The good borders guide

Not sure what to plant where? Helen Derrin from online nursery Crocus can help you…

Plan your summer colour

The prospect of filling an empty border can be daunting, and while you may have plenty of ideas about how you want your finished garden to look, knowing where to start is not always easy. With this in mind, I’ve put together a series of pre-designed borders that use a failsafe, paint-by-numbers approach.

The aim with these borders has been to take the hard work

out of the equation, to make it virtually impossible to go wrong. At the same time, I hope I’ve made it easy for you to create a lovely border in your garden.

These four borders on these have been carefully crafted to contain a collection of plants that offer diversity in height and structure, as well as tonal and seasonal variation. Above all, though, they include a range of plants that make excellent bedfellows, sitting happily together side by side.

There’s no need to stick too rigidly to the designs. By moving the plants around they can all be adapted to fit your garden.

As a rule, you should keep the taller plants towards the back of the border – but avoid sticking to this too rigidly if you want a softer, more natural effect.

If you’ve larger borders, just increase the numbers. And remember soft-stemmed herbaceous perennials (which usually die back each winter) tend to be faster-growing than shrubs. But, shrubs – particularly evergreens – do provide interest throughout the year.

Although these borders are quite heavily planted, they’ll take a couple of years to fill out, so in the initial stages after planting, you could temporarily fill gaps with annuals or bedding.