How to Create Colorful Flower Borders🌷🌼 | Talk & Tour with Cape Cottage Garden

Hello everyone, I am lucky enough to be here with Heather Thomas in her New Jersey garden this morning. Hey Heather. Hi. Thanks for having us today. Thanks for coming by. I can't wait to show everyone, you can just see a glimpse of it right now, but Heather has a really interesting approach to plant combinations and also just a lot of stories to tell us. So, let's start a little bit, let's start talking a little bit about the beginnings of this garden and the entrance here. Sure. So, we started the garden about seven years ago, a couple years after we moved in, and I was trying to figure out where do we begin with this garden, and then fate had it that a tree that was right here had to be taken down, and it was sitting in a bed of pakisandra, and when the tree came out, the whole spot was bathed in light, which is sort of a rare thing in this garden, so I thought that's where I'm going to start. And so my husband and I decided to pull the pakisandra out, which was, it was like pulling something out of concrete, it was such a hard task. What a project. Yeah. And so it was so difficult that my husband never came out and gardened again. Oh no! So I lost my husband to the cause at that point. But it was a good spot, not only because of the light, but I'm able to see it out of my kitchen window, so I was able to enjoy it. Right. And the other thing I did initially was put in this archway right here, and what it does, I think it really draws the eye as you come down the driveway, and it creates that sense of entrance into the side garden. It really does. It really draws people forward from the driveway down right into the garden, so let's go take a look. Great! Oh my goodness. So beautiful. And there's just so many different things going on at once. Yeah. But I know this is not, I mean, there's something going on all the time, right? There is, yeah. One of the things that people say about this garden is that it has this continuous flow over time, and I thought maybe I could share a little bit about how I've accomplished that. Absolutely. Let's start. So you're a professional communicator, so you obviously have lots of good ways to encapsulate ideas and make them really clear. I want to hear more about it. Oh, well, great. Thank you so much. So there's really four techniques, I think, that I've applied in this garden that weren't apparent to me when I was building the garden, but when I look back, I can see, oh, you know, these are the four things I really did that achieved that continuity of color. Right. Okay. The first thing we can talk about is the first, and they're all Cs, the four Cs, right? The first one is really this idea of companion planting. Now if you are a vegetable gardener, you might think of companion planting as, oh, I'm going to plant my basil with my tomatoes, right? Or the three sisters concept. But here I've taken that concept and I've sort of thought about it as pairing a spring with a summer and a fall plant as I plant it in, so I'm always pairing things that are going to bloom in the different seasons. Because it's so easy when you go to the garden center in the spring to buy whatever's blooming at the time, and then everything in your garden ends up looking, you know, at its peak all at the same time. All at the same time. I know. We get so tempted by that. It's true. So try to resist that. You know, pair a yarrow with an aster and you're good, right? Right. Exactly. Yeah. So in this garden, for example, so in this little area right here, what are some of the plants that you've been, you know, combining here? Sure. So in early spring, you can probably guess what I have a lot of right here. Tulips. A lot of tulips. Right. Yeah. I think they're so magical and I love to see the garden wake up from the winter and I really go to town with the tulips. Not just here, but all through the garden. It's just such a great way to splash color through. So what comes after the tulips? Great. Well, the next to bloom are really, these are hardy geraniums here. This is Johnson's blue and there's just a cloud of blue that runs through the space at the time. The other thing that, and we just missed it, that blooms after the tulips is our clematis, which drape the arch and really bring a lot of color to the late May timeframe. And it's really a stunning, it's one of those moments I look forward to every year. Like my tulips, I love when the clematis blooms. It's almost like every month is better than the next. There's always something to look forward to. Well, that's the goal. That's the goal. And then as we roll into, well, we're here in early June right now, so you can kind of see what's happening in the garden right now. So we have the irises, the pepticia, and the roses really have a big presence in this garden at the time as well. And so you kind of have this scene and then we have some peonies here and there still dotting the garden. That's really nice. And then what's next? What comes after this? So as we roll into summer, here's daylilies, for example, and we have yarrow in the spot. And then right there we have phlox. And so you're really picking out the yellow gets kind of introduced at this time, but you've got lots of pinks and this is kind of a yellowish white as well coming in. And then by fall. Yeah. So fall, here we have, this is bluebeard caryopteris that creates blue spikes in the garden. And then this is turtlehead shaloney that brings that pink and blue, but in the fall form. That's great. That just really keeps it going. And then you mentioned that you bring some dahlias in as well sometimes. I do. Yeah. So I actually grow my dahlias in grow bags. So what that allows me to do is in the fall, I'll sort of take a look at where the gaps are and there's so much foliage to hide the grow bags, I'm able to actually tuck in those dahlias here and there, such as a magenta one that would have been here last fall. I love that. That is such a smart way to grow, to bring that color in and tuck them in just where they, where you need them. Where you need them. What a great idea. So, so your color combination here is very much pinks and blues right now. Do you keep that? So you kind of keep that color going through the whole, through the whole year really? I do. You know, I think if you have a color combination that you really like, there's a lot of things you can do to kind of keep that same color going. And let me actually show you one way that I do that. Okay. All right. So here's an example of how I've kept the color going. So this is Silene, Red Campion, and it really takes off for me in late April and it's still blooming now. And here we are in early June, but it's about to kind of go over. So what I've done here is if you take a look at this phlox, it carries the same exact color palette. And in fact, the same form. Exactly. And it will pick right up where that Campion leaves off. So if you're trying to achieve multiple seasons of the same look, you can search for plants that carry similar form and color. And the flower shapes are even the same. I mean, that's amazing. You're right. Actually, that's a great point. Yeah. That's really, what a smart thing to do. And you, and then you have these little Salvia, the Salvia spikes back here. Yes. So what was blooming along this bed just recently was Muscari. So these blue spikes, I really liked that look and what I found here, this is a Salvia called Spring King and Spring King is one of the earliest blooming Salvias. And so it has almost exactly the same form and it picks up right where the Muscari leaves So they just transition right into one another. What a great idea. That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about it that way before. Yeah. Thanks. So this leads us into the next C of your philosophy. Yes, exactly. The next C is carry over plants, meaning, you know, we all have those times when our gardens sort of sink and don't look as great as they could. And so what carry over plants do are they're blooming in the interstitial moments. And this Silene here is a great example because it carries me right from the tulips to the peonies and even through the roses. That's really smart. So just look for plants that are blooming when nothing else is in your garden. And so you can really kind of transition it from one season to the other seamlessly. Exactly. And over the last seven years, you just sort of look around and think, oh, there's a dead spot here. Right. What can I fill in? And over time, I've been able to layer it in to keep the show going. That's really smart. I just can't believe I'm captured by these pansies here and how they're still blooming in June. They look fantastic. And they're also huge. Well, I love pansies. So I really baby my pansies, I really baby them. So what do you do to baby them? Well, I keep deadheading them and I fertilize them, which really keeps them going. And then the other thing I do is if we'll get a really hot day, so it was 94 degrees here last week, which is not good for pansies. No, they don't like that. But if I find if I put like a little umbrella over them, I've been known to do that. It really carries them through and takes the heat off. Or the other tool I use for this is really the floating row covers. Oh, right. The light colored shade cloth. The light colored. Yeah. It's a shade cloth, frost cloth. Yeah. And so if I find that something is about to be hit by a blast of heat, I will just roll out some of those shade covers, row covers, and really it gives the chance, the plants a chance to succeed. Just temporarily because then when the weather improves again, they'll be fine. And it's just that one day that could really hurt things. Yeah. So the next day after 94 degrees, it was 67. And the pansies are happy. And they were happy. So I find that with my hydrangeas as well, you know, in the, in the early spring when they're coming along and then you get that late frost, I just forced myself to go out there and cover them. And I find if I do that, I'm thanking myself in June when they're blooming. You're never sorry you did that. Never. Lots of good cases for that. So you, you mentioned that, um, shade cloth is a great, that's a great tool to have in your arsenal. It is. You know, it's funny. I was thinking if I could only have three tools with me from the garden, what would they be? Well, they would be my Felcos, which are in here. Um, my, I love, um, I have a DeWalt drill, 20 volt DeWalt drill with a bulb auger, which I use for everything, not just bulbs. Okay. What else do you use it for? Well, just to put any smallish plant in the ground. Any kind of planting. Yeah. Almost anything. That's yeah. Smart. That's good. Yeah. And then. And then this row cover cloth, because I use it so many times to help bring plants through either the heat or the cold. It is versatile. I hadn't thought about it that way that you could use it on, you know, almost any time throughout the year. It could be really useful. Yeah. I'm always bringing it out. Smart. Yeah. Well, let's take a look at the next, uh, the next C in your philosophy. Okay. That sounds great. All right. So our next C. Yes. Is containers. Containers. Okay. Yeah. And one of the things I've been able to sprinkle around this garden are a lot of containers in the beds. I see that. You have a lot of really beautiful ones and some of them are hidden too. They are. I'm a big fan of using containers. And of course, they're able to allow you to bring a spot of color to a spot that maybe is having some downtime. I think that's a great idea. So right here you have this, um, this pot. You've raised up these really pretty Calibrachoas and just pop some color in. I see there's a Buddleia behind this. Yes. And that's exactly why I put the pot right here. So the Buddleia obviously is going to fill out. It'll take three to four feet of airspace, but not right now. And so, right. Because they peak in late summer and fall, it'll be. Exactly. Much bigger. Yeah. Right. And so I have a pair of parallel pots actually in this bed that are carrying this function of creating a little interest in this spot. And I think containers are good. If you have a little gap here and there, you can pop a container in. Yeah. Sometimes even the geraniums, I'll able, you know, they'll stay in their pots for the first couple of weeks of life and I'll just pop them around the garden before I commit to a spot. That's so flexible. Yes. I love that. And that's the whole point about containers. They really are flexible. So do you think, so would you move this one when the Buddleia gets larger in the fall? I could. In fact, last fall I actually was able to put a different set of pots into this bed because there was another, a different gap and this was able to come out. So that's the thing about containers. You can really use them and have complete flexibility in where you're placing them. And you were mentioning a little secret about how you put plants in containers even. I do. Because again, I want to be able to move these containers. Right. So here's what I'll do. I'll show you here. This, for example, is a pot within a pot. Oh, smart. And so you just put a prop inside the pot to get the plant at the height that is the right height for that plant. Exactly. And so is this a pre-mixed container that you picked up at the garden center? It was. It was one of these popping, pop in and drop containers. And I, it has a big root ball, so I felt like I could, I didn't have to plant it in dirt. That's so smart. And I don't have anything heavy weighing me down for later if I want to move this container. It makes it really easy to move things around. That's smart. Really easy. And the other thing I can do is, so let's say when fall happens, if I wanted to keep this here, I could always trade out a mum, for example, and just pop it right in or move the container somewhere else. Or if, yeah, if the plants go down for some reason, if you have cool season plants that don't like the heat, just slide it out, pop something else in. Exactly. And I have a lot of those containers in different forms all through the garden. That's really smart. And it really creates that continuity of color. That's right. So that's the third C is containers. Let's talk about the fourth one. Okay. The fourth one is really picking your cultivars carefully to have a range of early, mids and lates. Okay. And I got into this really, it was tulips were my gateway. And when I first had tulips in this garden, they were only blooming for maybe 10 days. Okay. So I began a quest to really figure out how I can get a lot of more bloom. So you start with the earliest tulips and then grow mid-season and then late and really just stretch it out. So how many weeks of tulips do you have going in this garden? Definitely four. Many years, five. And I've gotten up to maybe five and a half, depending on if it rains that very last week, you know. That's right. It's game over. But I'm able to get almost five weeks of tulip bloom. That's good. So what are some of the other plants that you do that with? Well let's talk about alliums. There's a lot of alliums here. So it's really amazing. The range of bloom times you can get within one species or type of flower. So allium season really begins for us with Purple Sensation and Everest, which have gone over now. But you can still see their seed heads here. Yes. And I find them interesting, so I actually leave them. I love how you have them all mixed together in different stages of development. I think that's really pretty because you're right, alliums look great when they're finished blooming still. They do. So the next alliums to bloom for us here are Globemaster and Gladiator. And then what we just started was Ambassador, which are the tall purple ones as well. And then right here, this is actually another allium called Graceful. And this is what opens next in the garden. And then after that, in another section of the garden, I have the Drumstick Alliums as well, which come next. And then at some point, if you wanted to grow the summer-blooming alliums like Millennium or Summer Beauty or something, that would carry it through as well. So I mean, you can really have months and months of alliums blooming and get that shape and that color throughout the whole year almost. Exactly. And so what it does when you're really thinking about how do I have early, mids, and lates of different varieties, it just creates these waves of continuous color. And that really, yeah, it helps you maintain your color theme and also, yeah, the continuity of the shape. And alliums have such a strong, distinctive shape that that really, that's smart. And you can do the same with salvias? Yeah. So we looked a little while ago at the fact that I have Salvia Spring King. Well, I also have Caradonna, and I have Blue Hill, and I have Blue Marble, but I start off with Spring King because it's the first type. And the same thing with Nepeta. So over here, I have like, for example, this is Walker's Lowe, and this is Persian Blue. But in another part of the garden, I have a Nepeta, and it's called Early Bird, one of the earliest Nepetas. So what I've done is I've done this across the garden, and it really creates the same form in different seasons. Yeah, I like that. I like that idea of looking for varieties that have the word early, or you can usually tell by the variety name, can't you? Right. So, for example, there's April Night and May Night. Exactly. That's really... Salvias. Yeah, so use the names a little bit to help... Guide you. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, there's so much information online. Yeah, right. That's so interesting. Yeah. I can't wait to see more of the garden and hear more about the design theories that you kind of employed as you were developing this space. Let's go take a look. Okay, great. So we talked about the entrance bed and how you lost a tree that had a lot of pachysandra under it. What did the rest of this space look like at that time? Not very good. So we had an old children's tree house from the prior owners, and they had really used this place as sort of an outdoor playroom. There was a fire pit with burned area around it, zip lines all through the space. It looked really nothing like it does now, and I started there and I've beautified as I moved down the space. What a transformation. It's a little different now. A little different. Yeah. So how did you decide on the shapes and how to use this exact space? Yeah, sure. So I think many of us have the side garden issue of sort of it could be just a bowling alley. And I really thought about, you know, how do I make this space interesting? And so I really have designed a series of figure eights in this space. And I think what it does is it really creates a sense of movement. As your eye moves down, there's so much interest that it's layered upon layer. It's true. And you're really sharp. Having really sharp, crisp edges really defines it nicely here. It does, yeah. So the arbor bed over here was started about seven years ago or so, and this is a newer space here. How old is this part of the garden? I started this a year and a half ago. Oh, wow. So how did you get things going so quickly? Let me show you. All right. Let's walk over there and take a look. Okay. I started a year and a half ago by putting this arbor in. Okay. And it was a gift from my grandparents. And as I worked through the garden space here, you know, my grandfather was really financially disciplined and very frugal. So I thought, you know, how do I really honor him in the arch? His name was Quintin. And I decided what I would do in this space is really populate it largely with cuttings, seedlings, divisions. In other words, I shopped in my own garden to fill most of this garden. Shop in your own garden. Yeah. Right. So you have, we have the Caradonna salvia over here. Yeah. I find that really easy to divide. And in fall when I'm, you know, I work the whole garden to put in my tulips. So it's right there. And I'm able to, you know, take the salvias. All the salvias in this space are really things that came from other parts of the garden. That's the great thing about when you keep adding on, there's, you can definitely shop your own garden. You can shop your own garden. And then it also gives such a sense of repetition and it just creates a great sense of continuity throughout the garden. It really does. And as we get to this spot, the color palette changes a little bit. I introduced some of the orange that you see in the pansies, but the blues and the purples are unified throughout the whole space. It's really pretty. So it really adds that continuity. The other things I were able to bring in, for example, the irises I was able to bring in from other parts, the daylilies are another example. Daylilies are great to divide. They, I know. And they need it too. They do. Yeah. And then the silene over here as well. You know, we looked at it a little bit earlier, but it's also one that breaks apart really easily. So I've just been slowly filling the space. So, so you took cuttings from silene or did you do seeds? No, I actually just broke the plant apart and did a division. Oh, just divided it. Okay. It's so easy. It just almost comes apart at the seams. Oh, interesting. Very, very easily. And it transplants so well. You mentioned that the pachysandra in the first bed was so difficult to get out. So what's your soil like here? Well, this is a good example right here. When I started this bed, I had a feeling it would be clay, but it was like boulders of clay, like Play-Doh almost like. Oh, no fun. So yeah. And what I did to create this bed was in the back row, I did no dig. I laid cardboard and just put it right over the grass. And then the front layer of this, I did dig out the grass because I wanted to put tulips in. So I was able to, as I was planting, before I planted the tulips, really enrich the soil, which is really the foundation of where everything starts in this garden. And that's how you make things take off more. I mean, exactly. They will thrive so much more. So what did you bring in? I see that they're bermed a little bit. Yeah. So did you bring in soil from outside or how did you do that? Yeah. So I have three huge compost piles, so I was able to tap into that and then I just added a lot of store-bought compost as well, really enriching the soil as I do. Perfect. These containers are really dramatic coming down this path. It's really pretty. Oh, well, thank you. Actually, they serve a purpose. So I think we all have these challenge spots in our garden, and this was definitely one. It gets this beautiful dappled light all morning long, and then at around one or two o'clock, it gets blasted by the full sun. Oh, no. So what you'd think would be traditionally a part shade spot, that doesn't feel that way to the plants that live here. It doesn't. And if you look at most plants, when they say part sun or part shade, what they really want is they want morning sun and afternoon shade. More gentle light. So it's really difficult to figure out what to do in this space, and then I kind of hit upon an idea. Okay. So that's why these containers came in? Yes, exactly. So these are pink diamond hydrangeas in tree form, and they can take a little bit of shade, but they really like the sun. And what I'm hoping to do here is create a canopy of dappled light so that the plants underneath have a little break from that afternoon heat. That's really smart. So that'll just make it easier for everything to thrive in this part shade spot. You'll give them real part shade. Exactly. The kind they like. Yeah, and these guys will grow maybe two feet more on either side, and so I'm hoping, and they'll grow a little bit taller, I think, as well. And how fun to walk through this pathway and have this little archway of tree standard hydrangeas. Really pretty. With happy plants underneath. Exactly. At last. And beautiful, too. Yes. And the path leads to a really interesting place that I'd like you to show people. I just think it's such a smart idea. Let's take a look at that. Let's go take a look. So this is where all the magic happens. Yes. Welcome to my backstage area. This is perfect. Yeah. You can't tell it's here. No. From the other side. There's this interesting hedge here that's hiding your work area, and it's just right here. It is. You know, I don't think many of us would buy a house without closets or be happy in a kitchen that had no storage, and so I think one of the things that you have to think about with garden design is, you know, where am I going to create a workspace? Right. And as I laid the garden out here, I realized that by bumping the forsythia hedge out a little bit from the wall, I could create this space, which I really like. So this is your potting area. It's your spot where you can grow, where you have some strawberries growing in pots here. I do. You have your irrigation, so it's really easy to take care of. It really is. And you mentioned your dahlias earlier. Is this where you start your dahlias? Exactly. So again, I do them in grow bags, and so I put the grow bags in the containers, and I'm able to kind of grow them on here until they get a little big. That's really, that's really ingenious. And so you can use it as storage, potting, all kinds of things back there. Yeah, yeah. The other thing that I use this space for, in addition to growing some vegetables here and there, is, tell me if this has ever happened to you. You go to the garden center, and you bring home a plant, and you're intending to plant it, but you never get to it right away. So I have a lot of extra irrigation hookups here, and I can just, you know, put the pot over here and like, feed it in. Yeah, feed it in. That's smart. And keep it watered until I find the time to actually plant it. Definitely happened to me. Sometimes they stay for years. Oh my gosh, for years, wow. Don't do that. Yeah. So this is a great little space, and like you said, it is really hidden away. Completely hidden. And so it's a great space where all the untidy stuff, or even some pretty stuff, can sit. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. So we're hidden behind this hedge here. Tell me about how you created the hedge. Sure. One of the things this garden had a lot of was forsythia. I mean, it was rambling wild all through not only this space, but other spaces in the garden. And, you know, again, trying to think about how to be economical, how to be frugal, I thought, well, I have a lot of it. I wonder if I could put it to the test. So I was able to have this planted here, and I just continually clipped it to create this thick, lush hedge that you see here. It's just a formal forsythia hedge. And so it doesn't, does it bloom? Sometimes bloom, sometimes doesn't, or a little bit. I keep it pretty clipped, so I'm not really growing it so much for the bloom, although we get a little bit. Yeah, right. But it just has a nice shape, and it follows the shape of the beds here. I see it has that kind of interesting undulating shape to it, but yet a very formal feel because you keep it clipped. And I was able to use something that we had in abundance here anyway. Right. That makes so much sense. Heather, thank you so much for this amazing tour. I learned a lot of tips I think I'll use in my own garden. Well, great. You'll have to let me know how it goes. I'd like to do that. I would. You can see what Heather's garden looks like throughout the year on her website, capecottagegarden.com, or follow Cape Cottage Garden on Instagram.