How to create a complete flower garden with year-round appeal

The English perfected the pinnacle of flower gardening almost 80 years ago.

Global gardening legends, Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst and Lawrence Johnston at Hidcote, created stunning gardens that were full of rare perennials and bulbs, as well as roses and shrubs, which became a very sophisticated advancement on centuries of simplistic annual plantings of herbs and fruits by poor cottagers.

Heronswood, with its neo-Gothic stone house, provides a perfect backdrop to grow four different forms of gardening – an inevitable consequence of both our longer flowering period (being six months compared with only three and a half in the U.K.) and our summers being hotter.

Our cottage garden is exuberant, with tall showy annuals like poppies and biennial foxgloves, tall climbing sweet peas, zinnias and hollyhocks. Of course spring annuals die down after flowering and do best when planted next to summer perennials like lavender, herbs such as sage and rosemary, or fruit trees

Showy vegetables like silverbeet, cabbage and kale do well through winter and spring, whilst roses, perennial lupins and oriental poppies are spectacular until November when summer showy perennials such as delphiniums and gaura thrive. Heat-loving lavenders need to be placed in full sun and not over watered. We include herbs and fruit trees such as avocado, citrus, cherry and persimmon to give flowers and fruit.

Jeremy Francis at Cloudehill has cooler summers and has perfected the perennial border for both hot and pastel colours. He rarely uses annuals or vegetables, which are very labour intensive. His borders are seven metres deep, ideal for mixed plantings of shrubs and roses protected from wind within his beautifully constructed brick walls.

There is still confusion amongst Australian gardeners about the best plants for those inspired by selections other than plants from the outback. Australia has almost no native herbaceous perennials and very few showy annuals that thrive within 100km of the coast, where 90% of Australians garden.

To help you succeed I am writing with 40 years’ experience in choosing the best plants for four very different and distinct approaches to flower gardening.

Perennial border

Aspect: full sun

Soil: highly fertile and heavily mulched

Flowering time: summer to early autumn

Herbaceous perennials are selected because they have interesting foliage first and then harmonious flowers appearing from October to April. The Heronswood border is 3.5m deep and filled with summer and autumn flowering herbaceous perennials, which have attractive foliage that emerges in October.

Plantings in the front reach 30cm tall, middle plantings reach 60–90cm and background plants such as dahlias reach up to 1.5m tall. If plantings are well designed, flowering will extend through to April.

Herbaceous perennials die off in late autumn and don’t re-emerge until soil temperatures rise above 15°C. Choose from the following perennials to plant for spring emergence and summer and autumn flowering.

Spring/summer: Achillea, agastache, artemesia, coneflower, dahlia, delphinium ‘Blue Sensation’, eryngium, gaillardia, penstemon, Russian sage and lamb’s ears.

Autumn: Anemone japonica, sedum, grasse

Notes: No annuals, cut flowers with long stems, spring bulbs, vegetables or fruit, and minimal evergreen perennials.

Best visiting times: Oct-Nov and Jan-Apr.

Cut flower garden

The best florist flowers are showy soloists with long stems – perfect for display in a vase – but their awkward upright naked stems make poor companions in a flower garden, making them best grown alone in a picking garden, i.e. tulips, daffodils (unless naturalised in grass), liliums, stocks, roses and scabiosa.

Cottage garden

Aspect: full sun

Soil: highly fertile and mulched

Flowering time: spring, summer, autumn

Spring annuals (hardy): Queen Anne’s lace, Californian poppy, cornflower, poppy ‘Flanders Fields’, love in the mist, nasturtium and sweet peas.

Biennials: Foxglove and wallflower.

Perennials: Catmint, delphinium, gaura, lupins, lamb’s ears and oriental poppies.

Summer annuals (tender): Cosmos, gaillardia, hollyhock, sunflower and zinnia.

Edibles/herbs: Chives, golden marjoram, lavender, rosemary and sage.

Fruit trees: Small canopy because flowers need full sun, i.e. choose from avocado, citrus, cherry, white sapote, custard apple and persimmon. Berries and rhubarb.

Climbers: Kiwi fruit, passionfruit and grapes.

Vegetables (spring flowering): Silverbeet, cabbage and kale.

Roses: Old fashioned shrubs and climbers, (avoid hybrid tea and floribundas, which do best as cut flowers).

Note: Trees are too shady for cottage plants that need full sun, so are best planted on the edge of a cottage garden.

Evergreen perennials

Aspect: full sun

Soil: grainy, well drained with gravel, and even rocks

These largely non-native, drought-tolerant plant selections come from dry climates where temperatures and soils are hot and dry, such as the Mediterranean, California and Chile, as well as Australia.

Evergreen foliage, flowering all year: Anthemis, catmint, dianthus, euphorbia, evening primrose, gaura, geranium, iris, lavender, Limonium peregrinum, Limonium perezii, pelagonium, rosemary, succulents, shasta daisy, valerian and wallflower.

Shrubs for background framework: Bridal veil broom, ceonothus, cherry pie, echium, honey bush, phlomis, romneya and wigandia.