I love a good sale, and right now plants are marked down all over the area. It’s a good time to take a look at the bare spots in your beds and borders, on your porches and patios, as well as in your containers. Making improvements is easy and at the moment relatively cheap.
There are four things that you can do with bare spots: add more perennials, install some annuals, drop in well-filled containers or do nothing. Nature abhors bare ground, so if you choose the latter, your space will fill with weeds in roughly the time it takes to go to the gas station.
Perennials are wonderful because once you install them you will see the fruits of your labors return year after year, often in larger and larger clumps. If you want to fill your bare spots with perennials, buy plants that are blooming now. For example, if one of your beds needs color at this point in the season, buy Asiatic lilies, daylilies, stokesia, Shasta daisies, helenium or coreopsis. If you need something larger, invest in hydrangea, especially the beautiful Hydrangea quercifolia or oakleaf hydrangea. Its large flower panicles are just starting to turn from white to pale pink, and they are perfect for fresh or dried arrangements. Some of the rhododendron species are blooming now as well.
When you shop for perennials, take a hard look at the marked-down plants. They are probably a little root bound and possibly a bit shabby around the edges. You can tell that a specimen is root bound when you see roots sticking out of the drainage holes at the bottom of the pot. This is not necessarily a tragedy. When you get the plant home, take it out of the pot, trim off the roots that were emerging from the holes, and loosen the root ball, spreading the roots as you install the plant. Be sure to water it in–pouring some water into the planting hole before you insert the plant. Chances are your slightly shopworn specimen will perk right up.
Adding annuals is a great thing to do if you want instant and fairly constant color, and you don’t mind the fact that the plant will shrivel when the first frost comes in the fall, never to return. Of course some annuals are vigorous self-seeders and become like perennials. In that case you may have an abundance of riches next season.
At this time of year I especially like the little rose-form impatiens or the blue-purple and white torenia, sometimes known as “wishbone flower,” for shade. If your bare spot is in the sun, go a little beyond the usual marigolds and try tall, exotic cleome or some of the more unusual zinnias, petunias or snapdragons.
Annuals that you purchase now will probably also be root bound. Use the same techniques as for perennials. The annuals may be “leggy” as well, with relatively long stems or stalks. The best thing to do with a leggy plant is cut back the stems by at least a third, even if it means forsaking flowers for the moment. The pruning will rejuvenate the plants, and new growth will appear almost immediately. Within a week new buds will sprout, and, with careful deadheading, you can have color for the rest of the season. When you install your new annuals it is also a good idea to add some fertilizer or compost tea, as all annuals are heavy feeders.
Gertrude Jekyll used pots full of colorful plants to pep up her famous borders, and her example is a good one. If your garden is heavy on perennials, chances are there are times when it lacks color because the bloom times of various varieties do not necessarily overlap. If this is the case, make up a pot of annuals, or mixed perennials, annuals and grasses to drop into the colorless area. This can be either a temporary step or a longer term remedy. It also gives you the flexibility to try out new colors or combinations without making a permanent commitment. Your pots may contain only one variety or color, or hold an interesting mix of hues and textures. If you choose the latter, be sure to remember to put in “a thriller, a filler and a spiller”–in other words, a tall plant for vertical accent, a medium plant to fill in around the base of the tall plant, and a cascading variety to drip foliage artistically over the side. If your pots are going into garden beds, be sure to mulch underneath and around them. There is nothing worse than seeing a gorgeous potted specimen emerging from a sea of weeds.
The key to having a beautiful garden is to see it with a critical eye every time you walk around it. Be ready to change, rearrange and rejuvenate. It will keep you and your garden from becoming stale and colorless.