Summer Hot Garden & Prairie planting

Hot Summer Borders and Prairie Planting

Ken Cox writes:

Natural planting using swathes of gently-swaying grasses shot through with drifts of tall, open perennials to mimic the wild look of the American prairie lands caught the imagination of gardeners across Europe in the 1990s, and it's been going strong ever since - you can see some fabulous examples at public gardens like Cambo in Fife It's a look you can adapt easily at home in Glendoick for a gorgeous, contemporary design that's also very low maintenance.

You'll find all the plants you need in our garden centre in August and September: here's how to create your own back-garden prairie.

• Choose the right spot: prairies need sunshine, so pick an open, bright area of your garden, preferably not too damp as most prairie-style plants prefer free-draining conditions.
  Restrict your varieties: prairie planting relies on repetition for its effect, so limit your range of plants to a handful of grass varieties and a few perennials or annuals - just plant lots of them.
• Start with the grasses: these form the backbone of your design, so choose carefully. Tall grasses move gracefully in the wind: good choices forms of Miscanthus which flower in late summer and into winter. 
• Mix in the flowers: flat-headed daisy/spherical flowers work best with grasses as contrasts in texture and shape. They often flower at the same height, too, giving that level prairie-like look. Go for achilleas, autumn-flowering asters, and other daisies: both echinacea and rudbeckias were made for prairie settings. Crocosmia, Asters, Echinacea, Rudbeckia, Halenium, Achillea and lots more. 
• Plant in drifts: if the area is large, design your planting in drifts of the same plant meandering naturally in waves through the design. 
• Don't be too tidy: part of the charm of a prairie planting is the effect of frosty winter weather on seedheads and dead stems, so leave clearing up until February, when you can just chop everything back down to the ground and let it do it all over again.

 

Please ask the staff in our Glendoick garden centre for more information and advice about designing prairie planting.

Cambo Gardens, Fife   Below.