Simple ways to keep color recurring in the landscape

For penny-pinching gardeners who crave season-spanning beauty, author and garden expert Kerry Ann Mendez suggests a strategy inspired by horse racing.

Her “trifecta,” though, focuses on trophy-worthy perennials, annuals, ornamental grasses and flowering shrubs — not thoroughbreds.

By thoughtfully combining her suggested plants, you can create a landscape that looks fabulous in spring, summer and fall — a trifecta of seasons.

“Each plant has exceptional endurance, far surpassing other contestants for their blooming stamina, month after month,” she writes in “The Budget-Wise Gardener.”

“Each carefully selected contender has at least two seasons of interest provided by flowers, foliage, berries, seed heads and/or stem color” — ensuring that gardeners get the best value for their investment.

Here’s a sampling of her favorites.

Spring

• Arkansas blue star (amsonia), a perennial with light-blue flowers in spring and golden foliage in fall.

• Brandywine viburnum, a shrub that boasts white flowers in spring that are followed by colorful berries, then deep-red leaves in autumn.

Summer • Karl Foerster feather The author’s garden features long-blooming flowers such as Curry Up coreopsis (yellow with red centers) and Bonfire begonia (red, foreground). reed grass, a perennial ornamental grass that can reach 5 feet tall and whose dried seed heads look attractive through winter.

• Bubblegum Supertunia Vista, a hybrid petunia — an annual — that practically smothers itself with bright- pink flowers for months.

Fall

• Little Suzie witch hazel, a compact shrub with pale- yellow flowers in autumn — a season when few trees and shrubs bloom.

• Night Embers sedum ( aka stonecrop), a perennial with dark leaves and flowers of rosy pink in late summer to fall.