White Gardens E-Book

Nina Koziol

• Herausgeber: Creative Homeowner
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 163

Beschreibung

Appreciate your garden from a whole new light -- at night! A complete guide to creating a stunning white garden, White Gardens offers tons of tips to cultivate a beautiful night garden. Fill your garden with white flowers and native plants that reflect the light of the moon -- or even only bloom at night! -- so you can enjoy the beauty of your outdoor space in the evening, not just during the day. Featuring detailed overviews on gardening basics, elements of a moonlight garden, garden design guidance, and profiles of white annuals, perennials, shrubs, vines, tender bulbs, and tropical flowers, also included is a section on hardscaping for even more night-time enhancements, from light, fire, and water to arbors, pergolas, trellises, and more. It also includes an inspirational gallery of photos from famous white gardens, including the Kensington Palace White Garden planted in memory of Princess Diana. Perfect for discovering new and unique gardening ideas, this inspiring guide is a curation of flowers that truly shine at night! Author Nina Kozoil is an award-winning gardening expert, teacher, writer, presenter, judge, and more. Her articles on moonlight gardens have been featured in the Chicago Tribune, Old-House Journal, and the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to my English mum, Terry.

Copyright © 2024 Nina Koziol and Creative Homeowner

This book may not be reproduced, either in part or in its entirety, in any form, by any means, without written permission from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts for purposes of radio, television, or published review. All rights, including the right of translation, are reserved. Note: Be sure to familiarize yourself with manufacturer’s instructions for tools, equipment, and materials before beginning a project. Although all possible measures have been taken to ensure the accuracy of the material presented, neither the author nor the publisher is liable in case of misinterpretation of directions, misapplication, or typographical error.

Creative Homeowner® is a registered trademark of New Design Originals Corporation.

White Gardens: Creating Magnificent Moonlit Spaces

Managing Editor: Gretchen Bacon

Editor: Joseph Borden

Copy Editor: Kurt Connelly

Designer: Mary Ann Kahn

Indexer: Jay Kreider

Print ISBN: 978-1-58011-580-3

eISBN: 978-1-63741-172-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 9781580115803

We are always looking for talented authors. To submit an idea, please send a brief inquiry to [email protected].

Creative Homeowner®, www.creativehomeowner.com, is an imprint of New Design Originals Corporation and distributed exclusively in North America by Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc., 800-457-9112, 903 Square Street, Mount Joy, PA 17552, and in the United Kingdom by Grantham Book Service, Trent Road, Grantham, Lincolnshire, NG31 7XQ.

Contents

Background & Highlights

Chapter 1: White Gardens and Moonlight Gardens: Past and Present

Gallery

Chapter 2: Highlights of the White Garden: An Overview

Chapter 3: The Elements of Design

Chapter 4: Siting the White Garden: Sun, Shade, and Soil

Chapter 5: Designing the White Garden

Selecting the Plants

Chapter 6: All About Annuals

Chapter 7: All About Perennials

Chapter 8: Shrubs and Roses

Chapter 9: Annual and Perennial Vines: Upward and Onward

Chapter 10: Bulbs: Early, Middle, and Late Bloomers

Chapter 11: Exotics, Tropicals, and More Night-Bloomers

Photo Credits

About the Author

Introduction

“And still within a summer’s nightA something so transporting bright,I clap my hands to see.”

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

The Joy of an Evening Garden

The reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson was devoted to gardening and no doubt spent evenings wandering her family’s gardens and meadows in Amherst, Massachusetts, looking for inspiration. She was keenly interested in all nature had to offer, from blossoms and birds to beetles and butterflies. Her poems illustrate how attuned she was to the weather, the changing seasons, and transitions in the garden throughout the day and into night.

Dickinson appreciated that a garden with white flowers at night is totally different from one enjoyed during the day. On sunny days, we tend to appreciate showy, vibrant hues—the bright reds, oranges, blues and purples—of annuals, perennials, shrubs, and vines. By late afternoon or early evening, as the sun begins to set, those glorious colors fade. Orange and red become muted, and deep colors disappear in the darkness. Evening is the time when shimmering white blossoms and silver or variegated foliage become the stars of the garden. While understated during the day, white, lemon-yellow, and the palest pink flowers appear to glow at night, reflecting ambient light. This is when the white garden, also known as the evening garden or moon garden, comes into its own. At sunset and beyond, the garden is transformed into something soothing, fragrant, and mysterious.

Like crepe paper, the petals of tree peony flowers reflect the light at dusk and beyond.

This book is a practical guide to creating your own white garden, whether your space is a condo with a balcony, a small urban lot, or a sweeping suburban property. New to gardening? All the basics—from soil preparation and plant selection to fertilizing and watering—are included so that your new white garden is a success. And for avid gardeners and landscape pros, White Gardens can take your projects up a notch with ideas for elegant, stunning designs.

Read it from cover to cover or use the book as a starting point for choosing and combining plants. The book is divided into two parts: “Background and Highlights” and “Selecting the Plants.” The fascinating history of evening gardens, dating back several centuries and across the continents, begins in Chapter 1. The key components behind the white garden—from choosing a site and creating a succession of interest through the growing season—are covered in Chapter 2. The garden’s “bones” or hardscape appear in Chapter 3, where you’ll discover elements like fire features to warm the evening, water to reflect moonlight on clear nights, and lighting. You’ll learn how to determine the right size for a patio or seating area and embellish your outdoor space with arbors and trellises—all important, long-lasting elements that can add value to your property. Selecting an appropriate spot for your white garden, whether you have sun, shade or some of both, is found in Chapter 4.

A bounty of design ideas for beds, borders, foundation plantings and containers are featured in Chapter 5. You can effectively combine plants so that they look interesting during the day and in the evening when you understand how color, texture, shape, and form work together (Chapter 6). When it comes to selecting plants, including those with fragrance, Chapters 7 through 11 offer a wealth of choices—from spring- and summer-blooming bulbs to annuals, perennials, shrubs, vines, and tropicals.

As bright colors fade at sunset, white flowers begin to glow.

Time spent in the garden at night is a sensuous experience. It helps you slow down while you look at the shadows cast by moonlight. There’s the delicate tracery from branches and tree limbs cast onto the patio or lawn. When a gentle breeze floats by on a warm evening, you may catch a hint of vanilla or honey fragrance from sweet alyssum or tobacco flowers. Sit, watch, and listen. As night falls, we become much more attuned to our surroundings through scent and sound.

Some flowers emit a fragrance only after dusk. They have evolved to attract night-flying pollinators that navigate by scent. There are the delicate, fragrant flowers of jasmine, white roses, lilies, and petunias to enjoy. And there’s the moonflower vine, clambering up an arbor or fence and twirling open its brilliant white blossoms as the sun sets.

The sounds at night also capture our attention more so than during the day. The soothing trickle of a fountain, the bell-like notes of wind chimes, or the rustle of leaves allows us to experience the garden in a totally different and captivating way.

By the summer solstice in June, many evening gardens are alive with magic and wonder. In some areas, fireflies slowly rise from beds, borders, and lawns like floating lanterns. Birdsong at dusk, the great chorus of insects serenading potential mates, the night sky, moths flitting amongst flowers—all of these help redirect our attention from the day’s hustle to something ethereal and relaxing.

Part 1

Background & Highlights

There’s much to be said for taking a stroll among your plants on a summer’s eve at dusk. The concept of white gardens isn’t just a contemporary trend; it’s rooted deeply in history. The beauty of a white garden is that you can create one anywhere, in any part of the country with plants suited to your climate and terrain, whether it be in sun or shade. From its historic origins to the benefits it offers, like the way the white hues shimmer in the moonlight and provide a tranquil evening experience, there’s a richness to these gardens that goes beyond aesthetics. It can be a small corner of an urban lot or a sweeping border in the suburbs. Planted near a front entry, a white-flowering moon garden is a delightful evening greeting for you and your visitors. A white garden can be as simple as a planted window box or containers placed around a door, a gate, or at the head of a path. The possibilities are endless and deeply rooted in tradition.

Let’s get started!

Chapter 1

White Gardens & Moonlight Gardens: Past & Present

“Speak not—whisper not;Here bloweth thyme and bergamot;Softly on the evening hour,Secret herbs their spices shower,Dark-spiked rosemary and myrrh,Lean-stalked, purple lavender . . . ”

—“The Sunken Garden,” Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Evening gardens and moonlight excursions have been popular for more than a thousand years. The moon’s reflection on water has long been admired in Japan. During Japan’s Heian Period (794-1185), the aristocracy held moon-viewing celebrations at harvest time. They would glide along in boats to welcome the arrival of the full moon while enjoying its reflection on the water’s surface.

Fragrant white phlox begins to glow as the sun sets.

In Asia, a common garden theme is the perception and enjoyment of the moon. The Hirosawa Pond and Osawa Pond in Japan are remnants of Heian period gardens. The Hirosawa Pond was constructed as part of a temple garden built by the grandson of Emperor Uta. The pond is featured in many Japanese poems. The landscape boasts cherry trees, Japanese maples and willows, and is a popular spot for moongazing. Visitors enjoy the moon rising over the Higashiyama mountains, which are reflected in the water. When the weather conditions are right, the moon appears as a giant glowing disk over the mountain range.

The Osawa Pond is a manmade water feature in Kyoto next to Daikaku-ji Temple. This pond is the oldest known surviving part of any garden in Japan. Emperor Saga ordered its creation during his reign (809-823) or shortly after, and it was part of the garden while he resided in the temple. Today, visitors experience the garden from the veranda, but also while sailing on the pond in early autumn to view the harvest moon.

Taj Mahal’s Moonlight Garden

The Emperor Shah Jahan built a Moonlight Garden (Mehtab Bagh) in Agra, India, between 1631 and 1635 where he could view the Taj Mahal, a gleaming white marble mausoleum he dedicated to his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. On moonlit nights the building is magnificently reflected in the pool and the Yamuna River, producing an ethereal effect. The original garden was planted with fragrant flowers and used in the cool of the night. However, it was situated on a flood plain and deep silt eventually covered the grounds. Archeologists have unearthed evidence of some of the original plants including a sample of a champa tree. Related to magnolias, this tree produces large, fragrant flowers that bloom at night.

Bird’s eye view of the Taj Mahal at Agra.

Indian Hill Farm in Massachusetts

One of the earliest recorded white gardens in the United States was that of Major Benjamin Perley Poore (1820-1887), a prominent American newspaper correspondent, editor, and author. His parents owned Indian Hill Farm, a 400-acre estate in Newburyport, Massachusetts. In 1831, they travelled extensively in England, taking their son Benjamin along. It’s likely that they were influenced by the country’s beautiful gardens and returned with many ideas.

At Indian Hill Farm, they laid out extensive gardens in 1833, including expansive double flower borders. During Major Poore’s lifetime, the estate boasted a white garden along with herds of white cows, flocks of white sheep, white oxen, white poultry, white pigeons, and a white dog. One might say he was a bit eccentric. A gentleman farmer and avid horticulturist, he planted many trees and designed extensive terraces, formal gardens, and intricate cart paths throughout the property.

Alice Morse Earle described Poore’s garden in her book, Old Time Gardens (1901), writing, “I saw this lovely farmstead and radiant white garden first in glowing sunlight, but far rarer must have been its charm in moonlight…”

Alice Morse Earle detailed Poore’s white garden in her book.

Behind Poore’s enormous and ever-expanding mansion, the white garden stretched up the hillside. The borders were edged with white-flowered candytuft. The spring palette included white daffodils, spring snowflake (Leucojum vernum), Star of Bethlehem, white-flowered shrubs like bridal-wreath spirea, deutzia and sweet-scented mock orange, as well as white-flowered cherry trees. Fragrant honeysuckle vines covered arches over the path.

Poore’s white garden once boasted formal parterres at the top of the hill, but they were gone by 1901. Nevertheless, Earle was enchanted by her visit:

This lovely garden, varied in shape, and extending in many and diverse directions and corners, bears as its crown a magnificent double flower border over seven hundred feet long.

But the White Garden, ah! Then the garden truly lived; it was like lightest snow wreaths bathed in silvery moonshine with every radiant flower adoring the moon with wide-open eyes, and pouring forth incense at her altar. And it was peopled with shadowy forms shaped of pearly mists and dews; and white night moths bore messages for them from flower to flower—this garden then was the garden of my dreams.

Victorian Theme Gardens

White and assorted blooms against a Victorian brick backdrop create a timeless, refined aesthetic.

Monochromatic gardens rely on the use of one flower color, such as an all-white or all-blue garden. This type of garden was particularly popular with the Victorians in the late 1800s. At that time, the white garden was often called a moon garden because they found that white flowers and silver or green-and-white foliage at dusk seemed to glow in the fading light.

An illustration from the 1888 Vaughan’s Seed catalog, published in Chicago, features a young woman in a long, white dress standing in a moon garden, surrounded by moonflower vine, caladium, and white dahlias. In 1889, Vaughan’s Seed catalog promoted their seeds of moonflower vine, telling readers that “hundreds of thousands are sold yearly” and that the “demand sometimes exceeds the supply.”

Fragrance was very important to the Victorians, as well. The cover of Ladies’ Home Journal from June 1896 features a young woman enjoying the scent of white roses as she knelt in a border filled with carnations and irises. The rising sun behind her depicts the silhouette of a rugosa rose, recently introduced at that time from Japan to the United States.

An 1896 cover of Ladies’ Home Journal depicts a woman taking in the scent of white roses.

Many seed companies began importing lilies from Japan in the 1890s. This charming illustration emphasizes the garden at night.

A cover from the 1890s magazine Gardening, published in Chicago, shows a porch draped in sweet autumn clematis and climbing nasturtiums.

For one dollar, gardeners could receive 25 different seed packets in the Night-Blooming Collection featured in John Gardiner’s 1890 seed catalog.

Victorians embraced weeping plants like this panicle hydrangea, which has been trained as a small tree.

The night-blooming, fragrant tobacco flower was a Victorian gardener’s favorite.

By the Light of the Moon

The moon has played a big role in food gardening since ancient times. People around the world have sown seeds by watching the moon’s waxing and waning phases and using those events as a planting calendar. The idea is that water in the soil and in plants is affected by the gravitational pull of the moon, as are the tides. The tides are highest during the new and full phases of the moon and the theory is that seeds will absorb the most water during these times.

In the March 1913 issue of Country Life in America, a monthly periodical, the article “In the Dark O’ The Moon” by Ida M. H. Starr focused on planting according to the moon’s phases. She wrote:

[A moon garden is] a place where flowers that love the night, azure, white, silver gray, and lavender—ghost flowers—bloom; where it is always still and peaceful; where no one ever hurries; where you wait for the moon to tell you the time to do things; where all manner of powers that people ordinarily do not consider, float down from the stars to make things grow; where the gardener hears wonderful sounds stealing down from the milky way, for he has time to listen you know; where Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and all the planets work together to help.

While few studies have been done to test the veracity of lunar gardening, it’s a pleasant thought to be in the garden, planting by moonlight.

A White Garden in Wales

In her book My Garden, published in 1916, Louise Beebe Wilder (1878-1938) described a white garden she visited on the River Ely, not far from Llandaff in Wales:

We saw this garden first at twilight, that witching hour, and through the tall iron gates, above which swung a clematis starred with immense white blooms, the effect was almost as if a mist had crept up from the river and finding the haven of this quiet enclosure had swirled around and about, rising here in wraith spires and turrets, lying there in gauzy breadths amidst the muted green. It is impossible to describe its beauty at this dim hour—so soft, so ethereal, so mysterious, half real it seemed.

Helena Rutherfurd Ely’s 1916 book features white-flowered foxgloves on the cover.

Stately hollyhocks in white and yellow, single and double flowers from Peter Henderson’s 1903 seed catalog.

Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869-1950).

Mina Edison’s Moonlight Garden

American landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman designed a moonlight garden in 1929 for Mina and Thomas Edison in Fort Meyers, Florida (now the Edison & Ford Winter Estates). Mina envisioned a space for entertaining and Shipman included a pool for the moon’s reflection. The Moonlight Garden is the largest garden on the site and the primary flower colors are white and blue, including queen’s wreath (Petrea volubilis) and gardenias. Towering ficus trees planted by Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone stand tall. Today, the Moonlight Garden provides an intimate, romantic setting filled with fragrant flowers and tall bougainvillea-entwined trellises and is used for weddings and other events.

Honey-scented sweet autumn clematis rambles over this fence in late summer.

The White Garden at Sissinghurst

Perhaps the most famous white garden is that of Vita Sackville-West, an English writer and gardener who, with her husband, diplomat and author Sir Harold Nicolson, lived at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, England. In her weekly article for the Observer newspaper, Sackville-West told readers about her latest garden projects. In January 1950, she wrote of her plans for an evening garden, “I cannot help hoping that the great ghostly barn-owl will sweep silently across a pale garden, next summer in the twilight—the pale garden that I am now planting, under the first flakes of snow.”

At that time, her magnificent property featured a cottage garden where she experimented with “hot” colors: orange, red, and yellow. She recognized that by restricting the new garden to white, silver, and gray, she needed to create interest and drama by using plants with contrasting shapes, heights, textures, and form. Her husband created the overall structure with dark green hedges of yew and boxwood. Her plans portrayed ‘‘a low sea of grey clumps of foliage, pierced here and there with tall white flowers.”

Today, this world-renowned garden is filled with white-flowered roses, peonies, irises, hydrangeas, Japanese anemones, low mounds of silvery lamb’s ears, silver artemisia, and santolina. Spires of foxtail lily (Eremurus), lilies, and verbascum punctuate the billowy flowers of Ammi majus. The star of the garden is the weeping silver-leaved pear tree, Pyrus salicifolia ‘Pendula’, a stunning and graceful focal point.

The Queen Anne’s lookalike, Ammi majus, used at Sissinghurst.

A white garden at Sissinghurst Castle.

Sissinghurst Castle’s boxwood hedges enclose the white beds.

Silver foliage contrasts with white flowers at Sissinghurst Castle.

Evening Gardens Today