Expert Guidance for Your Flower Garden

Mar 31, 2025 06:30PM ● By Bill Noble

As luck would have it, 30 years ago when we moved into our house in Norwich, Vermont, we found that we had inherited a garden, or rather the remnants of a garden. There had once been a perennial garden at the edge of the front yard, and although most of the plants had been dug and given away, a few stray daylilies remained—along with the suggestion that a garden should once again grace the yard.

Bill Noble has gardened for 33 years in Norwich, Vermont. Photo by Roger Foley.

I was just starting on my path as a gardener, and reworking this bed was one of the first tasks in making the place our own. Inspired by the gardens of the Cornish Colony and giving a nod to the setting of our 1830s’ classical revival cape, I set about creating a garden of old-fashioned, hardy perennials and shrubs. This story is about the design ideas behind the border, its plants, and how we maintain it to provide a long season of interest.

Maximize the Blooms

Working in the flower garden at the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park taught me that New England gardens can be full of color and life from April into October. I set that as my challenge with this smaller but visually prominent garden. I also knew that it had to be manageable in terms of time dedicated to its care.

The 60-foot-long garden is at the far end of the front lawn and is backed by a stone retaining wall. A half-dozen shrubs and hardy roses give it year-round structure. The flowering season begins in late April and early May with a few dozen clumps of early and late-blooming daffodils strategically spaced between the lush emerging foliage of the perennials. Dozens of Allium Purple Sensation interspersed with the spring green of the perennials provide a late-May wave of color. Mid-June features flowering shrubs and the old-fashioned stalwart perennials bearded and Siberian iris, peonies, and hardy geraniums. The long days of late June and early July favor shrub roses, delphinium, Carolina lupine, and mulleins. As July progresses, phlox, campanula, daylilies,
and mallows flourish, leading into the dog days of August with hydrangeas, phlox, helenium, and sunflowers. Monkshoods, later blooming phlox, ornamental grasses, and a few annuals keep drawing the eye to the garden into September and October.

Make Thoughtful Plant Choices

Any garden evolves over time. I sometimes say this garden began with leftovers from gardening jobs. There is some truth to that, but it also began with plants that others gifted to me, many of them long-lived perennials, many of them from Cornish Colony gardens.

The garden presented a few design challenges: The stone wall mostly disappears as the plants grow, but from the other side, where it is viewable from the road, the stone wall is prominent and sets off the planting as if on a stage. This calls for two approaches to the composition; from the roadside one mostly sees flowering shrubs and large stands of tall perennials viewable from a distance, while from the lawn side, the view is much more intimate.

In putting a garden together, I first think about how to combine plants to best show off their distinctive qualities of foliage, flower color, and shape. I consider how the shape, size, and relative fineness or coarseness of foliage will play with its neighbors. I think about conditions of sunlight, shade, and how plants will respond. I weigh growth habits of a plant: Does it form a clump, does it spread by runners, does it want to lean? How do I manage that?

Something I learned in the Cornish gardens is that a clearly defined front edge with lower growing groundcover perennials, broken occasionally by more upright plants, helps create a rhythm and makes it more legible for the eye. Some of the best edging materials in this case are the low-growing hardy geraniums, lambs ears, and Sedum Autumn Joy, along with taller peonies, daylilies, mullein, and phlox. Repetition of color and form is one of the keys to making the garden tie together. There are often at least two, or sometimes three, plants of the same or similar variety spaced along the length of the garden to lead the eye down its length and back. Silver-foliaged shrubs and perennials are invaluable for the lightness and contrast they provide.

Consider Color

Combining plants for flower color is another matter. There is a larger flower garden in the back where long ago I decided on a more pastel color range of silver, green, pink, blue, and purple. It works there but can feel constraining. In the front border, the hotter colors of orange, yellow, magenta, and some red are allowed to scream their heads off. They are cooled down with silver foliage, the blues of the delphinium, and the pale white, fading pink flowers of the panicle hydrangeas.

The border receives afternoon and evening shade and that helps to blend colors. Many color combinations are hit or miss for me, which is fine, but silver, blue, and purple go a long way in helping to tie a garden together. Sometimes when considering introducing a new plant or new color combination, I will pick a flowering stem off the plant I’m considering and hold it next to its neighbors and see how it vibrates (or not).

No Garden Is Static

I rarely succeed in getting a planting layout to be entirely satisfactory at first pass. A lesson it took me a while to learn is that certain plants are heliotropic, in that their flowers face the sun. It was maddening that the original daylilies all faced away from the viewer. I learned to do mostly without them and instead concentrated on flowers that are showy from all sides.

I make notes throughout the season about which plants to favor, which to remove, and which combinations pack a punch and have some staying power. I’ll often take a photo of the area as a memory aid, and I place plant labels keyed to my notes where the moves will occur. I rarely plant a newly purchased perennial directly into the border; instead I anticipate what plants I may want to add and grow them in a small holding bed in the vegetable garden so they bulk up and transplant easily into the established border. April and September are when I lift and move plants; they can usually settle in with a minimum of watering. No garden is static, or permanent. Some plants grow tall and shade out neighbors, other plants can’t stand too much competition over time. Tastes change, new plants come along. The gardener is always striving for their own personal Eden.

Maintaining the Border

While I make no claims this border is low maintenance, over the years it has become easier to maintain as I observe which plants have a long season of bloom and are good neighbors, not too
aggressive or prone to disease.

Susan Howard and I maintain this garden. We have a rough schedule of the necessary tasks and their timing. Late winter is for pruning roses and shrubs. In early spring before the bulbs and perennials emerge, we do a light raking to aerate the soil after the weight of winter snow. This is also a good time to divide any perennials that will benefit from that, although I don’t do all that much dividing.

With more aggressive perennials, I slice off their outer portions with a spade to keep them in bounds. Seedling phlox are pulled as necessary, along with the freely seeding Allium Purple Sensation. Once perennials emerge, we apply a modest amount of organic
fertilizer (ProGro) and in the fall we add a three-to-four-inch layer of chopped leaves after plants have been cut back. These practices are sufficient for building soil health here over time.

As plants begin to grow tall, we install support for the three or four varieties that need it. We use a nongalvanized fencing material cut into different lengths and we encircle individual plants with it. Delphinium and peonies need support to keep their flowers upright during thunderstorms. Joe Pye weed and sunflowers can use support to keep them from falling on their neighbors. A strong tomato stake can help a shrub or large perennial to stay upright.
A bamboo cane or two can prop flowering stalks prone to flop from excessive rain.

We groom the garden as needed, usually once every two weeks. The daffodils are deadheaded, as are the peonies and roses. The mulleins and stachys are deadheaded as the season progresses. Keeping the edge tidy by string trimming and some hand pulling keeps the whole composition looking neat. After rainstorms, I use two five-foot-long bamboo canes to shake the waterlogged
perennials so they will stand back up.

Our well has never been robust, and I limit watering of the ornamental gardens; I save water for the vegetable garden and newly planted shrubs. If we had sufficient water, during periods of drought I would insert a hose with a rose nozzle on it at a low setting and let the water ooze around the rootzone of stressed plants, and move it along as needed.

Deer do not present a dire problem to this border. They are not interested in the shrubs: Viburnum Onondaga, PG hydrangeas, and roses. A well-timed application of a deer repellent (at the first sign of grazing) usually deters them for the season. Woodchucks love phlox, but somehow we get past that.

As the heat of the summer takes its toll and plants become stressed, we clean up damaged foliage; delphiniums, salvias, and a few others will push new growth after being cut back. As fall comes, we begin cutting back perennials; some we chop in short sections and let them drop in place, others we haul to a compost pile. Some perennials such as beebalm and asters don’t want to be cut back, so we leave their stems standing over the winter, which makes for wildlife benefits as well as a hopeful sight for the gardener, with their stems standing up out of the snow.

There are many ways of approaching gardening in the Upper Valley. Our climate is still conducive to perennial gardens, but they are not the easiest type of garden to create or maintain, and today’s gardeners are much more focused on the ecological benefits of plants. But I am confident that this garden not only provides delight for ourselves and people who pass by, but sufficient nourishment for the moths, butterflies, and birds that routinely visit it.

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