I’ve always felt a white garden looks incredibly stylish. Sticking to such a restricted colour range, and allowing the different plant shapes, leaves, and textures to shine, can result in an really powerful effect.
As many of you will know, my garden is not a white garden. I’m too much of a colour magpie. But I do have a number of areas where the white dominates – both in my sunny bed and in my newest shady bed. I blogged about it a few weeks ago. (You can read the blog here).
As a result I have experimented with quite a few white plants for all sorts of conditions. So I thought I’d share my top twelve plant ideas for a white garden.
White Garden – Annabelle Hydrangeas
Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’ as she is officially called, is an absolute beauty. The shrub has flowerheads which are about 30cm across, that’s larger than many hydrangeas. These are in bloom from July – September. However, even when the flowers are spent, they continue look architectural and interesting throughout the winter.
Annabelle is also statuesque – capable of growing about 3mx3m. So it’s wonderful as a specimen plant on its own. That said, it also works really well en masse. For instance, I’ve 10 Annabelle hydrangeas in a row in my garden, creating a screen for an unslightly cricket net. I often refer to them as ‘my girls.’ I’ve paired them with Catalpa Bignonioides Nana trees to create a white and green curving wall.
Leucanthemum Sante
This is a newer find for me, but I think Leucanthemum Sante is a fantastic addition to any white garden, or indeed any planting scheme at all! It’s a clump forming perennial with dark glossy leaves and white ‘daisy-like’ flowers. Daisy-like suggests it’s a dainty plant. It isn’t. This is a showy, effervescent, blowsy beauty. With regular deadheading I think you’d get flowers throughout the Summer and into mid-Autumn.
White Garden Plants – pots of possibilities
You can still, of course, create a white garden if you’ve only a small patio area or balcony with pots.
Gaura
White plants which I’ve found to work well in pots and containers include Gaura Lindheimeri. This grows about 75cm -1metre tall, so needs a big container. But it’s worth accommodating as it has spires of swirling butterfly-type flowers from July – October.
Physostegia & Campanula
You may recall that Dom in my village gave me a standard rose which I’m trying in a hot planting scheme. I blogged about this last week. Well, he also gave me two aluminium planters which he and his wife Sophie no longer wanted. I love aluminium planters, especially with pale pink or white planting. So my next two suggestions are plants I’ve used in these containers. They are Campanula Carpatica Alba and Physostegia Crystal Peak White. The Physotegia has gorgeous shortish spires of snap draggon-type flowers from July to September.
Ulitmately, the Physostegia might get a bit too big for the containers (it grows about 0.6m wide and 0.4m tall). But it might be fine. The Campanula, with its lovely bell like flowers, is a classic, lower growing, white garden plant and perfect for pots. You can of course plant both also in a border. The campanula with its spreading foiliage would be brilliant for surpressing weeds. The Physostegia would provide lovely spires of interest in a mixed white bed. No wonder I love them both!
Scabious Kudo White
Scabious doesn’t sound like a very nice name but the plant is wonderful and would definitely work in a white garden – so long as you don’t go for the mauve one! For a white variety I’d suggest Scabious Kudo White. The ruffled effect of the flowers heads always reminds me of clotted cream!
I’ve just two of them in a very large blue pot and the effect is stunning. They’re in the pot with an old geranium but to be honest I think they’d be better on their own. So I’ll remove the geranium and put it somewhere else. Again the Scabious would also be very happy in a border.
White Garden – three white border classics
No white garden scheme could be complete without the white foxglove, Digitalis Purpurea Albiflora. It has lovely, graceful spikes of pure white flowers on strong, arching stems. Digitalist purpurea albiflora grows tall, up to 1.5 metres and it’s a magnet for bees and other insects. So it’s ideal for the back or middle of a white garden border.
Astrantia Major Snow Star is another winning plant for a border. It’s pin-cushion shaped flowers thrive throughout the summer on stems about 60cm tall. It’s versatile too, happy in sun or semi shade.
You typically see gypsophila in florists but not so often in gardens. I don’t know why! It’s such a fantastic space filler. I have Gypsophila Bristol Fairy planted in my sunniest (admittedly not white) border in amongst a host of other border plants including Echinacea Purpurea, the purple Campanula Pritchard’s variety and the rose Wildeve. It’s soft tangle of interweving stems studded with tiny white flowers froth away. What’s more if you chop it back afer flowering, it will often go all over again, into Autumn!!
Two Geraniums
There are so many geraniums which I could nominate for that white border too. Geranium Macrorrhizum White-Ness has a carpet of leaves and above these rise wonderful, waving soft flowers from May to June. I have it next to a Mexican feather grass and the soft effect of the two next to each other is glorious.
However, if you are looking for something with a longer flowering season, then checkout Geranium nodosum ‘Silverwood’. It flowers from May through to October – yes five months – producing beautiful mounds of pure white flowers on glossy foliage. For me, it’s the ‘Colgate Ultra’, ‘Persil’ or (if you are my age and from Wales) the ‘Thayers Icecream’ of plants. The white of this Geranium is a brilliant dazzling white!
Erigeron Karvinskianus
Lastly, I’m going to suggest Erigeron Karvinskianus. This is one of my absolute favourites and for good reason. The small white daisy-like perennial plant has a big impact wherever you put it. I concede its flowers can turn pink but its effect is still predominantly white – so it’s on my list.
Erigeron is great for filling gaps, softening the edges of borders or in pots. Added to this, it’s a brilliant pollenator (attracting butterflies and moths). In my garden I have it on my patio, between paving stones, creating a 15cm high mat of frothy flowers from Spring to Autumn. It looks magical and it reduces the amount of weeding I have to do. What’s not to love about that!
There are so many wonderful other plants I could have put in this list, but hopefully these twelve give you a good start point for exploring the many many glorious white plants we lucky gardeners have to choose from. Happy gardening!
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