Expert tips for an eye-popping garden
Combine perennials and annuals in staggered heights and vivid colors to impress
There isn’t a color too bold for Cheryl Langford as she designs and oversees the spectacular spring planting in Uptown Houston.
When May arrives, Langford and her crew at Color Specialists Landscaping install thousands of pots of annuals and perennials in this busy area, full of swanky retail stores, upscale restaurants and office buildings full of wealth managers, lawyers and business executives.
And for Houston area residents, it’s just in time. We’re fully into spring and just starting to emerge from weeks of social isolation prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Langford’s gardening advice is timely, too, for homeowners who are sprucing up their own yards with spring color.
“Don’t be afraid to experiment. Sometimes my best combinations are out loud and proud,” Langford said. “I’ll look at them and go ‘whoa.’ Color is color and it’s beautiful.”
Langford’s mandate is to impress people who are driving on Post Oak Boulevard and other Uptown streets — that takes more than simple pastels.
That means you’ll see plenty of bright yellow rudbeckia (also known as black-eyed Susans) and blue salvia, a vivid almostpurple shade of blue, in what might be that area’s signature flowers.
On Post Oak alone, Langford and her crew will plant some 25 different varieties in 57,000 pots. Here’s her advice for homeowners looking for new ideas for their own planters and landscaped areas.
Bed preparation
Don’t plant a single thing until your planting beds are ready. Put a new flower in old dirt lacking in nutrients and you’re likely just wasting your time and money.
“You need an excellent garden soil — it’s like the foundation of your home,” Langford said.
When testing your own soil or shopping for new, stick your hand into a pile of the dirt and grab a clump, she said. If it sticks together, you’ve got good soil; if it falls apart, you don’t. Simple as that.
Picking good plants
There’s nothing wrong with buying pots or flats with flowers already in bloom, but that’s not a sign you’ve got a better or healthier plant. Langford looks for healthy, compact green plants with a good root system.
One thing she avoids is a potted plant that is root bound or has roots hanging out the bottom of the pot. If that’s what you’ve
got, cut off the bottom inch before you put them in the ground, she said.
Flower combinations
Part of the visual appeal of Langford’s designs are her combinations of perennials and annuals in staggered heights and vivid colors. Her in-ground designs are generally going to be three-tiered combinations of center plants, midlevel height plants and edging, planted 10 to 12 inches apart.
Combinations vary depending on the amount of sun or shade, but Langford has definite favorites interspersed with patches of trimmed Japanese yew, dwarf hibiscus and rudbeckia.
In sunny spots, she likes salvia and vincas as center plantings, with begonias, marigolds, pentas and strapleaf caladiums in the midlevel height. Edging favorites include verbena, spreading angelonia, scaevola and calibrachoa.
Areas with only partial sun would get crossandra or fancy leaf caladiums for the tallest plants, pentas and angelonia in the middle and spreading angelonia or begonias for edging.
In a section full of shade from live oaks, Langford likes to plant begonias, pentas and caladiums. She works in ‘Cuban Gold’ duranta — a durable plant that does well in sun or shade — for visual interest.
If some of your annuals die in the worst heat of summer, replace them with vincas, hearty plants that can take August’s high heat, she said.
Mulch
Too much mulch can suffocate a plant’s root system, so Langford recommends using 1½ inches of hardwood mulch. (It will pack down to 1 inch in time.) Be sure to use hardwood mulch — not pine mulch — because it’s already decomposed.
Maintenance
This might be the most important phase of gardening: controlling weeds, getting the right amount of water, deadheading and pruning and keeping bugs away.
Without at least weekly attention, all of the time and effort you’ve put into your landscaping could be for nothing. You’ll want to pull weeds and make sure plants have the right amount of water — in hot months, you’ll water more than weekly, of course.
Don’t forget to deadhead — plucking off spent blooms — so your plants will continue to produce more flowers.
“An annual lives to reseed and is a one-season plant. If you let it go to seed, it will stop producing buds to revive itself. Deadheading tricks it into continuous blooming,” Langford said.
Keep bugs — especially spider mites, mealy bugs, white flies, aphids and thrips — at bay with a spray or granular systemic insecticide.
Fertilize
Just like people, plants need food to survive. Theirs is called fertilizer, though, and an organic liquid fertilizer should be applied every other week, she said. Langford puts her plants in the ground with a time-released fertilizer.
Planters
People with minimal yards or those who stick to planters on high-rise apartment balconies can still have beautiful color with planters. Combinations for a 3-foot planter include calibrachoa, spreading white angelonia and orange marigolds paired with hotpink vinca or pentas. Creeping jenny is another great trailing plant to use around the edges.