Creating A White Garden

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

What plants are suitable for creating a white garden

Spirea

If we talk about the white garden, then we cannot but mention the special role of trees and shrubs that make up the structure of any garden. For me personally, the first thing that comes to mind is a huge bird cherry that meets everyone who walks past our collective garden in the city of Pushkin.

Probably, bird cherry is the largest tree in our area, so lavishly blooming with white clusters of countless flowers. Remember this spicy, slightly bitter aroma of unfolding leaves and the first pearls-buds, and later - the immense openwork of white color, which sways the wind, like a bride's veil … Or a snowstorm of petals crumbling in due time …

There is no need to be sad about this for a long time, because plums are already blooming in the gardens, literally covered with large white flowers with a slightly greenish tint. Then the cherry will pick up the flowering baton, revealing its white umbrellas of flowers, tinted with pinkish-brown sepals. And finally, solid and young apple trees enter their flowering season with a slightly pinkish tinge of large flowers, but there are many varieties that bloom in a snow-white color.

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Apple tree in bloom

In order to appreciate the white color in the garden, you have to intersperse other shades and even contrasts here and there. The contrast, incredibly beautiful, are the varieties of the Nedzvetsky apple tree - crimson flowers, and then the fruits, completely stained with anthocyanins - an amazing sight!

At some point, the apotheosis of white flowering of fruit trees occurs when they all bloom at the same time! And even if you have an exclusively ornamental garden, for the sake of this spring blooming riot, it is worth having at least one fruit tree - you really will not regret it.

An absolutely stunning impression is made by the flowering snow-white steppe almonds and a slightly pinkish sakura - they quite successfully live with us. And the list of more exotic species that can decorate our garden with white boil can be continued.

Blackberry

It is impossible not to sing an ode to the magnificently blooming fruit trees, since they serve as the main background and basis for the composition of a traditional Russian garden. And if you have blackberries growing and blooming, none of your guests will forget this squall of large textured flowers on arcuate shoots! Only the September landscape with black large berries strewn with strong branches can be compared with this splendor.

Our traditional gardens typically include fruit trees, berry bushes, vegetable and green beds, flowers and some ornamental shrubs. Given the small size of the plots, we can hardly afford to arrange an entirely white garden, although in European garden culture there are examples of famous, even iconic gardens, matured in a silvery white color. But trying to create at least a corner in noble white tones is very tempting.

A rich dark color is chosen as the background for such a composition - it can be a hedge of yew, spruce, thuja, brilliant cotoneaster, Thunberg barberry and other species. As a dark and openwork background, say, around a white bench in a remote corner of the garden, plantings of semi-shrubs with carved ornate foliage - mountain ash, aruncus (volzhanka), snowberry can serve as a dark and openwork background. After flowering fieldfare and aruncus, the inflorescences are cut off, the greenery remains decorative throughout the season.

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A bit of history about the old gardens. The gardens, laid down in the 50s of the last century, are complicated by the fact that they were laid in an orderly manner in a square-nesting way - under pegs installed by local authorities. As a result, the plots were very quickly shaded, because the overgrown tree crowns closed and deprived of light, and therefore life, all the plants planted in the aisles. In addition, novice gardeners often sinned by overloading the garden with an inordinately large number of trees. There is no sense in this at all: normal growth, development and fruiting are possible only in the case of good illumination of the entire crown.

The way out, unfortunately, is as follows: reducing the number of trees to normal (3x5-6 m for each tree on seedling stock); regular crown reduction to 2.5 m in height, thinning and rejuvenating pruning. In our garden, we tried to free the central part of old unproductive trees of unsuccessful varieties. And as the site became lighter, it became possible to "introduce" ornamental plants into a purely fruit and berry garden.

Perennial flowers gradually settled under the crowns of trees, where now mini-gardens of continuous flowering have turned out. Then it became possible to embed miniature flowering shrubs into ready-made compositions. Miniature, because the entire garden is less than five acres. I must say that ornamental shrubs bloom profusely exclusively in sunny places. All, of course, cannot be accommodated, but the most unpretentious and spectacular species should settle in a white garden or such a part of it. In addition, splashes of white will noticeably enliven the dark corners of the garden.

Spirea cinerea

For many years now, one of the most fashionable and beautiful white-flowered spiraea has rightly been considered gray spirea (Spiraea cinerea) with narrow pointed leaves of a grayish tone, blooming in May on arched graceful shoots. Even a single plant will decorate the garden with "snowy" arches, entirely covered with umbrellas of the whitest inflorescences.

It grows up to 2 m, and it is propagated by layering, cuttings (spring or summer), which, without treatment with root stimulants, take root by 30-40%. You can "knock out" the spirea bush with white or slightly yellowish viola, white daisy, hazel grouse, hyacinths, crocuses, primroses.

Spireas with white flowers of spring and summer flowering are very numerous. Among the low species - alpine, dwarf, Thunberg, Emilia. Medium-high are white-flowered spiraea (blooms in mid-July - August), St. John's worm (mid-May), nippon (June), lily (mid-June), three-lobed (from early June to early July). Spireas can grow in free-form and sheared hedges.

They grow ubiquitously in city gardens and parks, which testifies to their sustainability and unpretentiousness. Propagated by seeds (if they are not of hybrid origin), cuttings and layering. When choosing planting material in a nursery or store, it is better to take young plants in containers - they are easier to adapt to new conditions.

Kalina Boulle de Neige

The soloist in the spring garden has always been an ordinary viburnum with a flat umbrella of inflorescences of white large flowers along the edge (they are sterile) and small ones in the center. It is very effective in the form of a standard tree, you can form it like a bonsai in the ground.

In autumn, its bright red, shiny fruits are especially elegant. Viburnum Boulle de Neige (Snow Globe) with spherical, almost pompomous inflorescences with sterile flowers attracts special attention.

There is a modern variety 'Roseum - an analogue of the previous one. Viburnums are unpretentious cold-resistant shrubs, they are moisture-loving, prefer drained light soils, but put up with medium loam. The difficulty of growing viburnum lies in the strong damage to its foliage by the viburnum leaf beetle. As a biological protection, it is recommended to prophylactically treat plants with a 2.5% solution of microbiological preparations of entobacterin and dendrobacillin against leaf-eating caterpillars.

Herbal preparations are also used. Here is the recipe: 15-20 g of dry mustard powder or 40 g of tobacco dust is dissolved in 1 liter of hot water, infused for 24 hours, filtered and sprayed on the plant. For better adhesion, liquid laundry soap is added to the infusion.

White lilac

White lilac is an unusually gentle, nostalgic plant for the Russian garden. It grows best in sunny places with moderately moist soils without stagnant water, with deeply standing groundwater. Lilacs, like other fragrant plants, are planted near the house, gazebos, benches, so that the scent of lush brushes makes us dizzy, and that would be nice.

May bright evenings are always associated with blooming lilacs. I would especially like to note the Amur lilac, which is rare so far - a low tree with large lush clusters of small fragrant ivory flowers. It blooms later than all the lilacs. But how beautiful and unlike anyone else she is in full bloom!

Next to the lilac, it is worth planting a crown mock-orange - the white flowering in June smoothly passes onto it, and the aroma becomes even stronger. Chubushniki easily propagate in spring by winter cuttings with still dormant buds: even rather large branches (up to 50 cm) can be invaded into wet soil in a semi-shady place, press a row of cuttings well with your foot and confidently wait for rooting.

In the fall, you can plant young bushes in a permanent place. It is possible to plant such cuttings for rooting in September, usually in the spring they also give seedlings from seed pods. The seedlings are left to grow for 1 - 2 years in the same place. There are amazing varieties of terry chubushnik, they are propagated by layering and cuttings.

Hydrangea

Hydrangeas paniculata and tree-like are integral persons of the white July garden, their flowering continues until late autumn. It is important for them to get acidic (pH 5.5) and fairly moist soil, a bright place, protected from northern winds. When planting, the root collar should remain at the level of the soil; after the soil subsides, deepening up to 3 cm is permissible, but no more, so as not to weaken the development of the seedling.

A dump of white crushed stone with a couple of containers of bush chrysanthemum or native nivyaniks in the ground will emphasize the romance of a white bench surrounded by a haze of globular bushes of gypsophila paniculata, a wall of white-variegated Siberian turf and a fragrant thigh-leaved rose, a white rose and its terry paths … a trellis climber may surprise - clematis fargesioides with white star-shaped flowers in loose racemes. It climbs to a height of three or more meters along the wall of the house, blooms from late June to autumn and hibernates without pruning and shelter.

To ensure abundant flowering when planting any plants, 1-2 teaspoons of long-acting complex fertilizer granules are added to the hole, the next feeding is given only after two years. As a nitrogen component, compost is used in the planting pit and in the form of autumn mulch. In the spring, nitrogen fertilization with urea or humus is necessary for the entire garden. Sometimes, instead of pure nitrogen, Kemir's fast-acting complex fertilizer is used, 80-100 g per 1 m2 of area, repeating feeding in two weeks.

It is impossible not to remind respected gardeners that there is still a group of plants, without which the white garden will not have a finished look. These are small grasses with grayish, silvery foliage: wormwood Pursha, Steller and other species; anaphalis pearl with really pearl-colored stems and leaves and large shields of small white flowers, spectacular both in cut and in dry bouquets; Byzantine purse with felt pubescence of leaves and stems; white-bordered hosts, white-spotted periwinkle; cereals - gray fescue, falaris with white stripes on the leaves; variegated ferns, lamium and zelenchuk with silvery patterns on "nettle" leaves, silvery rugs with white flowers of cerastium, rabis and other species.

Pure green leaves of an interesting texture are also necessary in compositions with white-flowered plants: tall and low ferns, aquilegia, Rogersia astilbe, evergreen periwinkle creeping, white sedum, eidum with white shields. The latest white stars in the autumn garden will be the perennial New Belgian and New England asters - tall, lush bushes with miniature leaves and numerous glowing radiant flowers with a bitter aroma.