Annual borders - the basics

Annual Borders - the Basics

While you're getting to know your garden, you can still do some gardening. Here's how to create a temporary border to bring some colour to a bare space while you're working on your design.

• If you have a bare patch you can bring in some colour and interest by planting annuals, corms, rhizomes and tubers.
• We created a temporary bed with annuals and bulbs to give some colour through the year.

Bulbs, Tubers and Corms

These are such good value in the garden. Even if it's a temporary border, you can keep them and move them or put them in pots.

• I've used dahlias and gladioli to give fabulous colour.
• I've also sowed some seeds, e.g. cosmos.
• A colour theme of peach, wine and burgundy creates cohesion.
• Erigeron karvinskianus is a great little perennial daisy that will self-seed to give you free plants. It's great for the front of the border and will naturalise into gravel, cracks between paving etc.

It was really easy to put this temporary bed together and I can use the bulbs, corms and tubers and the few perennials that are in here elsewhere next year.

Dahlias for Late Summer Interest

We'll plant tulip bulbs in November for next spring, but in the meantime we've planted dahlia tubers for summer colour.

• If you want to, you can change up your dahlias each year to give a different effect.

I've also got a Panicum grass and two of my favourite annuals that are cheap and easy to grow from seed:

• Phlox 'Crème Brûlée' – peach and lilac with magenta centre that picks up the dahlia and gladioli
• Cosmos

Cosmos and a Stowaway

Cosmos comes in a wide range of colours to choose from.

A poppy has also self-seeded into this bed. It doesn't fit with the colour scheme, but I love that it's made a point of growing there, so I'm leaving it be.

• I recommend you do that with self-seeders that find their way in – e.g. poppies, Verbena, Erigeron. They'll all help to create a relaxed feel.

Repeating Plants Through the Border

Even though it's temporary, this border is productive – giving cut flowers – and also uses the same theme of repeating plants.

• The big, bold flowers of dahlia give a strong presence, and the groups are repeated in a staggered or winding way down the border.
• Don't put your repeated elements all in a row, e.g. all at the front.

Scabious for Borders

Scabious is a great perennial for borders. It gives height and has beautiful pompom flowerheads that give a long season of interest.

• It's great for the front to give a haze to see through, or the back to give height.

Honesty gives great interest after it's finished flowering, with its fabulous structural seedheads.

• Both plants are great for cutting and will work in whatever size border you have.

Just remember to repeat the plants you use – a group at the front, another further back, then forward again, in groups of threes or fives.

Plant Directory

Cosmos bipinnatus cultivars

Mexican aster

Half-hardy annuals

Asteraceae

Dahlia species and cultivars

Dahlias

Tender or half-hardy perennials, often grown as half-hardy annuals

Asteraceae

Erigeron karvinskianus

Mexican fleabane

Hardy semi-evergreen perennial

Asteraceae

Gladiolus species and cultivars

Gladioli, sword lily

Hardy or half hardy herbaceous bulb

Iridaceae

Lunaria annua

Honesty

Hardy annual or biennial

Brassicaceae

Panicum species and cultivars

Panic grasses, switch grasses

Hardy or half-hardy, evergreen or deciduous, annual or perennial ornamental grasses

Poaceae

Papaver rhoeas

Common poppy

Hardy annual

Papaveraceae

Phlox drummondii 'Crème Brûlée'

Annual phlox 'Crème Brûlée'

Short-lived perennial grown as half-hardy annual

Polemoniaceae

Scabiosa species and cultivars

Scabious

Herbaceous hardy perennials

Caprifoliaceae

Verbena bonariensis

Purple top

Herbaceous hardy perennial

Verbenaceae