Tips for Beginners

Here are some suggestions from Anne that you'll find helpful in your garden:

• For easy spring and summer color, plant flowers that come back from seed. Dianthus, violas, larkspurs, poppies, wishbone flowers, coneflowers, and love-in-a-mists seed themselves into the gravel and soil and pop up every spring.
• To reduce watering (especially now in the drought-stricken Southeast), grow plants that need little water, such as rosemary, thyme, bearded irises, and succulents. Use rain barrels to collect water. Most rain barrels aren't pretty, so the couple found some old oak wine casks into which they inserted faucets. "This last rain, we collected about 400 gallons," Anne says.
• Vertical accents work well in a small garden. "You don't want everything at one level," she states. In this garden, clematis vines trained on blue wooden obelisks rise above the hedge and take up little space.
  • Year-round color and architectural interest are important for an entry garden. Grow lots of things in containers. Anne's favorite plants for this include succulents, foliage perennials, and annuals for seasonal color.
• A garden with many different plants can look chaotic without permanent structure. The hedge and pavers supply that here.