Foolproof Plants for the Temperate Garden

Foolproof Plants for the Temperate Garden
by Jeff Lewis

I am not a Master Gardener, but within the confines our own yard, things grow to satisfaction. If you are not planting in a location that is within a square mile of our yard, my advice may not be good, but it won’t be terrible either. Having said that, here are ten plants that I recommend planting if you live in a temperate climate.

Note: In regions where winters are mild, it's not a bad idea to plant in the fall, so that the transplants can benefit from winter rains and become well established by spring.

1. Dahlia (dahlia hybrid)
Exposure: Full sun
Water: Requires a fair bit of water and will droop in the heat of the day, but tends to be hardy
Blooms: In summer

If you don’t know the first thing about gardening, but would like to fill your yard and porch with gigantic, beautiful flowers, look no further than the dahlia hybrids.

With little talent or care, you can produce dinner-plate-sized blooms in nearly any color. Plants range from the minute foot-tall dwarf varieties, with delicate flowers, to bushes that dwarf a man. You generally buy dahlia tubers in the spring; an excellent source on the internet is Swan Island Nursery. At three or four dollars a dahlia, you won’t get more bang for the buck in any other plant.

Plant them in a pot or in the ground in well-drained soil, with plenty of soil amendment and if you’ve purchased the gargantuan varieties, add some stakes or wire cages at time of planting. At the end of the season, after you’ve amazed your friends and neighbors, you can dig them up, divide them and store them for next year, or just leave them in the ground. I don’t like boxes of roots sitting around our garage, so I don’t bother digging them up.

Fun Tip: Dahlia Hip Corsage – Take advantage of the dahlia’s sturdy, but flexible, stem. Cut two dahlias six inches below the flower and place the stems in your front jeans pockets. The flowers will stay fresh and decorate your hips all day! The blooms will last even longer if you wear leather pants because the humidity trapped by the synthetic material will keep the stems moist.

2. Nemesia (nemesia versicolor)
Exposure: Full sun or a little shade
Water: Can tolerate occasional lapses in watering
Blooms: Year-round

The purple and white flowers don’t quite match the dahlia’s flare, but no flower I’ve grown has nemesia’s lasting power. It blooms year round in our garden’s Mediterranean climate and, though often sold as an annual, it survives mild winters and reseeds itself. If you plant nemesia in your yard, pixies will soon follow: that’s how magical these plants are.

3. Princess Flower (tibouchina urvilleana)
Exposure: Full sun, shielded from the wind
Water: Regular water
Blooms: Fall through spring

These large Brazilian shrubs can approach twenty feet tall and ten feet wide, with interesting red and green fuzzy leaves and spectacular purple flowers. They are common in gardens throughout the West, but often look a little leggy when not mixed in with other plants. Since my landscape design forte is the “jungley jumble,” I tend to use them to their greatest advantage: jammed together with seven other plant varieties in a tight space. If given a head start, the princess flower will grow above the mess and reign over the chaos with purple majesty.

4. Clematis (clematis)
Exposure: Roots in the shade, leaves in the sun
Water: Regular water

Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten the name of my favorite clematis variety, so here’s all I can give you: buy a vining, summer-blooming clematis that is not of the evergreen or large-flowered varieties. Plant it in a shady area at the base of an ugly tree and, “Voila,” by summertime, you will have a beautiful tree awash with flowers. During the winter, you can cut back the clematis to the ground and await the next year’s miraculous transformation of your ugly tree.

5. Pineapple Sage (salvia elegans)
Exposure: Full sun to partial shade
Water: Needs moderate water; these are cheap, so if you kill them, it doesn’t matter
Blooms: Late summer through fall

A few years ago, in late June, I bought a two-inch tall pineapple sage for 99 cents from a nursery’s herb section and placed it at the foot of a small magnolia tree that I’d recently planted. By early August, the sage was six feet tall, four feet wide and covered in red tube-shaped flowers that attracted hummingbirds. Lovely, although not ideal for the magnolia, which was only four feet tall and three feet wide and now was in full shade. To compound the problem, the tree fern that I planted up the slope from the magnolia tripled in size over the course of a few months and grew man-sized fronds that completely covered the little tree. As I said before, I like this jungley-jumble look, but in hindsight, the $30 magnolia purchase was not as shrewd as the 99 cent salvia.

Fun Tip: When gardening, rub pineapple sage leaves on your gloves. You will smell dee-lish.

6. Bear’s Breach (acanthus mollis)
Exposure: Sun, shade, doesn’t matter
Water: Water, not water, doesn’t matter
Blooms: Summer; not really known for its blooms

These tropical-looking plants with spiky flowers are natives of the Mediterranean, so they thrive in similar climates. They grow anywhere, including deep shade and don’t require much water. Snails love them and acanthus can be a bit invasive, but they’re worth these minor drawbacks.

7. Common Calla (zantedeschia aethiopica)
Exposure: Can bloom in the sun or shade
Water: Need water, but they will go dormant rather than die if they go without
Blooms: Spring through fall, as long as they get water

These grow as weeds in damp areas, which means that they are fool proof in the temperate garden. The colored varieties are fussier, so I recommend sticking with the basic white. Very classy.

When we moved into our house, there were several giant groupings of dormant calla rhizomes that we didn’t know about and therefore we planted ferns on top. This was not good for the ferns, which ceased to exist once the calla hordes emerged from hiding. This brings up another Fun Tip…

Fun Tip: Do not grow plants on top of other plants, unless the planting instructions specifically recommend it.

8. Rosemary (rosmarinus officialis)
Exposure: Blooms in the sun, but grows well in the shade
Water: Minimal; doesn’t hold up well to transplanting
Blooms: Spring

Great for cooking and sniffing, rosemary requires little care, other than good drainage. Most varieties sold in the “herb” section grow quickly, and therefore are a good bargain. They grow vertically or spread out on the ground, depending on the variety and hold up well to most types of urine, which makes them useful additions to your front yard. I prefer the “Blue Spires” variety because of the handsome blue flowers and twisted branches that can reach six feet tall—well out of the reach of your neighbors pets, making them the cook’s friend.

9. Hardenbergia (hardenbergia comptoniana)
Exposure: Sun or partial shade
Water: Needs little water
Blooms: Late winter, early spring

I have no picture of hardenbergia, so I'm treating you to this picture of an iron grouper instead.

This vine produces purple flowers in late winter and the early spring when many plants are still dormant. It requires almost no care and can bloom in partial shade. All it needs is something to climb on and well-drained soil.

10. Nasturtium (tropaeolum majus)
Exposure: Sun or partial shade
Water: Needs little water

Like the calla, in many regions nasturtiums grow as weeds, so if you have any in your neighborhood, you can gather up their big, funky looking seeds and plant them in your yard. The leaves and flowers are spicy and taste OK in salads, which is a nice bonus, and if you get tired of having them in your yard, just treat them as weeds and tear them out.