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| Photo Credit: Lane Greer |
| The fine texture of the silvery leaves make Senecio cineraria an ideal moon garden plant. |
Different gardens serve different purposes. There’s the vegetable garden, the flower garden, the herb garden and the perennial garden, each with a specific function, dictating the plants cultivated in that particular setting. As much as we’d love to spend every moment out in our yards or on the patio, sometimes our busy lifestyles just get in the way. The thought of enjoying the outdoors once the sun goes down after a hard workday may not seem like an option. But it’s actually when the sun goes down that another type of garden is given new light: the moon garden.
Moon gardens are designed with certain key elements in mind. Plants that provide the most evening enjoyment include those with white or silvery flowers or foliage, fragrant blooms or an evening bloom time. A combination of plants with these characteristics guarantees an atmosphere ideal for relaxing and unwinding as a hectic day draws to a close. One essential element of the moon garden is the color white. White flowers, variegated leaves or silvery foliage reflect the light of the moon, creating a soft, luminous glow. Common annuals with showy white flowers include impatiens, begonias, verbena and dianthus. And dusty miller, Artemisia and lamb’s ear are a few plants that provide silver foliage and an interesting texture to the garden. Even vegetables – like white eggplant, white squash and white pumpkins – can add substantial color to the moon garden, while herbs with white or cream-colored variegation can add culinary purpose, as well as fragrance. And fragrance, indeed, is another important characteristic of the moon garden. Some plants bloom through the day only to release their scent as night falls. Night blooming jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum), for example, has somewhat insignificant flowers compared with its heavenly scent. Four o’clocks (Mirabilis jalapa) begin opening their 2-inch, trumpet-shaped flowers in the late afternoon, releasing a sweet perfume into the evening hours.
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