How to plan for perennials

Christopher Lloyd explains how to grow your plants next to others that you think will make good neighbours

- Christopher Lloyd

Part of the famous mixed border in Christopher Lloyd's garden at Great Dixter

IF anyone asks me how I plan for perennials, I would probably answer that I do not. That would shut them up for a bit and give me time to think. Then I should begin to realise that the planning, such as it is, and being largely unconscious, falls into three parts.

First, there are certain plants I like very much indeed, and I must have them and grow them somewhere. Second, I want to grow them where they are likely to do best, in sun or in shade, sheltered or exposed, on light soil or on heavy. Third, I want them to look well where I put them. This last point requires the most skill, because you have to consider neighbouring plantings in relation to one another.

Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter

Let us look a little closer at the implications here. You probably have ideas on colour and would like to juxtapose, for instance, a deep-pink or carmine-flowered helianthemum, or sun rose, with blue lithospermums. Your next worry is, will they flower together? Otherwise, of course, your object is lost.

You consult books and catalogues, which help a bit but are usually maddeningly vague. It is best to make your plan in the previous growing season, when you can see for yourself in gardens and nurseries what is flowering when and make appropriate notes. But if you forget to do this there is nothing for it but to take the plunge. You are sure to make mistakes; there is nothing disgraceful about that, and in most instances you can easily swap things around in the next dormant season when you have seen what went wrong and how to put it right. This altering of plans goes on all through one's gardening life.

Low-growing perennials such as Geranium macrorrhizum 'Ingwersen's Variety' grow well in shade

Good neighbours