Landscaping For Year-Round Interest Part 2
If you’re going to put time and money into creating a new landscape bed or re-doing your existing landscaping, you want lasting results. And you want the resulting design to look good all the time, not just a few months out of the year.
Join us for a four-part blog series that will help you create year-round interest in your landscape. While we’re at it, we’ll focus on low-maintenance plants so you’ll have time to enjoy your beautiful landscape project rather than spending all your time on up-keep. This week, we focus on a stellar summer display.
Shrubs and Trees
Larger perennials like shrubs and trees form the backbone of a landscape bed. As the spring blooming plants switch over to leaves, finding flowering shrubs to take their place can be a challenge. Still, there are a few that provide summer interest and grow well in Texas.
Crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia spp.) flowers all summer. The tree and shrub forms have attractive exfoliating bark that gives the plants year-round interest. Plant them in well-drained fertile soil in a full sun location with good air circulation, and they’ll be a low-maintenance plant. Most thrive in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 7 through 10, though some cultivars are hardy in cooler zones.
For a fast-growing hedge or specimen plant, Rose of Sharon (Althaea spp.) is a good choice. They have showy hibiscus-like flowers and a long summer bloom time. Right after planting they’ll need regular water, but after that they’re drought and heat resistant. They grow in USDA zones 5 through 9.
Summer Bulbs
Low-maintenance summer flowering bulbs don’t take up much room in the garden and provide dependable color year after year. Summer blooming alliums such as blue globe onion (Allium caeruleum) and drumstick allium (Allium sphaerocephalon) are a fantastic choice for summer color and die back after flowering. Asiatic and trumpet lilies (Lillium spp.) are another good choice.
Gardeners in warmer growing zones with a little more time to care for their plants can also use gladiolus and dahlias. These bulbs need fertile, well-drained soil and taller varieties should be staked when they flower. In USDA zones cooler than 9 for dahlias and 8 for gladiolus, you’ll need to dig the bulbs and store them indoors over winter.
Striking Perennials
One of the easiest flowering perennials to grow is the daylily (Hemerocallis spp.). These plants are virtually maintenance-free once established and they come in a dazzling array of bloom styles and colors. Choose varieties with different bloom times and you can have flowers from early spring until frost.
Ornamental grasses are essential for four-season landscaping. For established grasses, you’ll cut the dead foliage down in the spring and by summer they’ll grow up showy and ready to bloom. There’s a huge range of varieties available with different sizes, leaf colors, and bloom forms. The foliage will remain attractive on into fall and you can leave the grass and seed heads up all winter for interest in the year-round landscape.
Seasonal Care
Most of the landscaping work in the summer involves keeping weeds out of your gardens. If you didn’t mulch during the spring, make sure you do that now to help keep plant roots from drying out during the hot summer months. Keep an eye on the landscape and if any of the plants start to wilt, water deeply around the base of the plant.
You’ll also be doing a lot of lawn mowing and trimming in the summer. Warm-season grasses, such as the species most commonly grown in Texas, thrive in the hot seasons of the year. Keep up with the mowing as well as edging and trimming to keep the area around your landscape beds looking good.
