The Northern Garden:
Designing with perennials and paths

"Wouldn’t it be wonderful," Vermont garden designer Gordon Hayward asked more than 300 enchanted Idaho gardeners, "if every day, when you walked in and out of your home, you walked through a garden?"

Or, if you could embrace your guests with an inviting, human-scale entrance garden, cozy with loose, easy, relaxed plantings and saturated with dappled shade?"Gardens are for people," the former English teacher and author of three gardening books told participants in the ninth UI Horticultural Symposium last September in Boise. "This is something we so easily forget in our passion for plants and for design: Gardens are for our families, our friends, our guests, ourselves."

The Horticultural Symposium has evolved into a twice-yearly event enthusiastically attended by devoted gardeners in southern Idaho.

"So far, my goose bumps haven’t subsided," said Barbara Cusick, of the co-sponsoring Idaho Botanical Garden, four hours into the most recent symposium. "I’ve enjoyed every minute–wish it wouldn’t end."

Idaho Master Gardener Cheryl McCall of Paul called it "jam-packed with more ideas and stuff than you can possibly use." Colleen Crain of Hailey was simply "lovin’ it…everything the speakers have talked about is doable."

"We wanted to develop a world-class horticultural event that would energize the creativity and expand the horizons of Idaho’s gardeners–and I think we’ve done that," said W. Michael Colt, extension horticulture specialist at the Parma Research and Extension Center, who organized the first symposium in fall 1996.

Speaker Mike Heger entranced the audience on September 9 as he narrated dazzling slides of the best perennials for southern Idaho. Co-author of the 431-page reference book, Growing Perennials in Cold Climates, Heger assured the Gem State gardeners: "When you live in a northern climate, people think you can’t grow anything. Nothing is further from the truth. I still maintain that some of the best gardens in the U.S. are in the North."

Formerly with the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and now co-owner of Ambergate Gardens in Chaska, Minn., Heger bases recommendations of individual varieties on foliage as well as bloom. "People tend to think only of woody perennials for fall color," he said, "but there are a lot of herbaceous perennials that take on wonderful colors in fall. Think of combining them in your landscape with fall-blooming perennials. You can keep that fall landscape going right up until it freezes–and into winter with grasses."

For a practical approach to garden design, Gordon Hayward suggested that Idahoans expand their commonplace 3-foot-wide sidewalks into generously sized paths lined with plants. Expansive lawns are better divided into 5- to 6-foot-wide straight or swirled panels. "The shape of the lawn has to be as strong as the shape of the beds," he advised.

However, carving kidney-shaped raised beds out of the centers of lawns and filling them with small or mid-sized herbaceous perennials is rarely a visually satisfying alternative, Hayward noted. "It makes us wonder why that’s there. Every curve must be justified and appear to be logical." He suggested curving bed borders around trees, shrubs, boulders, or ornaments–and if those substantial plants and objects aren’t already there, installing them.

Materials and designs used in paths should flow as well–particularly from function. Want to sweep people to the front door? Use brick to point the way. Want your guests to tarry near a pleasing plant combination? Set small stepping stones close together. Want your perennials to flop casually without getting caught in the mower? Use gravel both as a betwixt-and-between mulch and as an informal path.

To build intimacy, Hayward advised the Idaho gardeners to "create a separation of spaces so people enter and leave small areas. Don’t give the whole story of your garden away from the driveway." Instead, divide the garden into distinct, small areas. Intimacy builds with repetition and variation of chosen themes, Hayward said. An arbor built in the same shape as an interior window frame beckons from outside. An inviting garden bench is irresistible when it’s painted the same color as the house trim. And adding a remarkable "old thing" from an antique store or garage sale "all of the sudden makes a garden feel like it’s been there 200 years."

Hayward even coaxed the audience into creating intimate spaces for their cars. "Separate the driveway from the entrance garden," he said. "If you can see your car, try to figure out a way to make it go away."

—Marlene Fritz