How to Create Colorful Flower

Learn how Heather Thomas of Cape Cottage Garden keeps her flower borders colorful from spring to fall!

Heather Thomas' colorful flower borders in New Jersey

A few years after her family moved home to New Jersey, Heather Thomas was eager to start a garden. She dreamed of turning the side yard, previously reserved for a children's play area, into a garden space where perennial borders would be colorful from spring to fall. Today that dream has become a reality. Read about how she achieved Cape Cottage Garden's transformation here and watch our interview with Heather in our Talk & Tour video above!

Starting a garden

When they removed the tree growing too close to the house, this spot near the kitchen window was the perfect spot for the entrance to the future garden. Heather set up a tree stand and began digging up the Japanese pachysandra (Pachysandra terminalis) surrounding the tree. To make sure the firm ground didn't settle back into the garden later, Heather left the area fallow for a few weeks so she could easily catch new sprouts as they appeared. A month later, he brought out the first plants: peonies (Paeonia lactiflora), daylilies (Hemerocallis hybrids) and roses (Rosa hybrids).

The next step

To make a background hedge for the planned flower borders on the side, Heather dug up the original three forsythia (Forsythia x intermedia) bushes from several more locations. Then she can get to the fun part: the curved perennial borders she dreams of.

As you know, it's one thing to design a perennial garden that looks good for a short period of time, but maintaining color for months is another challenge. Careful planning and observation led Heather to a design philosophy she calls the "4 C's." This helps ensure these borders stay colorful throughout the growing season. Keep digging and reading!

4 Secrets to Creating Colorful Flower Borders All Season

As a professional communications consultant, Heather is skilled at organizing and articulating ideas. After experimenting and observing different ways of combining plants, he developed the 4 Cs: cultivars, containers, companion plantings, and carryover plants. These four considerations ensure that something will bloom from the earliest bulbs in the spring through the last garden mums of the fall.

1. Grow a mix of Cultivars

Heather says, “When I first planted tulips (Tulipa spp. and hybrids), the flowers only lasted about 10 days. So I set out on a quest to figure out how to get more flowers.

Now he grows about 30 early, mid- and late-flowering varieties to keep the show going for 4 or 5 weeks. And globe allium (Allium spp. and hybrids) start the season with 'Purple Sensation' and 'Mount Everest', whose green seeds you can see above. Next, 'Gladiator' and 'Globemaster' bloom in purple, and finally 'Ambassador' ends the allium season after several weeks of color. He also grows several varieties of salvia (Salvia hybrid) and catmint (Nepeta spp. and hybrids) to create continuity in his borders. When you know a plant thrives in your growing conditions, go in!

Smart garden design tip

Use the names of the plants to tell you about their order. For example, 'Spring King' salvia (Salvia nemorosa) is one of the earliest to bloom.

2. Utilize Containers in garden borders

If you need instant color in the border, slip into an attractive annual container! For example, the pot full of Calibrachoa hybrid above is the center of attention until the butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii) behind it fills in. Large containers like this are easier to move when you leave the pot empty and drop in pre-planted nursery liners. Here you see the early summer mix, but in the fall, the vessel will be in another nearby location on this border and filled with mums (chrysanthemum hybrids). Placing a large overturned nursery pot inside a larger decor supports replaceable drop-ins.

3. Design multi-seasonal companion plantings

It's easy to get excited about everything blooming at the garden center in May and pick favorites. But for each spring-blooming plant, leave a space next to one that blooms in summer and one that blooms in fall. Bearded irises (iris hybrid) and peonies above carry this border into spring. Later in the summer, daylilies and garden phlox take over below. In autumn, turtlehead (Chelon leoni) and bluebeard (Caryopteris x clandonensis) close out the colorful garden year.

4. Mix in some carryover plants

Heather switches to some long-blooming plants such as perennial xylene (xylene hybrid) to carry color during slower times. Heather says, "'Roli's Favorite' Xylane takes me from tulips to peonies and roses all spring long." He keeps his beloved pansies (Viola x Wittrockiana) blooming even in mid-summer with mulching and fertilizing, and shades them with floating row cover on hot, sunny days above 90 degrees F. This lightweight fabric is one of her favorite garden tools. Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) helps protect flowers from late frosts and cool-loving plants from heat.

Smart garden solutions

These lush, relatively young plantings might lead you to believe that gardening here is easy, but every garden presents its challenges. And Heather takes care of it herself while running her own business full-time. From clay soils to rabbit threats and weather stresses, she faces struggles familiar to most of us. Here are some of her solutions.

Hide a garden workplace

Every garden needs a hard-working space. Looking at these borders you would never guess that a work area is hidden in plain sight between the hedge and wooden privacy fence. The 9-foot-wide space you see here leaves plenty of room to turn the wheelbarrow. Here, Heather grows strawberries in pots with drip irrigation, starts dahlias (dahlia hybrids) in grow bags for late summer stash in the garden, and cares for newly purchased plants until they find a place.