Designing for multi season interest- It is always important to design and plant in combination for prolonged interest. Unless it is just your summer home you should have color year round. This planting has Purple Leaved Actea which adds a beautiful foliage color spring through fall but also adds blooms of white in the early summer. As those blooms fade this beautiful pink phlox variety takes over throughout much of July until it is paired with the Black Eyed Susan. As these will both fade soon the Cranberry Viburnum as the backdrop steals the show with its gorgeous bright red berries that cover the entire plant sometimes (remember to plant males for better berry set). Finally as the cool of fall takes over the Viburnum will turn all the fires of fall with reds and oranges creating a great stage for the many colorful birds that come to devour the many red berries and dried seeds of the Black Eyed Susan.
“A collection of plants is not a landscape, any more than a list of choice words is a poem. The merit is in the design, not the material it is expressed in, and the best designs, like the best poems, make ordinary material significant by its arrangement.”