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Native Plants in the Formal Border—A Wildly Elegant Design
Plants & Gardens News Volume 20, Number 3 | Fall 2005/Winter 2006
by Patricia A. Taylor
Too often gardeners think of natives in terms of wildflowers, with an emphasis on the "wild." In actuality, many are among the most elegant plants one can have in a garden. Consider, for example, this formal display of East Coast natives. This part-shade garden, pictured here in September, features plants with flower colors ranging from soft white through pink, red, and bluish purple. There is also an abundance of foliage color and contrast.
The star of the design is one of the loveliest and most neglected natives—bowman's root. This two- to four-foot-tall perennial features glossy, cut-leaf foliage, mahogany-red stems, and a profusion of crystal-white star-shaped flowers in late spring. In fall, the foliage turns a spectacular scarlet red. Nearby, the purplish-blue flowers and bluish-green foliage of smooth aster act as a cool buffer between the glowing red fall leaves of the dwarf Virginia sweetspire. The creamy-white flowers on the late-blooming summersweet shrub not only complement the white spires of the lobelia but also emit a strong fragrance that wafts over the setting.
Bordering this design are the warm-pink, long-blooming flowers of the dwarf aster and the green and purple foliage of two heuchera cultivars. Heuchera villosa 'Autumn Bride' is decked with creamy-white flowers for weeks at this time of year, and the mottled, warm-purple foliage of H. 'Montrose Ruby' is handsome throughout the growing season, its early-summer flowers a bonus.
This native plant combination not only provides interest in fall but in spring and summer as well, when butterflies, bees, and moths flock around the flowers in bloom. Perhaps best of all, the plants are easy to care for, requiring neither pesticides nor fertilizers but only reasonably drained soil, a weekly watering during severe dry spells, and four to six hours of sun. Thus, the only thing “wild” about this native plant design is the amount of pleasure to be obtained from it.
- Aster dumosus 'Alice Haslam' (hybrid dwarf aster)
- Aster laevis (smooth aster)
- Clethra alnifolia 'September Beauty' (summersweet)
- Itea virginica 'Sprich' (Little Henry) (dwarf Virginia sweetspire)
- Gillenia trifoliata (bowman's root)
- Heuchera villosa 'Autumn Bride' (heuchera)
- Heuchera 'Montrose Ruby' (heuchera hybrid)
- Lobelia siphilitica 'Alba' (lobelia)
Patricia A. Taylor is a popular garden writer and lecturer and the author of Easy Care Native Plants.
Illustration: Paul Harwood