Landscaping For Year-Round Interest Part 1
A landscape bed is pretty useless if it only looks good for a few months out of the year. If you’re going to spend the time and money to put in new landscaping or re-do what you have now, you want the results to look good all the time.
Join us for a four-part blog series that will help you cultivate 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. Let’s start with spring.
Spring Color
Flowering bulbs come back year-after-year and provide reliable spring color. They don’t take up much room, either. For most, the leaves die back to the soil shortly after blooming, making way for summer perennials. And if you pick species with staggered bloom times, you can have flowers from the last days of winter through late spring.
Plant spring-flowering bulbs in the fall in a location with well-drained soil and full sun or partial shade. Many of the common spring flowering bulbs need cold winters to bloom, but others are reliable in central Texas and some warmer areas as well:
- Daffodils (Narcissus spp.) typically bloom in late winter and early spring. Most are hardy to USDA plant hardiness zone 5 and will still flower reliably in zone 8 or 9 (depending on the specific species or cultivar).
- Dutch iris (Iris hollandica) bloom early in the spring. They’re sometimes grown as an annual, but are hardy in zones 5 through 9 and often come back if the summers aren’t too wet.
- Some allium (Allium spp.) species flower in the spring, others in the summer and fall. They’re hardy in zones 5 through 9, (depending on the species or cultivar). For flowers in mid to late spring, try the short ‘Jeannine’ golden onion and the tall, purple giant onion, (Allium giganteum).
Backbone of the Garden
Trees and shrubs form the backbone of a garden with year-round interest. When people think of trees that look good all year, we often think of evergreen conifers. But there are others that will bloom in one season and then offer interesting foliage or form for the rest of the year.
- Magnolia trees (Magnolia spp.) typically bloom in the spring and then carry lovely, glossy leaves for the rest of the year. Some, like the Southern Magnolia, are evergreen. Check the hardiness zones for each species to see which will grow in your area.
- Azaleas and rhododendrons (Rhododendron spp.) typically need partial shade and bloom for just a short period of time in the spring. The blooms are spectacular, though, and the foliage stays attractive. Some varieties are evergreen and hardiness varies by species.
- Spring flowering trees provide spring color and varieties, like crab apples, can also carry interesting fruits into the summer and fall. If you choose a variety with an interesting form, such as a weeping cherry, the tree will also look good in the winter landscape.
Gardening Tasks
Spring is a good time for cleaning up the garden and adding new perennials for the summer and fall seasons. Get a head-start on the weeding early in the spring and lay down fresh mulch. That will help keep the summer weeds down and hold in soil hold moisture to protect against drought. Spring is also a good season for catching up on any lawn equipment maintenance so you’ll be ready to gardening tasks the rest of the year.
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