Designing the White Garden

I hope this series of articles on the white garden has given you some ideas of plants to use to create, design, plant and enjoy a white flowered garden or a moon garden of your own. I’m sure you will find that many of the plants you already know and grow can fit perfectly into a white garden, and that a romantic, fragrant and ghostly moon garden is easily within reach as well. Scroll down the page for the list of all the white garden articles from perennials to shrubs to roses and even shady gardens all in white.

White Flowers and More

In creating your design, don’t limit your choices to traditional annual, perennial or biennial flowers alone. Try to surround yourself with white flowered plants of all kinds to extend the white garden so it can envelope you in its magic. Look for white flowers on bulbs, trees, shrubs, vines, and roses that bloom from early spring through late fall, and select those with silver and gray or blue foliage when you can as these will increase the shimmering quality of the garden.

What Color is White?

As you look at these white flowered plants, you will see that some white flowers are more cleanly white than others. Many have a tint of something else, a hint of pink or green or cream or buff or blue or sometimes a dingy gray. Some may have buds that are pink or cream or green and then open with white flowers.

You will need to decide for yourself if this is acceptable color variation in your white garden, or not. You will also find variegated plants with gold, cream, white and silver markings. How much of a variation you wish to include in your garden is, again, up to you.

Be careful too to inspect the plants you are considering and see them yourself — in person –if at all possible. Color is always subject to the eye of the beholder, so one person’s “creamy white” may seem quite clearly a pale yellow to you, while another person’s cream may seem just fine to you when you see it in real life. Gardens are so personal, take time to find the plants you really like the best. Don’t take someone else’s word for it, not even mine.

Enjoy your White Garden at Night as a Moon Garden, too!

Be sure to place your white garden in a spot where you will see it or pass through it or sit near it at night so you can enjoy it as a moon garden, too. And if planted near a porch, deck or patio that is often used in the evening, take special care to include some fragrant plants in your white garden design or moon garden design because many fragrant plants are at their most scented at night. Once you give this all white theme garden a try, I think you’ll be hooked.

Read All of the White Garden Design Series:

The White Garden

Flowers for the White Garden

Foliage for the White Garden

Vines for the White Garden

Roses for the White Garden

More Roses for the White Garden

Trees for the White Garden

Shrubs for the White Garden

The White Garden in Shade

Designing the White Garden (you are here)

All Flower Gardens Articles So Far

Copyright 2006 Barbara Martin All Rights Reserved

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