylily, sharing space with a Daffodil, a Narrow Leaf Tulip, and interplanted with Perennial Phlox, Phlox Penticulata. So we're here on the shootgardening.com website, and this is where I was able to find a picture of the Daylily that's mentioned in the book. The variety is Marion Vaughn. I was actually not able to find a U.S.-based source for this Daylily. You can see here it's got a bright yellow, like a bright lemony yellow color, and it's about a three foot tall Daylily. Now I personally don't care for Daylilies because I think that they're kind of thugs in the garden, but I wanted to share this combination because it is in the book, and I know a lot of people love Daylilies. The book pairs the Daylily with the Narrow Leaf Tulip Linifolia, and you can see that Tulip here on the John Sheeper's website. This is a bright red Tulip. It's about six inches tall, and the website mentions that this Tulip perennializes better than most Tulips. This Tulip dates back to 1884. Now the book also mentions pairing the Daylily with a Narrow Leaf Daffodil. I thought what was interesting is that there's a picture here on the John Sheeper website that does show this Tulip paired with a Narrow Leaf Daffodil. Now the Daffodil that was mentioned in the book is called Dove Wings. I wasn't able to find a U.S. source, but I thought that this Jet Fire Daffodil would be a similar Narrow Leaf Daffodil that would look great with this combination. The last plant mentioned in our fourth plant combination is Phlox Paniculata, which is a fall blooming Phlox. There are a number of varieties available, and here on the Eden Brothers website you can see my favorite, David, with its clear white blooms. This variety of plant is mildew resistant. It gets approximately two to three feet tall with an upright clumping habit. It blooms in late summer and early autumn. This is a wonderful plant. While it's impossible to include all of the plant combinations and techniques that were included in this book, I do hope you enjoyed the ones that I shared that really should do well in our Midwest gardens. I'd love to hear if you've tried any of these plant combinations yourself. Please leave some comments below. And that's it for this video, and we'll see you in the next one.