Design and planting tips

There's just a smidgeon of time to remain sane, before the garden centres are stuffed with plants yelping to be taken home. Repeat offenders, you know who you are. You load up at the nursery with new, improved, more fragrant, less invasive, longer-flowering plants, you take them home and walk around semi-comatose trying to find places to put them.

I recently attended a horticultural convergence, where wise men and women tried to help us help ourselves. I scribbled some notes, so that I too might avoid the binge-purge cycle of gardening. Here are some traps to avoid and ideas to employ.

• Forget the 250-foot perennial border.
  This advice came from a man who makes his living selling perennials. "Most perennials bloom for 2-3 weeks and then look horrid," he said. Employ the mixed border instead. Add small trees and shrubs to garden beds. By planting elegant shrubs, like a Shasta viburnum and a fothergilla, you'll get height, structure, good foliage and peaceful areas in the garden, that demand nothing.
• Drought tolerant doesn't mean a "Cactus and Cow Skulls" garden.
  There are many examples of gardens that get along fine without water. I have never seen Russian sage, coreopsis, lavender, catmint, sweet woodruff, lamium or perennial geranium wilt. The more you withhold water from the garden, the tougher your plants become. If you are away much of the summer, plant lots of ornamental grasses.
• Give up growing grass underneath dense shade trees.
  Two of the greediest trees and most widely planted are Norway maple and lindens. They suck water and nutrients from the earth, and their thick roots ripple near the surface of the ground. Grass is impossible to grow here. Try shallow-rooted ground covers like lamium, ivy, epimedium or ajuga. Alternatively, rotate pots of more colourful plants like begonias, impatiens, astilbe and coral-bells underneath the trees, and then out again when they need more light.
• Make peace with white birch.
  They are beautiful, but frail. Just when they look good in the garden they keel over, full of borers (insects that tunnel inside the tree and cut off the flow of sap). A fine substitute is the river birch (Betula nigra). This birch is heat resistant, borer resistant and has lovely peeling cinnamon-brown bark. For best growth, it likes a moist soil.
• Don't plant hogs like Norway spruce in small yards.
  If you do, it will obliterate your house, and you'll have to slash and burn your way to the front door. A perfect evergreen for small yards is the Serbian spruce (Picea omorika). It has a slender trunk, elegant drooping branches, and best of all it is narrow - only 10- to 12-feet wide as it reaches maturity. The Serbian spruce is adaptable and hardy to zones 4-7.
• Splashy plants give the garden a lift.
  The yellowy-green of Golden oregano and the midnight black of Black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens') looks like something right off the runways of Milan. This would look snazzy in a container. Another dazzler is the perennial grass hakonechloa (sometimes called Japanese hair grass). It's slow to get established, but that can be good in a small garden. Once it is bulked up it looks like a soft yellow waterfall, fine for a semi-shady area with adequate water. Another vivacious plant for part shade is Brunnera 'Jack Frost'. The deep-blue flowers in the spring are a bonus. But the veined leaves, the colour of melted pewter, are flawless from spring until fall.
• Mulch with skill.
  Any new planting of perennials will benefit from a two- to three-inch layer of mulch. But you have to keep the mulch away from the crowns or stems of your plants so it doesn't cause them to rot. So, try this after you've planted - invert the pot the plants came in over the plant and then mulch. It will keep the plant from being smothered.

So, yes, it's the time to puff up on good intentions. Shop sensibly, know your plants, wean your garden off water, make woody plants your workhorses, and shake up your colour combinations. I'm dubbing this the "Easy Elegance" garden. I'm going to try it in my garden. I'll report back in August after the normal six weeks of drought.