Planting a garden in the early-Summer

Early summer is a time of bounty in any garden. A full canopy of leaves on trees and shrubs form lush clouds of green overhead, and sunny beds boast an abundance of beautiful blossoms.

The list of early-summer bloomers is a long one.

• Starlets of the early-summer garden are hardy perennials that spend spring growing new stems and leaves in preparation for a bright flush of flowers.
• However, personal preferences strongly affect which plants figure most prominently in your garden. Peonies and irises are a mainstay in many gardens, accompanied, perhaps, by pink or blue campanulas and clematis.
• Roses can be counted on to perfume the early-summer air.
• Other gardeners may prefer more unusual plants, such as foxtail lilies with their 2.4 metre (eight foot) spikes of white, yellow or orange flowers, flowering onions with globes of mauve flowers on stiff stems or the alpine clematis that don't need hard pruning and have delicate white, pink or rose flowers.
• If you need a wide variety of sizes, shapes, textures and flower colours summer after summer without replanting, collect perennials.
• The simplest way of filling your early-summer garden with care-free colour is to infuse the garden with two or three perennials that bloom simultaneously.
• They need not stand side by side. In fact, a more pleasing picture might be staged by sprinkling flowering perennials among other plants that are not yet in bloom and won't compete for attention.

When featured flowers are framed against green foliage plants or late blooming perennials they often look more refined than when they stand alone, or cheek-by-jowl with other showy flowering plants.

• Try using silvery leaved plants like lavender to frame a bright flowering plant like a bush of red roses.
• Plants with pale gray or bluish foliage, such as lavender, artemisia, lamb's ears, rose campion and Russian sage, always make good framing plants for snappier neighbours.
• You can also set your flowering plants off by surrounding or backing them with plants that have striking dark foliage, such as dwarf boxwoods, liriope, dark burgundy black cohosh or even smokebush.

If there seems to be something missing in your summer garden that you can't quite put your finger on, perhaps what you really need is more vertical interest.

• Plants that rise high, such as vines grown on arbours or upright trellises, shrubs with an upright habit like columnar junipers or even a climbing rose attached to a post or pillar can give your eyes a welcome break from looking down into the garden.
• As you raise your head to admire vertical plants, you can't help taking in the view of the wonderful tree canopies and brilliant blue sky, which you might otherwise miss.
• Vertical plants make maximum use of ground space, so they are especially functional in a small garden.
• In addition, fast-growing annual vines like canary vine, morning glory and scarlet runner bean can give an instant look of maturity to new beds.

• Astilbe
• Bee balm
• Bergenia
• Blue star
• Borage
• Browallia
• Calendula
• Calla lily
• Catmint
• Coleus
• Columbine
• Coreopsis
• Daylily
• Dead nettle
• Dianthus
• Dusty miller
• Euonymus
• Ferns
• Foxglove
• Fuchsia
• Garden phlox
• Gayfeather
• Geranium
• Goatsbeard
• Heuchera
• Hollyhock
• Hops
• Hosta
• Impatiens
• Japanese maple
• Lady's mantle
• Lamb's ears
• Larkspur
• Lavatera
• Lily
• Lobelia
• Meadow rue

That sounds pretty great, right? If you plan your garden properly, you can virtually schedule when everything blooms (weather permitting). This allows you to make sure your garden looks beautiful all season long. By prepping the garden with early-Summer bloomers, you can get a great start on the season.