By garden designer Alice Bowe. Integrate light blooms in your planting, and see the twilight garden come alive.
It's
frustrating for many of us that we only return from work as the
light is fading or almost gone, aware of all the perfect garden
moments that have slipped by while we were stuck at the office.
However, with a little planning, it is possible to create a garden
that is at its peak at dusk - welcoming us in a cloud of fragrance
as we open the back door.
White, grey and silver are colours that appear to glow at dusk: an
optical effect that results from the ability of these colours to
bend invisible ultraviolet and infrared light into the visible
spectrum. In giving back more light than they receive, white, grey
and silver plants appear to effloresce.
White
and pale-coloured plants also tend to be the most fragrant, and it
is always worth including a selection of these night-scented treats
in your garden. Jasmines such as J. officinale and J. polyanthum
are best grown against a house wall where they will benefit from
the retained heat of the bricks, oozing a rich heady scent in the
evenings. This provision of scent close to the house can be
continued throughout the year, perhaps with a winter flowering
honeysuckle and pots of lily
of the valley, hyacinth
and tobacco plants. By
integrating fragrant white blooms and silver-leafed aromatics
throughout the planting scheme, you can create a scented garden all
year round.
The
delicate, aromatic foliage of grey and silver-leafed plants such as
lavender and
artemisia provide the
backbone of the planting and can be complimented by more structural
forms, perhaps Melianthus
major or the biennial sea holly Eryngium maritimum 'Miss
Willmott's Ghost'. Other silver plants include the non-flowering
lamb's ears Stachys byzantina 'Silver Carpet' or the wonderful,
silvery Convolvulus
cneorum.
Concentrated daubs of white can be used to draw the eye and as a striking focal point. You can achieve this effect by grouping together plants with large, white flowers such as Lavatera trimestris 'Mont Blanc' or Hibiscus syriacus 'Diana', whose flowers stay open at night.
White
flowers with an airy texture work in a different way, creating a
misty, romantic feel when dusted by frost and dew. Cleome, Gaura lindheimeri and gypsophila
work effectively as a subtle introduction to larger white blooms.
The best effect is gained by sparing use of white within a matrix
of grey and green foliage. The darker greens, greys and silvers of
the foliage form a strong background against which the white can
shine, as well as serving to separate the multitude of white shades
that appear in nature.
It is worth avoiding plants with white blooms, whose dead
petals
cling to the plant, such as roses and the white form of lilac.
Superior choices include spring-flowering snowdrops, the white flowering
bleeding heart Dicentra spectabilis 'Alba' and tulip
'White Triumphator'. These could be followed in summer with
Geranium 'Kashmir
White', white
foxgloves and the fluffy clouds of Crambe maritima, plus the
sweet scents of the tobacco plant Nicotiana sylvestris and a mock
orange Philadelphus
'Belle Etoile'. A wilder autumnal aspect could come from the
translucent grass-like molinia and the pale spires of Veronicastrum
virginicum 'Album', before rambling into the ghostly elegant
bramble Rubus thibetanus and a sweetly scented virburnum at the year's end.
With so many plants to choose from and so few precious daylight
hours in the garden, a moonlit garden never seemed more
appealing.