Perennial borders delight with exuberant flowers and foliage in a seemingly effortless fashion. They bring the garden to life with a dynamism that changes with the seasons. In a well-planned border, there’s always something interesting happening, even in the quiet days of winter.
Keeping a few guidelines in mind when arranging the border helps create a healthy, aesthetically rich bed of flowering perennials, varying textures, and anchor plants. A diversity of plant material lends visual interest and ecological value, and a tailored composition organizes them harmoniously, evolving as the garden grows.
Fall is the perfect time to create a perennial border or to divide, rearrange, and add to the collection. You can also use winter to plan for a spring start. While the border should evoke easy-breezy abundance, the best designs incorporate planning and conscientious collecting.
What is a Perennial Border?
Borders are, by definition, transitional areas that form a distinction or boundary between spaces. In the garden, they serve as sweeping unifiers between zones or edges to define an area. Whatever the scale of your space, perennials fill it with swaths of color, texture, and movement.
Perennial borders are versatile, with endless planting options, even if you’re working with a small bed. First, consider the physical space and its growing conditions, such as light exposure, wind, temperature, water access, soil quality, and size. For the best success, pick plants with similar cultural requirements that match site-specific conditions.
Site Considerations
Observing site conditions leads to the best foundation for plant selection. Assess how sunlight moves through your space. Note windy or high-heat areas and plan accordingly with durable varieties. Use your USDA growing zone as a guideline to grow perennials, shrubs, and trees to survive winter.
Sun Exposure
Sunlight is among the most important factors in determining what grows well in a site based on the plant’s needs. Choose plants that fit the exposure your bed receives.
Many blooming perennials perform best in full sun, with six or more hours of sunlight daily. Lots of options span full sun and partial shade, with around four or more hours of direct sun. The morning sun is optimal. Full-shade growers need less than two hours of sun, and plenty of floral and foliar selections fit the bill.
Observe your space at different times of day to account for direct sun and shaded zones. Walls and tree canopy can shadow areas as the sun moves throughout the day.
South- or west-facing spots provide the best exposure for fruiting and flowering plants. They need to handle intense afternoon sun in open sites. East or north-facing situations receive less sun and are better for leafy, partial shade selections.
Size and Depth
If you have a lot of space, you have the ideal foundation for a mixed border. Broad, long beds allow room for small trees, shrubs, and perennials. If the sky’s the limit, aim for a space three to five times longer than it is deep. Go at least six to eight feet deep and more if you can.
If you’re working with a small area or pre-determined strip (like a curb zone, bed edge, patio border, foundation, etc.), fill in the zone with scaled-down plants. This means smaller species and fewer varieties. The same principles of order apply, but with extracted measures to suit the smaller growing area.
Borders may be linear with a consistent depth or incorporate curved lines for organic variation.
Vertical planting maximizes space and interest, and trees and shrubs add dimension. Growing plants upright on support structures takes advantage of height while minimizing spread. Go vertical with trellises, arches, and staking.
Background
Borders often have a defining backdrop, such as a wall, fence, or hedge. A backdrop adds cohesion to the space and gives the eye a place to rest. A variety of materials create backdrops, including plant forms, structures, and implied boundaries.
Trees and hedges screen a space, while walls and gates physically bind it. The border itself implicates a space as its own. A grassy patch, sidewalk, or path adds visual separation.
Soil
Soil quality is a crucial building block. It provides essential nutrients and significantly affects overall health, from soil pH to drainage capacity.
A soil test from a reliable at-home kit or your local university extension service offers interpreted results and assessments. Amending native soils with compost at planting adds nutrition, aeration, and moisture retention.
Knowing your soil type, from clay to sandy to loamy, helps gauge organic richness and how the bed absorbs water. It guides how much to irrigate for even moisture and whether your border runs naturally dry or wet. Water content plays a role in plant selection to match the site’s moisture.
Plant Selection
Choosing the right plants is the ultimate fun—and vital—part of border design. As gardeners, we’re always adding and rearranging to accommodate new selections. The border is a perfect place to experiment, but starting with a solid arrangement saves time, money, and resources and creates a cohesive, harmonious look. Let plants follow their natural form, free of heavy manicuring except for focal specimens.
A perennial border isn’t limited only to perennials. Robust mixed arrangements incorporate varying heights and textures for a layered landscape of trees, shrubs, and perennials. Embellish with annuals for high color and seasonal beauty.
Dwarf and compact growers save space in small settings. Because of the limited real estate, be selective with your chosen plants, focusing on repeated favorites rather than a vast cross-section of different plants. Use clustered groups of low-growers and ground covers at the front of the border to anchor a small display.
Incorporate native plants for a low-maintenance, biodiverse display. They enrich the border with ecosystem benefits for butterflies, bees, birds, and other wildlife through nectar and seed production, as host plants, and as shelter.
Trees and Shrubs
Small, understory trees bring vertical interest with multi-trunks, exciting bark, flowers, and foliage. Examples include dogwoods, redbuds, serviceberries, magnolia, crape myrtles, Japanese maples, flowering cherries, and crabapples.
Evergreen and flowering shrubs add year-round variety. Boxwoods and clipped yews ground the display with persistent dark green foliage. Bloomers like heirloom roses bring romance in flower, form, and fragrance. They pair beautifully with companion plantings like catmint, salvia, and hardy geraniums. If a wall or fence is your background, use climbing roses to run along it.
Annuals
While trees, shrubs, and perennials unify the scheme year-round, annuals accent with high color. Annuals allow us to add flourish when little else is blooming. They can also punctuate a color palette. Added color is valuable as perennials establish in their first season and in cool winter and spring weather.
Look to petunias, zinnias, cosmos, impatiens, sweetpeas, bellflowers, snapdragons, and violas for fully-petaled touches. In addition to boosting aesthetics with their all-season color, annuals serve pollinators in nectar and pollen production.
Texture
Plan for high textural contrast among foliage. Palmate and lobed leaves contrast the delicate and feathery, as do narrow and strappy, broad and tall. Repeat textures to keep the flow consistent.
As repetition helps create a unified foundation, variety brings visual interest. Use plants with different growth habits, leaf textures, and foliage or bloom colors to create a standout border.
Style
Working from a garden concept and style informs design decisions. They help us stay on course to meet the overall goal of an aesthetically pleasing and functioning composition that works with the rest of the garden.
Garden styles are personal, creative endeavors. They complement the style of the home, evoke mood, and influence plant layout. They also provide guiding principles for working within your site’s physical framework of sun and shade conditions, soil types, and water levels.
Standard styles and themes include native, Mediterranean, woodland, cottage, tropical, formal, contemporary, naturalized, desert, and Asian-inspired.
Color
Color is one of the most impactful tools for creating the garden’s aesthetic and mood and unifying the landscape. For the perennial border, it relates to flower, foliage, seed, and stem qualities. Think silver leaves against deep purples and greens.
Choosing colors for the garden allows us to play with exciting combinations to create lively, energized spaces or peaceful, serene ones. They’ll complement a home or contrast it beautifully through striking opposites.
Color schemes include monochromatic (single-color shades), analogous (blended shades in the same color range), or complementary (opposite shades for contrast). Look to nature for inspiration or to your favorite hues for building the plant selection.
Bright, primary colors appear closer and may make a small area feel smaller. Soft shades recede and visually expand an area. Vibrant colors, like reds, oranges, and yellows, energize and activate a space. Pastels and whites are calming and serene. Use a limited color palette in small borders to maintain a streamlined look.
All-Season Interest
Add all-season appeal with plants that add color at varying times of year, particularly those with extended bloom seasons. For fall interest, look to foliage color and late-season bloomers; for cool-season color, include fruits, berries, and winter bloomers.
Winter
In winter, plants with unique shapes, bark, colors, or fragrances are particularly impactful. A deciduous tree or shrub adds visual interest to the garden and offers shelter for wildlife. Winter-blooming and fruiting plants give bursts of color to the landscape and provide food to sustain birds and pollinators throughout the season. Witchhazel, beautyberry, viburnum, daphne, winterberry, and numerous other hollies bring vibrant berry clusters that persist all season.
Include ornamental grasses for added dimension and movement. Don’t cut them back in the fall; keep them intact to enjoy their dried blades, plumes, and seed heads as winter interest. Grasses add texture, swaying in the breeze and contrasting evergreens, bare branches, and dormant perennials.
Spring-Flowering Bulbs
Late winter and early spring bulbs add bursts of color to bridge seasonal temperatures and achieve staggered bloom intervals. Plant bulbs in the fall for late winter and spring display and en masse for impact. Check bulbs and varieties to determine their early, mid, and late-season flowering habits.
Underplant perennials and shrubs with daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, snowdrops, and crocus for recurrent spring displays. Plant fall-blooming crocus bulbs (Crocus sativus, Crocus autumnale, Crocus speciosum) for autumn color.
Plant Arranging
Perennial borders brim with unstructured appeal in layered plantings and variations in height and form. Unstructured doesn’t mean unordered, however subtle the sequencing may be.
Incorporate high- and low-growing selections, beginning with trees and shrubs and working down to smaller plants. While the general guideline is to place low-growing varieties in the front of the border and tall ones in the back, avoid a straight stair-step setup. Adding varying heights in the mid-border lets the eye drift and wander across the scene in a wave of variation.
Repetition and Order
Repeating plants and plant characteristics is one of the easiest ways to create unity in the landscape. It helps achieve abundance without becoming muddled. Repeated plant sequences organize the overall experience and lend a sense of balance.
Repetition occurs through form, texture, and color. Repeat the same plant or opt for plants in the same color scheme with similar foliage textures and growth habits. Different plants become cohesive through overlapping form, texture, or color.
Maintaining a Perennial Border
An established perennial border is low maintenance, though regular seasonal tasks maintain health, vigor, and kempt appearance. Water newly planted specimens according to their cultural requirements. For most new plantings, this is even, consistent moisture. Once established, regular seasonal moisture with supplemental irrigation during heat waves and dry spells is often sufficient (depending on your climate and the specific variety).
Divide vigorous perennials over time to expand the collection. If you have the room, let them reseed. As the border matures, cultivate the star performers and weed out unwanted volunteers to maintain a bounty of blooms.
Practice seasonal cutback as plants enter winter dormancy, leaving some for winter interest (and added insulation). Prune them in late winter or early spring before new growth emerges. Enjoy the flurry of blooms and buzzing activity as the border awakens in the warm season.
