In The Garden with Danielle Brown | May 2025 Edition
In The Garden with Danielle Brown | May 2025 Edition
Chapter 5: Painting the Garden with Summer Color
This month, winter is officially banished and it’s time to turn our thoughts to the warm weather that lies ahead. The garden centers are filled to bursting with every kind of plant delight from the new introductions to the tried and true. Creativity abounds and it’s hard not to get excited at the prospect of meeting your new plant crush!
With this excitement in mind, it is time to plant summer color. My gardening tip for May is COLOR.
Annual plants often are overlooked as a frivolity or even subpar plants. If you really look at them, yes, they are short-lived and don’t produce food and will just die when frost hits, but they give all they got and continuously bloom from May through September most years (water, fertilizer, and the occasional deadheading help). They brighten up a bed and create pops of color anywhere you want to place them.
I love coming up with a color scheme and designing my containers based on what’s out there in the garden centers and even take some inspiration from social media. It’s important to know what plants like sun or shade, more or less frequent water, and the size and form the plant will eventually take. For example, a succulent will thrive in dry soil and sun with occasional watering so it will need to be with other plants that enjoy the same.
I don’t know who coined the phrase, but “Thriller, Spiller, Filler” is a nice guide to construct a container planting. Thriller is that unique plant that can stand up, has a unique form, color, or other defining features, like canna or ornamental grass. Spiller is the trailing plant that can fill the lower portion of the planter, like sweet potato vine and dichondra. Filler is that in-between plant that holds it all together. A favorite is euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost’ (and similar).
One of the best things about planting annuals is it gives license to experiment with color, form and texture on a small scale without spending a ton of money. One year it might be hot, vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows. One year maybe elegant blue and white. You get to know what works and what fizzles out come July, what is classy and what is tacky, although being tacky can be fun when it comes to plants!
I really enjoy using different textures together, even if the colors are similar or only vary slightly with perennials and even small trees in the mix. It is amazing how plants placed close together can compliment and contrast in the best ways. It can be how the burgundy underside of a leaf brings out the reddish undertone of a flower or the way a peachy color is set off by an icy blue. These plantings are often in close proximity to where we spend our time-by the pool or on the patio where we can notice these subtleties.
This is a time when you can be inspired, go out to your favorite garden center, load up, and plant without special equipment or a crew to implement your design. And if it doesn’t work out, there’s always next year!
About the Author: Danielle Brown – Project Manager at J. W. Townsend Landscapes
Danielle has 1/4 of a century of hands-on gardening experience and landscape design application under her belt. She is a VNLA Certified Horticulturist, ISA Certified Arborist, and is a Commercial Pesticide Applicator. She holds a B. S. in Psychology from JMU and a certificate in Landscape Design from University of Richmond. She is a VNLA Certified Horticulturist as well as a Registered Technician for pesticide application. Danielle joined J. W. Townsend, Inc. in April 2010 after working in sales and landscape design at a local garden center. She enjoys spending time with her two boys, cooking, gardening, and traveling.