Please help me figure out what I am missing or doing wrong... My garden has a range of different plants. Azaleas, hydrangeas, knock out rose bushes, dusty miller, sedums and philox. Even though I have many different plants (and I keep adding many different plants) my garden always seems to be boring and green with no harmony. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I could do to make my garden colorful for at least most of the year??? I would really appreciate any suggestions. Thank you (from an amateur gardener) Maria : )
Azaleas may take a while to get going, so unless they have been there for a while don't expect too much from them just yet. Is your garden full sun, partial sun, or shade?
Most of the plants you have listed have relatively short flowering seasons and foliage that is not particularly interesting. For a longer season of visual interest you should be adding some easy perennials with leaves in different textures, colours and shapes and possibly some low annuals with a long bloom season. For perennials Hostas, low grasses and Heucheras would be good choices, but don't just randomly buy a bunch of boldly variegated plants or your garden will still look spotty and unharmonius. To create unity you should choose plants that relate to and complement each other in some way. For example if you want a blue hosta and a gold one try tying them together with a third hosta like "June" which combines blue and gold. You can also pick up the gold in a hosta with a gold groundcover or grass which has a contrasting shape and texture but similar colour. Touches of gold are very good for brightening a dull area and can also complement yellow flowers. For a less dramatic effect a cream/green or cream/blue-grey hosta can be complemented with a variegated Brunnera or Polemonium which shares the cream edge. Pink or red flowered shrubs are complemented by reddish, purple and/or silvery foliaged perennials or shrubs. Take a look at Japanese Painted fern. For annuals pick one or two colours of fibrous begonia. They are cheap, problem free and will bloom from April till frost. They are available with green or bronze foliage. You can achieve a similar effect with impatience, but try to relate the flower colour to the plants you already have. Red, bronze and silver is one nice combo. White and bronze begonias with purple/bronze Heuchera is also very nice as is pink and silver.
If you decide you really like those annuals, you could always dig them up before the first frost very gently and take them indoors to a sunny window. You may have to treat them for various insects and separate them from your houseplants but it works to an extent. Just be sure to get enough soil from around the plant to keep its roots in the same dirt when you bring it in initially, and make sure you wait until after the last frost in spring to put them out again. This usually won't work indefinitely but for a few years it's nice to have the same plants sometimes!
There's a bunch of stuff that blooms for varying lengths of time before July. Another set starts up around July, blooms until frost - providing a much longer season than many of the spring-early summer things. In addition to the bigleaf hydrangeas and "ever blooming" roses you may have already there is Frikart asters, Geranium Jolly Bee (better than Rozannie), and shrubby potentillas - assuming these all grow well in your area. In my climate we can also do Acanthus spinosus, fuchsias, Indigofera, and Lavatera x clementii.
wow thank you for all your great suggestions. I will try to see what perennials go good together and put them in my garden as well. I have a very dry sandy soil with full sun for mostly the entire day. I have planted some perennials in the past but they never came back due to the contsant dryness and sun that my garden receives. I will take your plant suggestions and look them up to see what I could plant in there - Thank you all again!
