Gorgeous Grasses for Borders (2442)

 

Memorize the words:

 

1) gorgeous – яркорасцвеченный; великолепный

2) bland – невыразительный; безвкусный

3) nursery – питомник

4) thrust – опора

5) fussy – вычурный, аляповатый

6) subtle – утончённый

7) broad-leafplant – широколистноерастение

 

Ornamental grasses bring beauty, motion, and a soft, romantic look to beds and borders.

Adding grasses brings texture, motion, light, and even sound to the garden. More important, grasses are graceful threads that weave all other plants in the garden together, making them look more like family members than a convention of strangers.

A border composed solely of flowering perennials can be colorfully bland. Adding grasses brings texture, motion, light, and even sound to the garden. More important, grasses are graceful threads that weave all other plants in the garden together, making them look more like family members than a convention of strangers.

Ideas for designing borders

Western designers have found beautiful new ways to integrate grasses into the garden. Lew Whitney, vice chairman of Roger’s Gardens in Corona del Mar, California, combines grasses with shrubs in low-maintenance but high-interest foundation plantings, where flowers are clearly secondary to foliage.

The nursery’s demonstration garden is a good example. Grasses with vertical thrust, such as blue oat grass* and pheasant’s tail* look like fireworks erupting between the hills, when combined with dense, round shrubs. A green carpet of autumn moor grass* contributes additional textures, shapes, and colors.

Simple grasses are particularly appealing when used in gardens close to wilderness, as is the case with Kelley and Stanton Perry’s home in Laguna Niguel, California, overlooking coastal chaparral. “In this situation, a variegated grass would have been too fussy”,says Carole McElwee, the garden’s designer. “I wanted everything to be very soft and subtle – mostly grays, greens, and blues – just like the view”. Despite the formal columns and the bench, this garden feels a bit wild. And grasses are primarily responsible for that mood.

Containers. Ornamental grasses make great companions to potted annuals, perennials, herbs, succulents, and broad-leaf plants. If the container is particularly striking, let the grass go solo, so it complements its setting rather than competes. Blue lymegrass*, for instance, looks dyed when paired with a weathered copper pot. Blonde feather grass* pairs beautifully with rusty iron.

Ground covers. Neat little tuft grasses look good with practically anything. To make any of these simple grasses look natural, use them in clusters – they rarely occur in widely isolated clumps in the wild.

Hedges and screens. Grasses 6 feet or taller can form barriers, boundaries, and screens that catch the light and move gracefully.

Perennial companions. Grasses of medium stature (3 to 6 feet) or low clumping grasses with tall flower spikes all look good with perennials and flowering shrubs.

For example, blue oat grass, a metallic blue grass bearing wheat-colored flowers, combined with yellow Mexican tulip poppy*, or orange monkey flower*.

 

* Notes:

 

blue oat grass – овсецвечнозеленый

pheasant's tail – ковыльтростниковый

moor grass – сеслерияосенняя

bluelyme grass - колоснякпесчаный

blonde feather grass – осокакосматая

Mexican tulip poppy – гуннеманниядымянколистая

monkey flower – губастик (мимулюс)

 

Text 6

Garden Border Design (3106)

How to use foliage and flowers to soften a wall, accent a lawn, or fringe a path

 

Memorize the words:

 

1) create – создавать, творить

2) lacey – кружевной

3) layer – слой, наслоение

4) curving border – извивающийсябордюр

5) straight-edgedborder – прямойбордюр

6) hose – шланг (поливочный)

7) thyme – тимьян, чабрец

8) sage – шалфей

9) mildclimate – мягкий, умеренныйклимат

10) hue – цвет, оттенок

11) spiceup – придавать пикантность

12) fine – тонкий

13) maroon – тёмно-бордовый цвет

14) clash – сталкиваться, дисгармонировать

15) clump – группа (растений)

 

Creating a border isn’t difficult if you break it down into its basic elements – lacey fringes, accent colors, and layers of short-to-tall planting. Curving borders are more interesting – and more complementary with casual landscapes – than straight-edged ones.Before planting, test out possible outlines for your border with a rope or hose.

Herb border

Combine thyme, oregano, English lavender, and sage for a gorgeous herb border. Once established, these herbs need only little to moderate watering and occasional fertilizing to look good for most of the year in mild climates.

Cool spot in the sun

“I use ribbons of color to unify the border”, says designer Gabriela Yariv in her Santa Monica garden. “For example, pink echeveria* dots the carpet of gray-blue dymondia**, repeating the hues of the larger plants”.

Warm bed in the shade

TishTreherne’s garden on Bainbridge Island, Washington, features a variety of warm colors that do well in the shade. Plants with warm colors carry their hues throughout the border for overall harmony. “I particularly like trees whose bright red or orange fall color floats above blue foliage”, says the designer.

Foliage border

A great foliage border gives a garden a rich, layered look that doesn’t depend on flowers for dramatic effect. The key to success: Pick the right blend of shrubs and small trees whose leaves and branches create contrasts in color, texture, shape, and size. To make each plant stand out, set big-leafed plants beside fine-leafed ones, and spice up a mostly green palette with variegated plants that provide hits of gold, bronze, and purple.

Colorful border for three seasons

Flowers that bloom over a long season and require only modest amounts of water or time – isn't that what we all want? Choose the right plants and you can have borders from spring through fall.

Pool garden border

Borders don’t have to be large or complex to have visual impact; just four or five well-chosen plants can work wonders.

Soften a wall

Purple fountain grass and other foliage plants create a leafy screen that adds texture in front of a fence or wall.

Pink garden border

A new twist on the pink theme, a border that pairs pink-flowered plants with subtle splashes of gray, green, and maroon foliage is more sophisticated than sweet.

Edible garden path

Line a garden path with herbs and vegetables for fragrance, color, and a delicious harvest all summer. To unify your design, pick a color scheme.

Using the right balance

Playing with height is but one principle of how to design a balanced border. Plants’ needs, as well as leaf texture and color, are other considerations. A border’s design doesn’t have to be complicated. Just keep taller perennials at the back and shorter ones up front. Decide which colors to plant side by side. Separate by several yards flowers whose colors clash, or divide them with a mass of blue or white flowers or gray foliage.Pay attention to leaf texture and color. Beyond that, the balancing principles of contrast and repetition come into play. “Put bold next to delicate and big next to small”, says perennials expert Judy Wigand. “Contrast flower shapes as well”.

Repetition is another great workhorse of good design. Clumps of three or more daisies repeated throughout a border unify the planting, as does placing side by side plants whose flower or foliage colors echo one another.

Flowers and edibles

Many herbs and vegetables have especially colorful foliage that look great with flowers and ornamental grasses. In this 8-foot-wide planting, lime green and purple basils determine the color scheme. Use flowers of yellow, orange, and red to play off bold foliage in shades of green.

 

* Notes:

echeveria – эхеверия (каменный цветок)

dymondia – димондияромашковая

 

Text 7

Herbaceous Border (1127)

 

Memorize the words:

 

1) arrange – располагать, размещать

2) shape – форма

3) scale – масштаб

4) dig up (dug up, dug up) – выкапывать

5) overgrowth – разрастание

 

A herbaceous border is a collection of perennial herbaceous plants (plants that live for more than two years and are soft-stemmed and non-woody) arranged closely together, usually to create a dramatic effect through colour, shape or large scale. The term herbaceous border is mostly in use in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. In North America, the term perennial border is normally used.

Herbaceous borders as they are known today were first popularly used in gardens in the Victorian era. Hybridization and new imported plant species revolutionized the form of British gardens in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. In addition, the works of Gertrude Jekyll, a British 20^th-century garden designer and writer, popularized the use of the herbaceous border through a revival of the British cottage garden.

Maintaining the herbaceous border is work-intensive, as the perennials had to be dug up every 3–4 years and divided to keep the bed clean-looking and prevent overgrowth of the plants. In World War I this type of border became less popular in Britain as there was a shortage of labour to keep the gardens maintained. However, there are still some celebrated examples in British gardens. The world’s longest herbaceous border at 215 metres (705 ft) is according to the Guinness Book of Records at Dirleton Castle, East Lothian, Scotland.

 

Text 8