A perennial – or in this case, annual – favorite of gardeners, the English border employs annuals to stunning effect. If your taste is informal yet old-fashioned, or if you’re simply a romantic, this planting style is for you.
Classic English borders comprise plants of various heights, foliage and color. Where space and circumstances permit, follow the British approach to garden layout: Toss a handful of pebbles within each marked area of the bed to determine the planting locations for individual flowers. It results in a natural, eye-catching freeform arrangement.
Photo Credit: ©2000 Dolezal Publishing/Image Point
For edge plantings and borders, follow the classic English border form: tall plants in the rear, occasionally broken by medium-height flowers; place medium and low annuals to the front. When fully grown, the border will appear a solid mass of blooms and color.
Photo Credit: ©2000 Dolezal Publishing/Yvonne Williams
First developed by landscape designers in Great Britain at the turn of the twentieth century, the English border was an antidote to the rigidly formal garden style that it eventually replaced. The design looks perfect next to nearly any house that’s small, quaint, or…well, English.
English borders have a natural – even playful – look, achieved by combining and juxtaposing a profusion of plantings with different colors, shapes, textures and heights. Within this natural look, however, is a subtle structure: low plants in front, medium-size plants behind them and tall plants in the back; spiky forms are placed so as to complement rounded ones; and colors are equally subtle, tending more toward the pastel rather than the fluorescent.
If you live in an area with long, cool summers – or if you want a springtime English border – choose tall larkspur in the back row and old-fashioned mallow at the mid-border, behind poppies and an edging of sweet William. You also can create a garden themed around one or two colors by planting, for example, cream- and raspberry-colored pansies, pink globe candytuft, pink and peach Iceland poppies, pink flowering flax, and pink and white foxglove.
For summer gardens, create an English border with heat-loving annuals such as spider flower in the back row, globe amaranth in the mid-border and pansies in the front – or start with a backdrop of Mexican sunflowers, which will create a 5- to 7-foot-high background hedge for the rest of your plantings. Their deep-green leaves and bright-orange flowers harmonize beautifully with mid-border drifts of gold coreopsis.
In Great Britain, border plantings comprise cool-weather annuals that won’t tolerate summer heat found in areas much above USDA hardiness Zone 8. If your heart is in England but your yard is in a warmer region, don’t despair. Warm-climate dwellers can have English borders, too, provided your garden has mild winters. Plant your cool-weather annuals in autumn for a winter bloom or in very early spring, when cold-climate gardeners are dreaming with their seed catalogs.
These and other durable annuals are available in colors that virtually will transport you to the English countryside – regardless of where in the world you actually live.
