Seasonal colour through a GTA season
Most gardens peak for three weeks in June and coast for the rest of the year. It does not take much to fix that.
A garden that looks good from May to October is not a garden with more plants in it. It is a garden where something is coming into flower as something else finishes, which is a planning problem rather than a budget problem.
Plant for waves, not for a peak
- May: bulbs finishing, early perennials starting
- June: peonies, salvia, catmint, the traditional peak
- July: coneflower, daylily, bee balm carry the middle of summer
- August: rudbeckia, phlox, sedum beginning to colour
- September and October: sedum at full colour, asters, ornamental grasses
Sedum and grasses are the most underused plants in GTA gardens. Both look structural all summer and then do their best work in September, exactly when everything else is finished.
Annuals: where and when
Wait until after the risk of frost, which in the GTA usually means the Victoria Day weekend. Planting earlier is a gamble that costs the whole tray when it goes wrong.
Put annuals where people stand, not where people drive past.
Annuals are expensive per square metre and they are replaced every year, so concentrate them where they are seen closely: entrance beds, containers by the door, the edge of a patio. Spreading them thinly across a large bed wastes both the money and the effect.
Where colour has the most impact
The approach to the front door, without exception. It is the part of the property every visitor sees at close range and the part that sets the impression of the whole house. A well-planted entrance and a plain side bed reads far better than mediocre colour everywhere.
For commercial properties
The same principle applies with more force. Entrance beds and the immediate surrounds of the lobby are what residents and visitors actually experience. Rotating those two or three times a season delivers more perceived value than anything spent on the perimeter.