Tranquil Lake Nursery has matured over the past twenty years, since Philip Boucher and I purchased the daylily and iris catalog business. The site has transformed from simple fields of daylilies and iris surrounding a house and random plantings of shrubs, to a complex of garden spaces with ten acres of colorful outlying production fields.

The gardens express our passionate love of plants mixed with horticultural expertise and artful design. They also offer a long-season of interest to complement the daylily and iris fields and nursery container sales areas.

Our philosophy is to grow the perennials, grasses, shrubs and trees in our own gardens to show off their ornamental characteristics and test their mettle through the many seasons. Over the years we have written about plants that are drought tolerant, offer winter interest, produce colorful foliage and offer many other outstanding attributes. We have also provided design tips for use in the garden. These recommendations and observations have been based on the twenty years of practical experience from making our own gardens as well as the gardens we have designed for customers.

Mixed borders provide interest in every season, utilizing all of the characteristics of plants from evergreen foliage to fall color, fruits, seed pods and blossoms. While every mixed border should be planned specifically to your site and conditions, the following tips are useful.

A perennial is a plant that endures from year to year. Those that complete their life cycle in one year and then die are annuals. Therefore woody plants such as sugar maple, red oaks, white pines and lilacs are perennial. Peonies and daylilies are perennial too. They are herbaceous perennials that endure from year to year in our New England region. Of course these scientific classification of perennial and annual presume that plants are growing in their native climate and growing conditions.

Gardeners, of course, don’t limit themselves to only those plants from one region. So how do gardeners define ‘perennial’? Connecticut horticulturist Maryanne McGourty says "perennials are plants that come back every year, unless they die!" This witty and all too accurate definition always elicits acknowledging smiles and knowing laughter from gatherings of gardeners. We’ve all experience the latter of McGourty’s perennial description. Not all perennials are long lived, and garden hardiness can truly be subjective, depending on site and soil conditions.

Many of us, myself included, have been smitten by the ‘siren’s song’ that steers passionate plant collectors to the irresistible charms of the new, rare or fashionable perennial. Then we ‘crash on the rocks of destruction,’ when these so-called perennials die during their first year.

This past winter was a rude reminder of regional reality. It tested the limits of the true USDA plant hardiness Zone 5 winter. In January, the thermometer dipped to 16 degrees below zero at the nursery!

This is not to say there isn’t a place for tender or just plain tropical plants in our gardens. We can celebrate and make room for all plants. However, experienced gardeners acquire a grounded sense of place - an awareness of the land and its particular site and cultural conditions. Plant hardiness is more complex than the lowest, cold temperatures.

To define enduring herbaceous perennial, I keep returning to the book Low Maintenance Perennials by Robert Hebb. Though published nearly thirty years ago, when Hebb was Assistant Horticulturist at the Arnold Arboretum, and long out of print, its practical information is not dated. Hebb outlined six criteria that define low maintenance and enduring perennial qualities: (1) infrequent need for division; (2) flower stalks that stand up without staking; (3) attractive foliage after bloom; (4) able to grow in a broad range of soil types; (5) resistant to insects and diseases, and (6) HARDY to winter cold as well as summer heat. The number of plants that can be included on the list of qualifying candidates is not lean, but includes hundreds of genera. Besides the obvious Hemerocallis (daylilies), Iris sibirica, Paeonia, Hosta, and Astilbe, he lists a host of other perennials. from Achillea to Yucca.

Hebb may not include the newest cultivars of Hemerocallis, Geranium or Heuchera, but we can use his valuable criteria to evaluate what’s ‘new, rare, or fashionable’ and compare it to the ‘tried and true.’

Our display gardens at Tranquil Lake Nursery are designed and rooted in Hebb’s ‘low maintenance’ criteria. The soil tends to be dry and sandy, and we don’t have time to drag hoses and set up sprinklers. We don’t pamper our perennials.

Plant your garden’s with a backbone of plants whose foliage and form will sustain the seasons. Woody shrubs with interesting winter twigs, dwarf or slow growing conifers and herbaceous perennials and grasses which retain some of their structure in the winter are excellent choices. For instance, in a shady border, use a woody shrub such as Enkianthus campanulatus (an exemplar example of four season’s interest) with herbaceous perennials Cimicifuga ‘Hillside Black Beauty’, Hakonechloa macra ‘Albo Striata’ and Hosta ‘Sum and Substance’ for a bold accent.

Thuja occidentalis ‘Rheingold’ adds an evergreen background of chartreuse foliage in a sunny situation. Add the starry yellow flowers of Coreopsis ‘Moonbeam’, the pleated leaves and chartreuse sprays of Our Lady’s Mantle (Alchemilla mollis) with Iris sibirica ‘Swank’, Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and Aster oblongifolius ‘Raydon’s Favorite’ for a long and colorful season.

Ornamental grasses offer beautiful, long-season structure of colored and pattered leaves and plumes and panicles of flowers. Switch grasses (Panicum), maiden grasses (Miscanthus), feather reed (Calamagrostis) and fountain grasses (Pennisetum) all stand up to frost, snow and ice, creating sculptural winter effects in the garden.

Aronia is very hardy and tolerant of both wet and dry soil conditions. Aronia blooms with white flowers in the spring, has attractive green foliage that turns fiery red with fall color and sports clusters of red fruit that last all winter! Tall daylilies, such as the very statuesque ‘Autumn Minaret’ and other late blooming perennials; Boltonia asteroides ‘Snowbank’, Helianthus salicifolius ‘Gold Lace’ and Sedum ‘Autumn Joy,’ add a colorful complement to an ornamental grass and woody shrub alliance.

Two indestructible shrubs for sunny, dry, garden conditions are purple smokebush (Cotinus coggyria ‘Royal Purple’) and the variegated five-leaf aralia (Eleutherococcus sieboldianus ‘Variegatus’). The dark round leaves of smokebush can offer both a complement, as a background for the pale flowers and variegated leaves of Phlox paniculata ‘Nora Leigh’ and a contrast, to the striped linear leaves of Miscanthus sinensis ‘Strictus’.

The green and cream compound leaves of Eleutherococcus give a soothing background for the vibrant gold and black flowers of Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm.’ Blue star (Amsonia hubrectii) adds a fine textured accompaniment with bright yellow fall foliage. The Eleutherococcus also flourishes in dry shade. A fantastic foil for Hosta, its dissected, variegated leaves are a textural contrast to the broad, bold foliage of Hosta ‘Francee’.

To create a garden that endures, chose hardy perennials suited for your site. It, not only, will ‘come back next year’ but give you years of enjoyment.

New Mosaic Garden

One of the hands-on demonstration workshops during our 2005 Fall Festival was the creation of a semi-circular stone seat located in the lower garden by the pond. At our Spring Festival in April, we added a Dragonfly Mosaic paving made of granite and plate glass.

This new garden was planted using silver-foliage plants punctuated with vermilion fuchsias and standard purple heliotropes. The concentric circles are nestled within a border behind a towering twenty-foot tall fastigiated yew moved nearly twenty years ago. A large specimen of a dwarf blue spruce (Picea pungens ‘Montgomery’) flanks one side and sets the tone for the silver, blue and gray color scheme.

Summer 2006 Newsletter

Mastering the Mixed Border