We had a lot positive feedback and questions about plants in this bed over the summer, so we thought it would be a good idea to share some of the rationale behind the design and selection of the plant material. We hope you enjoy!
This is one of the larger annual floral displays in Saanich. Considerations when designing this bed are; it’s size, the site conditions and its location.
Due to the large size, we have decided to incorporate some trees, shrubs and perennials to give the bed more interest throughout the year, and allow us to reduce the number of annual plants used.
The site is exposed to a fair bit of wind, so we need to avoid delicate plants that would require staking in this situation. The edges of the bed tend to be on the wet side, while the centre of the bed is well drained and on the dry side, so our plant selection must meet these particular soil conditions.
This location doesn’t get a huge amount of pedestrian traffic, but it gets a tremendous amount of vehicular traffic, therefore we use plants, colours and textures for a bold eye-catching display for our drive-by customers.
In 2010, we planted an edging alternating pattern of Ipomea battatas ‘Lime’ and ‘Blackie’ (sweet potato vine) as the first row. These plants are very vigorous, are very low maintenance, and have spectacular contrasting colours. The colours also “echo” the colours of the trees planted in the centre; Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia’ with lime green leaves (Locust), flanked by two Fagus sylvatica purpurea “Pendula’ (Weeping purple Beech).
Moving up a row into the bed, we combined pockets of hot pink- magenta zonal geraniums, silvery Salvia argentea, Coleus ‘Kingwood Torch, which has burgundy leaves with green stripes.
The next row in, with slightly taller plants is comprised of Salvia farinacea ‘Victoria Blue’ spikes (Blue mealy sage), Rudbeckia X hirta ‘Cherry Brandy’ (Wine red daisy upright ) and Agyranthemum ‘Butterfly’.(mounds of smaller bright yellow daisies) These three plants are used in repetitive blocks of colour to give flow and continuity to the bed as well as adding a contrast in height and form.
We also use a number of foliage plants to punctuate the design. Colocasia esculenta (Elephant’s ears, Taro) are planted in clumps on all three corners of the bed. Closer to the centre are three Musa ensete (purple leaved Bananas), in combination with clumps of tall, red flowering, green leaved Canna lilies.
Dahlias are used as accent plants throughout the bed. The varieties include Rothesay Reveller, Elsie Huston, Rip City, Blackberry Ripple and Cynthia Houston.
There are a number of other plants in this bed that were ‘volunteers’ (self-seeders) from 2009, which we selectively avoided weeding out, where there was room for them fill in a gap. These include Helianthus annuus (annual sunflower), Cleome or Spider flower in white, purple and pink and several varieties of Amaranthus or commonly known as Amaranth.
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