Border Rescue
Flesh out spring borders with biennials and foliage plants, says Ian Hodgson
Flesh out spring borders with pretty biennials and early foliage plants
Q What can I plant to cover bare soil?
WITH MANY herbaceous perennials still hiding underground in spring, borders can look a bit empty, save for a few lonely tulips. Fortunately there are lots of colourful partners for them. Frost-hardy evergreens (including brunnera and heuchera) and robust early perennials (such as the astrantias shown here, aquilegias and dicentra) are a good starting point, as are biennials (honesty, wallflowers, forget-me-nots) and hardy annuals (such as violas). Many of these classic ‘groundcover’ plants not only partner tulips for colour, but also help to hide their tatty foliage, which can quickly become torn and floppy. Tulips prefer a nice light sandy soil and a sunny sheltered spot where their bulbs can bake in summer sun – they don’t like to be shaded by too much neighbouring foliage. This is why annuals and biennials often make better neighbours than evergreen shrubs and leafy perennials; you can just dig them all up after the display has died back and store the tulips in a warm, dark, well-ventilated space ready for replanting next autumn. One idea is to create an ‘island’ of tulips, plunge-planted (their bulbs in plastic pots) for a bold block of colour in spring. You can lift the potted bulbs after the tulip flowers have finished (late May), mulch with organic matter and grow your choice of colourful annuals in their place. Here, bearing in mind my reservations about evergreen foliage plants, I’m going to suggest planting a few purple-red heucheras to echo the magenta tulips, and a carpet of white myosotis to create a light froth that holds the scheme together. For later colour, we’ve got the astrantias (pink ‘Roma’ and red ‘Claret’) and aquilegia ‘Louisiana’. Maybe add in a few red violas for good measure.