Re: Juniper Level / Tony Avent

In a message dated 10/16/02 2:54:35 AM Eastern Daylight Time, mtalt@hort.net 
writes:


> with borders using plants that flourish here.  Most "English" borders
> are not obtainable outside of the PNW or New England, but those in
> Raleigh are something most of us could make if we have the sun for
> them...and, of course, some space:-)  


Marge, would you settle for the form but fleshed out with different plants. 
The crammed style with a a good variety of genera (repeats along the way of 
the same plant is important)?   I think you can get the "feel" which is so 
successful without the need to use English plants.  Actually there are many 
left alone here, zone 4, because it is just too cold for them.  Gardeners 
love the English border style as it offers lots of diversity and something 
coming along all the parts of the growing season.  It is nostalgic and lush 
and has endured for a century.

If you substitute plants that like your growing area, a idea which should be 
at the top of your "plants to own" list,  you can achieve the same 
comfortable milieu minus some of the English plants.  The mixture of foliage 
and flowers can be done in any climate, it being a mistake to think you need 
to replicate what pix you see in the perennial guides which carry photographs 
of places you can never hope to duplicate. 

For some reason that has escaped me reading all these years we have evolved 
in the US, the US "mixed border" which is really the English border with some 
small woody plants and confers added.   The old idea of a perennial border 
which is absolutely flat in dormancy and mulched with manure makes for a 
plain or maybe even ugly strip around the garden.  The American idea of 
adding a few small conifers and some winter interest plants is now copied 
everywhere.

The "flat" idea is one that show plants rising as from the ashes each spring, 
bring a glorious spring and summer and returning to flatness come fall.  
Considering this we have added something which ends up becoming the "mixed 
border" which is now the standard and far more interesting to the gardener.

So I think we can have this somewhat modified design idea everywhere. We need 
only substitute plants that do well in our own area.  There is no need to 
think your "English" style border is not a superb perennial border just 
because European plants will not do well in it.  

One of the border ideas we can copy to good visual advantage is the idea of 
planting in drifts. That is to use certain very good plants in larger 
irregular patches through the border as a unifying feature.  

I have seen a lot of mixed borders and one in North Carolina, a college 
location which escapes me now, that featured plants doing well in the 
somewhat humid south. It is not the plants we need to copy but the form and 
design which does the trick.

There is no place in the US that does not have plants that thrive, it is us, 
the gardeners, who need to accept that we can work with plants that like our 
conditions.

Claire Peplowski
NYS z4

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