The best landscape-designer tricks to make the most of a shady, north-facing garden will transform a dull, dark plot into an inviting outdoor space where you'll want to linger. Designing a garden with this aspect is all about bringing more light to the space as well as selecting the right shade-tolerant plants that will flourish in these conditions. A shady garden brings wonderful opportunities that simply aren't possible in a sunny south-facing garden, so rather than thinking of a north-facing plot as a problem, make it work to your advantage.

One of the main challenges will be the lack of direct sunlight, which can make your outdoor space feel dull and gloomy, as well as restricting the types of plants you can grow. Tall buildings or trees blocking available sunlight compounds the issue, especially as we head into the winter months when the sun is lower in the sky. But all these landscape designer tricks will overcome such issues to create a covetable garden that you won't want to swap for a sunnier plot.

Which will you use to brighten up your shady north-facing yard?

1. Use Pale-Colored Pavers to Bounce Natural Light Around

Opting for lighter-colored materials for paths, patios and other hardscaped areas will reflect light as well as brighten the space, making a shady or north-facing garden a much more pleasant place to be. Choose porcelain or limestone pavers, and pebbles or river stones in pale tones of soft gray, sand, buff or other light neutrals, to make the most of whatever sunlight your garden gets. This also visually expands the space, which is one of the most common methods landscape designers use to make a small garden feel bigger.

It needn't be an expensive job to swap out existing darker paving for a lighter option such as these limestone-look porcelain pavers from The Home Depot, as long as you don't change the dimensions of the paved area and choose tiles of the same size. Lifting old pavers carefully means you'll keep the substrate intact, and can sell the old pavers on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.

2. Layer up a Base of Large-Leaved Plants in Zingy Tones

Shady garden design starts with a strong base of foliage-first plants, to which flowering varieties are added. Layered planting is a big trend with landscape designers right now and it can be used to create a relaxed, immersive feel that helps soften the edges of shady, north-facing gardens too. There are plenty of varieties of leafy plants that thrive in low sunlight levels, so you be very intentional in the shades of green you choose.

Ferns are one of the most valuable plant groups for north-facing gardens and work particularly well to add vibrancy when combined with Fatsia japonica and hosta. All these plants are available in varieties with zingy green leaves and lighter-colored foliage that catches the light and helps to brighten dark borders and corners. You can also use plants with variegated foliage to add colour and interest in shaded areas.

3. Add Luminous White Blooms to Your Border Design

Shade is often viewed as a disadvantage because it limits the choice of plants you can grow. But there are plenty of flowering plants that flourish in the shade, and by choosing varieties with luminous white blooms, the pale petals will lift any gloomy or shady space, dancing around the foil of zingy foliage you've created.

Flowering shrubs such as hydrangeas are one of the most consistently reliable shade-loving plants, offering masses of blooms right through summer and fall. There are plenty of pale-bloomed flowering varieties to choose from including garden favorite Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle', available from trees.com, that brings luxurious white pompom blooms to partial shade. In a more compact space, Hydrangea paniculata 'Little Lime', also available from trees.com, is a new dwarf form that also appreciates partial shade.

4. Play a Visual Trick with Partial-Shade Plants

Landscape designers know the power of choosing several key plants and repeating them in groups of three, five or seven throughout the design to add continuity and flow. This is an easy planting solution for shady, north-facing gardens too, as you simply choose plants that will work in these conditions and multiply them to build up your collection.

But here's the clever bit. Choose three unfussy plants that flourish in partial shade to plant throughout as these will typically cope with both a little more sun and a touch more shade. Then in areas of deeper shade, add a couple of varieties that prefer full shade, and in sunnier spots, swap these out for two sun-loving plants. That way, the planting is cohesive, linking the shady and sunny areas rather than having a stark contrast between them.

Be intentional when choosing your three key plants so each takes on a different role in the design. In this garden, which ranges from partial shade to full sun, there are repeat plantings of clipped evergreen hebe shrubs for structure, tall perennial foxglove beardtongue for airy flowers, and low-growing Mexican fleabane for groundcover. All these plants prefer full sun but cope very well with partial shade.

5. Create Focal Points with Showstopper Accent Plants

North-facing gardens can be wonderfully immersive spaces, lush with green foliage and pale-petalled flowers. But landscape designers will always ensure there is also accent planting to create focal points that elevate the entire scheme.

It's an inescapable fact that plants that produce the most vibrant colors are typically those that prefer full sun. That's because a great deal of energy is needed to produce intense pigments, which plants generate through photosynthesis using sunlight. However, by carefully mapping how sun and shade moves through your garden over time, you can identify spots that get the most sunshine, and use these to add accent plants that landscape designers love but are easy to grow yourself.

To create a simple shadow map to identify where these prime spots are, do a very simple sketch of your plot from an upstairs window. Then every two hours throughout the day, mark on the patches of shade. By the end of the day, you'll quickly see where the deepest patches of shade are, and which areas are only cast into darkness for a couple of hours, where a showstopper plant such as this fabulous Japanese dogwood, which likes full sun to partial shade, will thrive.

A useful tool to help you identify these prime accent-plant positions is a digital soil tester that also measures sunlight intensity such as this 4-in-1 moisture meter from Amazon.

6. Play with Reflections to Lift Dark Corners

One way to bring the illusion of light to a shady garden is a water feature that reflects the sky. This will help to stretch your space and bounce any available light around the garden to create bright spots in shady areas. Adding a few drops of black pond dye such as Aquascape, available from Wayfair, turns the water into a dark mirror that clearly reflects trees, sky, and surroundings. Add a micropond to a border and the water will reflect the overhanging leaf and flower shapes all around it, too.

Other reflective surfaces like garden mirrors can achieve the same effect and make a shady, north-facing garden appear lighter and brighter by reflecting sunlight across the space. Carefully positioned on a shaded wall, fence or shed, a garden mirror will add a bright note. They can also help make the garden feel much larger, in the same way mirrors are used in interior design.

Use mirrored balls like this Outdoor Gazing Ball from Wayfair to capture the reflections of plants, the sky and sunlight, too.

7. Position Strategic Solar Uplighting Beneath Architectural Plants

A well-designed garden lighting scheme is always a key element landscape designers add to the mix in a north-facing garden. Garden lights can be used to great effect in dark shade during the day to highlight planting, garden sculpture or architectural features.

In addition to brightening the space, lighting your garden will draw more attention to landscape design elements by enhancing shapely trees like Japanese maples and sculptural plants such as agave or yucca. If you're using solar lights like these stake spotlights from The Home Depot, you'll obviously need to position them in a spot that gets sun for part of the day to charge, but then they'll add a glow once light levels fall. Choosing warm-toned lights will add a far softer ambience than cooler bright white lights.

8. Paint Boundaries a Pale Neutral Tone

If you're on a budget and want to brighten a north-facing garden without a major overhaul, one of the most cost-effective solutions is to paint boundary fences or walls in a lighter tone. This will immediately transform the space, bringing a much brighter feel to a garden that's mostly shaded.

Try light neutrals and soft, muted pastels in shades like pale gray, buff, cream, and willow or sage green – one of the strongest fence-color trends in 2026. If you want to pick up on the green trend then Glidden Fundamentals Light Sage Satin Exterior Paint, available from Walmart is a lovely option. Alternatively for a neutral cream try Glidden Fundamentals Oatmeal Satin Exterior Paint, also available from Walmart. Opt for a satin finish rather than matt as this will bounce the light around rather than absorbing it.

To avoid a big stretch of painted boundary, soften the look with fence landscaping ideas.

9. Choose Container Planting Combinations that Love Shade

One of the easiest ways to switch up the look in a north-facing garden is by planting up pots with shade-loving plants that love life in a container. Whether it's a small urban courtyard garden overlooked by apartment buildings or a patio close to the house that doesn't get much sun, there are plenty of attractive options to create an appealing combination in a planter.

Reliable container garden favorites including hydrangea, hosta, ferns and ornamental Carex, adding precious blooms and interesting foliage to bring life and light into dark corners of your yard. Containers in shady spots need less watering and deadheading, and flowers tend to last longer than those in scorching sunshine, so there really are advantages to having a north-facing plot!

Amanda Seyfried has done something celebrities and the average person dream about and talk about ad nauseam but never actually get around to doing: she’s made her property completely disappear from prying eyes (in her case, nosy paparazzi, and in yours, nosy neighbors). Located in the middle of the Hollywood Hills, the traditional-style house, built in 1916, was just listed for $3.2 million.

It’s tucked away behind gates and tall hedges, despite sitting in one of the most densely populated, paparazzi-adjacent neighborhoods in the world. From the street, it’s basically wearing that invisibility cloak from Harry Potter, but inside, it’s a whole different story.

This is actually the power of privacy planting when it’s done correctly. Unlike most celebrity gardening “inspiration,” you can actually achieve this in your own garden, anywhere in the world.

Start With a Fast-Growing Evergreen Hedge

The backbone of this whole look is the tall, dense evergreen hedge that takes care of your privacy all year long, even in winter. In a warmer climate like Los Angeles, Indian laurel fig (Ficus nitida), available from Citronella King on Amazon, is exactly what you want for this type of screening. The iconic "Hollywood hedge", it grows quickly into a full, glossy wall that you can maintain at any height you choose.

Thuja Green Giant arborvitae, available at Trees.com, is the equivalent in a cooler climate, and it’s a real workhorse. Growing three to five feet every year, it has a deep green color that doesn’t turn yellow in winter and a height that gives you some serious privacy rather than the polite suggestion of it.

For boundaries where you don’t necessarily have all the space in the world, Emerald Green arborvitae, available from Plant Addicts, grows to about 12 feet and will stay narrow enough that you can plant it close to a fence line without worrying it’s going to take over the whole garden.

What’s key to all of these is planting in autumn before the soil gets too cold, watering them very well throughout their first summer, and having a little patience (Rome wasn’t built in a day). Most fast-growing hedge plants will give you a noticeable screen within 2 years (that may seem long, but I promise, time flies!)

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Add Gates and Structure

Hedges alone won’t give you the “Seyfried effect” (as I will refer to it from now on); you also need gates to carry at least half the load. A boundary that combines tall trees with a solid structure creates the feeling of a mental enclosure for you as well as a physical one. Even a simple timber or metal gate within the hedge line can take your property from exposed to private practically overnight.

If a full gate isn’t in your budget or it’s just not your thing, a pergola or arch over an entryway planted with lovely climbing roses or jasmine can give you something similar with a delightful scent on top. It’s a threshold that tells everyone passing it they are now in a separate world from the street.

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Layer the Planting for Depth

A single hedge gives you the wall, and layered planting creates the garden, but you still need that middle tier so you don’t have any gaps. You have lots of flowering shrub choices, including viburnum, pittosporum, and Mexican orange blossom; these give you structure year-round, with seasonal interest as an added benefit.

Don’t forget about ground level, which can help fill in the bases of taller plants and keep stems from looking bare and leggy. Plants like ferns, ornamental grasses, and spreading perennials are a great choice. This gives the whole garden a natural, organic quality rather than looking like you had it installed.

Layered planting also makes a boundary feel further away when you're trying to create privacy. This is a useful trick if you’re dealing with a smaller, urban garden where the fence line is close, and the neighbor's windows aren’t far enough.

When done well, privacy planting doesn’t look like a defense mechanism from the world. It looks like a garden you want to be yours and don’t want anyone to see. In a world where most people have their outdoor space visible from 14 different angles, that’s about the most aspirational thing you can have.

The English country garden aesthetic is having a major moment right now, and if you’ve seen photos of George and Amal Clooney’s Mill House garden in Oxfordshire, then you’ll see why. Sandstone stairs softened by euphorbia delicately spilling over railings, climbing vines covering old stone walls, and pastel-colored flowers tucked into borders, giving the impression that they’ve been there for hundreds of years.

Photographed for Vogue by Annie Leibovitz, the couple's garden strikes a perfect balance between thoughtful design and natural beauty. It’s the kind of space that invites wandering and daydreaming. But much like a classic Parisian outfit that appears thrown together, it is actually the result of careful planning and a discerning eye.

While it may seem out of your price range and not achievable unless you have a sprawling estate like the Clooneys, there are ways you can get the English cottage look in your own garden. If George and Amal's greenhouse has already inspired you, the garden itself is obviously the next step.

The Difference Between Country Charm and Just Overgrown

So, what is the difference between overgrown and neglected and a charming country aesthetic? This question is at the heart of the look, and the answer is actually quite simple. Marta Pawlik, Co-Founder and Director of luxury property management company Laik, frames it beautifully: "Style a country garden in exactly the same way you'd style a living room, except stop a step sooner."

She applies a principle of contrast, telling me, "The key to achieving country charm instead of a run-down look is purpose. We always compare a relaxed element against a neater element. A rumpled throw on a well-made bed.”

She continues, “In garden terms, this is what Landscape Architecture professor Joan Nassauer called ‘cues to care’ – intentional signs of maintenance that give the eye permission to relax everything else. In the Clooneys' garden, it's the sandstone walls doing that work. The structure is impeccable; the planting gets to be loose and romantic within it.”

Crystal Olenbush, luxury realtor and interior design expert at AustinRealEstate.com, makes the same point from a design perspective, saying, "In an English country garden, despite some relaxed-looking planting, people can clearly understand its layout and the way to walk through the garden, find a place to sit down, or enjoy the views framed by the planting from the windows of your house."

Start With Structure, Then Back Off

The most common mistake when attempting this style is starting with the plants rather than the bones. Pawlik's advice is to begin where an interior designer would: "Start with some shrubs for structure – a couple of well-trimmed yews or hollies, the blight-proof alternatives to box hedging. The structure is like starting with the rug and the sofa in the living room. It gives some shape to what's going to be your focus. Then back off and let things self-seed, foxgloves spill over paths, everything."

Her other tip, which is one that changes how most people approach garden planning entirely, is this: "Plan your garden by standing in your kitchen window, not outside. You'll be looking at your garden through a window far more often than you'll be out in it."

Olenbush adds that the planting itself should soften the architecture without trying to hide it, saying, "Let the climbers cover the wall, perennials flow slightly over the border, and grasses grow through the stone steps, but leave the bones of the garden visible. If there are no visible paths, seats, or facades of the house, the garden has left the country style."

Copy Amal and George’s Rustic Pot Look

Adapting the Look for Warmer Climates

For US gardeners in warmer or drier zones, Olenbush recommends recreating the visual language rather than copying specific plants. "Look for local species that offer similar soft colors, flowering periods, and forms. Drought-tolerant flowering perennials, native shrubs, and suitable vines can create the same layered effect."

For climbers specifically, she suggests star jasmine, coral honeysuckle, or crossvine as alternatives to the clematis and roses that are all over English gardens. For the looser middle layer, lavender, salvia, catmint, and rosemary all give off the soft, billowing quality of a classic English border but don’t require the dampness that is such a classic of an Oxfordshire summer.

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At the end of the day, the Clooneys’ garden is the exact argument you need for restraint. Strong bones with a lot of repetition and the confidence to let some things be just a little undone and not too perfect. This combination can work in a 17th-century Oxfordshire mansion, but it works just as well in a backyard on the other side of the Atlantic.

Starting a new garden from scratch can feel daunting but there are plenty of easy, inexpensive ways to quickly give your plot a more lived-in look. Landscape designers use these tricks and techniques all the time to make a new garden look mature, and they're straightforward enough to DIY yourself on a budget. So, if you're wondering where to start when faced with a bare patch of earth and a big stretch of fencing, these garden design ideas will get your new yard established, fast.

If you've moved house and have a newbuild plot, or you're thinking about giving your existing yard a makeover, this blank canvas gives you the opportunity to design the garden of your dreams, in the same way you might be rethinking the interior layout and decor to suit your tastes. The joy of designing a garden from scratch is that you can tailor it to be the outdoor living space you want, rather than inheriting someone else's dream yard. And with these DIY garden design techniques, there's no need to wait years for your new plot to mature, even if you're on a budget.

All these clever landscape designer tricks to make a new garden look mature will quickly give a freshly-created yard a lived-in look. Which ones will you choose to use in your garden?

1. Invest in a Tree for Instant Impact

In a new garden, a well-positioned specimen tree will become the focal point around which the rest of the planting develops, as well as adding instant interest. Choose a multi-stem tree variety such as a Japanese maple,like the Acer japonicum 'Aconitifolium' in this design and the shapely branching structure will immediately create a diversion, drawing attention away from other, less developed areas of the garden.

Buy the most mature tree you can afford, and if you can stretch the budget to a few, do. Larger trees will immediately make the design feel it's been there for a while; smaller trees will simply draw attention to the fact everything is new. Choose varieties with interesting sculptural outlines, foliage, blossom or berries and you will enjoy four seasons of interest as well as instant privacy.

2. Clothe Fences With Fast-Growing Climbers

Freshly-erected walls and fences stand out as they look so stark. While their bright tones will dull down over time, introducing a softer element to landscape your garden boundaries quickly fixes the issue. A combination of trellis and your choice of fast-growing climbing plants that don't scramble out of control is one of the speediest ways to create a lived-in look. Even covering a small mid-section of a wall or fence with a climber will break up the hard landscaping and make the garden feel like it's been there for longer.

Do treat your fence first if needed, or paint it if you fancy. If your garden feels boxed in by its boundary, painting a fence a darker color to make it less visually overwhelming is one of the simplest DIY ideas garden designers use to make a small yard feel bigger.

3. Layer Planting to Add Depth

New gardens are often dominated by plants of the same height, so introducing a layered planting effect will create the impression the space has been established for a while. This garden-design technique will also help to distract from bare areas of soil while you're waiting for plants to mature.

When deciding on your planting, aim for a range of plants that fill three vertical zones and you'll automatically avoid the flat layout typical of so many newbuild gardens. Mid-height perennials in borders and beds are your mainstay, but mix in tall structural plants to act as focal points. Your final layer is low-growing, and don't dismiss this as an afterthought because there are lots of glorious flowering groundcover plants that can add color as well as texture to your garden design.

As you can see in this beautiful garden, it's safe to ignore the old 'big plants at the back of a border, small plants at the front' rule! Layering the planting height like this immediately makes borders look more mature, and allowing foliage to sprawl over paths and other hardscaped areas achieves a similar effect by blurring the edges.

Do ensure you improve the soil before you get planting, though, especially if you have a newbuild garden and have been left with a combination of rubble, clods of poor soil and weedy patches. It's always worth investing in your soil by adding a natural product like this Organic Compost Soil Improver from Home Depot that will nourish plants and help them thrive, quickly creating a more mature garden.

4. Claim Your Vertical Space

Another common issue in a newly planted garden is an absence of height. While you're waiting for trees and shrubs to mature, a speedy solution is to add a pergola or gazebo planted with a climbing vine. Clematis is a super choice, especially fall-flowering clematis that peak just as the rest of the garden is fading and, whether you're looking for a compact vine or fast coverage, you can find a clematis vine to suit every garden spot.

Using a structure to claim your vertical space quickly makes a garden feel more established, and it doesn't have to be a big spend. A simple design like this Outdoor Metal Pergola from Wayfair won't blow your budget yet will add that all-important height factor to switch up a flat plot. A pergola improves privacy, too, one of the most common requests landscape designers are asked for.

5. Use Hedging to Add Dense Foliage

Adding a hedge to a new garden can double the foliage count and also provides shelter to wildlife, helping to quickly establish an ecosystem for healthy, thriving plants. Buy in fall or in bulk and hedging plants are surprisingly cost-effective, allowing you to afford more mature plants and cut the time it takes to soften boundaries.

An established hedge immediately gives a garden enclosure and privacy while creating an attractive background that will enhance any planting in front. Think too about using hedging plants to divide a larger garden into different areas or garden 'rooms', making the space feel more considered and established.

Don't skip straight to boxwood because there are all sorts of plants that work well as hedging, contributing texture, shape and color to your garden design as well as making it look more mature.

6. Enclose a Seating Area With Planters

Once you've decided where to put your seating area, surrounding the space with raised planting immediately brings an immersive sense that many mature gardens enjoy. By all means hardscape an L-shape or U-shape of raised beds, or achieve a similar effect with contemporary planters.

Fill the containers with repeat planting for a cost-effective, modern look that soon fills out and looks good year-round. Opting for tall ornamental grasses or clipped evergreen shrubs is just one of many affordable planter box ideas that boost your garden style as well as your growing space, and will quickly add a sense of permanency. Think about adding recessed lights too as they will light up the plants at night for extra interest, as well as making your design feel polished.

7. Top Dress With Gravel to Cover Bare Soil

One of the biggest giveaways a garden is newly designed is the large areas of bare soil left between perennials and shrubs that require room to mature. The quickest way to address this problem is the popular landscape designer trick of adding a layer of gravel to cover the soil surface.

As well as making the area look finished, and those gaps intentional, this brings the added benefit of giving plants a boost by helping to retain moisture in the soil and suppressing weed growth. Use smaller, slightly rounded pea gravel such as this pretty warm-hued Rainforest Pink Washed Gravel from Lowe's for a natural effect.

Another solution is to banish bare soil with ground cover plants that spread beautifully but gracefully give way to taller perennials and shrubs as they mature and grow. Use a combination of both gravel and groundcover and that immature border will instantly look like it's been there for years.

8. Blur Hard Landscaping Lines

Perfectly straight edges between recently paved patios, freshly laid lawns and new paths are a clear sign of a just-completed landscaping project. To make the space look more settled, blending the different landscaping elements for a more aged aesthetic is a trick designers often use. Let ornamental grasses and low-growing perennials flop over a path, and use pea gravel to transition between different areas to banish hard lines.

The trick is to use low-maintenance plants that landscape designers favour to soften hard landscaping as they look good without much care from you. A common trick is planting in the cracks between flagstones, bricks and pavers so stems spill over the edges to soften hard outlines and make the hardscaping look aged and characterful. Using creeping thyme to scent paving and pathways is particularly successful and, once stones or pavers are partially covered with its fragrant foliage, they look like they've been there for ever.

9. Sow Self-Seeders for a Random Detail

One of the biggest joys of a mature garden is the little pockets of colorful petals that pop up in unexpected spots as a result of self-seeding short-lived plants. It's simple to replicate this in a new garden with fling-and-forget seeds that practically grow themselves, and many can be sown in fall to flower early the following year. Don't be too careful about where you sow them but aim to recreate a natural, random positioning.

A smart choice is California poppies as they gently self-seed without taking over the garden, only grow just over a foot tall, and will flourish in poor soil and even gravel. While a cheery orange is the usual color of Eschescholzia californica, and California poppy seeds are available from Eden Brothers, there are all sorts of pretty tones to choose from such as Thai Silk Appleblossom Chiffon California poppies, with seed also available from Eden Brothers. Poppy seeds require a cold period for good germination, so sowing in fall is beneficial.

Making a new garden look more mature is simple with these landscape designer techniques. With these basics in place, you can employ all sorts of little tricks to age any parts of your yard that still look far too new. Painting yogurt or buttermilk on unglazed terracotta pots encourages the development of a natural patina, or try applying a thin coat of diluted paint to fences or walls for a more aged aesthetic.

Gwyneth Paltrow recently posted a video of herself making a frittata on Instagram. It was a very Gwyneth thing to do – wholesome, polished, and faintly aspirational – and it looked delicious. But the eggs are not what caught our attention. Before the frittata took center stage, Gwyneth was seen harvesting vegetables from the most beautiful raised-bed kitchen garden, which is clearly producing real food – not merely posing for the ‘gram.

Her Montecito garden, designed by landscape designer Christine London, is the kind of setup that makes you want to rip up half your lawn. It's gorgeous. It’s also, according to the experts I spoke to, doing several specific things right that any home gardener can copy – whether you’re looking for inspiration from these raised bed ideas or hoping to recreate Gwyneth’s productive setup. Purchasing property in Montecito is not required.

The Detail Everyone Gets Wrong

If there's one thing to remember from this whole article, it's this: keep your raised beds narrow. It’s not just a style preference; it’s just the correct way to do it if you want beds that are both functional and beautiful like Gwyneth's.

Limit the width to about 4 feet (1.2 m) so that all parts of the bed can be accessed from the side without stepping in and compacting the soil. Otherwise, that gorgeous wide bed becomes a sad, neglected middle strip that never really thrives because nobody wants to climb in and squish the soil to reach it.

If you have the space, then 4x8 feet is the maximum you should go for a single raised bed. That's the size of the Yaheetech wooden raised garden bed kit on Amazon, which is a good budget-friendly option if you want a natural wood look like Gwyneth's. For a smaller area, the 4x2ft Birdsinyard galvanized raised bed is a stylish solution with an open-bottom design, which helps solve the drainage problem that slowly kills so many kitchen gardens.

The Boring Bit That Actually Matters

Here’s the thing nobody posts about: water. Andy Layton, founder and managing director of Hello Plumbing, has worked on enough kitchen gardens to know the unglamorous truth: “The most frequent cause of raised bed gardens not doing well is not due to plant selection or garden design. It’s a matter of drainage and access to water. A bed that doesn’t have good drainage can kill plants in one growing season, and a bed that is too far from a water source will be neglected in weeks because hand watering is too much work to do every day.”

In Gwyneth’s video, irrigation appears to have been integrated into her raised beds. To make watering easier, consider the All-in-One raised bed kits from Garden in Minutes. They include an irrigation grid for even, soil-level watering, an open-bottom design to encourage drainage, and a square-foot plant-spacing grid to make planting easy and consistent.

Whatever you do, don’t overlook these vital design issues, and heed Layton's cautionary tale: “We worked on a residential kitchen garden where the homeowner had constructed four beautiful cedar raised beds, but located 50 feet (15 m) from the closest faucet. The garden was abandoned in one summer. The cost of running a drip line from an existing faucet would have been less than $200, and the garden would have required very little daily maintenance.”

This is a lesson learned the expensive way, so you don’t have to learn it yourself: before you build anything beautiful, figure out where your water is coming from.

Stylish Raised Bed Kits

Paths Matter More Than You'd Think

Good raised-bed design is about more than the beds themselves. Leave at least 18–24 inches (45–60 cm) between beds for comfortable walking access, and consider widening the paths to around 24–35 inches (60–90 cm) if you want to move a wheelbarrow through the garden.

A dual-wheel wheelbarrow, like this one from Best Choice Products, available on Amazon, makes navigating paths between beds far easier than a single-wheel barrow.

Walking aisles between raised beds should be between 18 and 24 inches (45–90 cm) wide so that there is ample room to walk through the garden and work on the garden. These dimensions are not a matter of aesthetics; they are a matter of function.

Bed height matters, too. Raising beds to at least 12 inches (30 cm) creates a more intentional structure, while beds around 17–24 inches (43–60 cm) high are easier for people with back or knee limitations to access. If bending over makes you wince, build the beds taller. Nobody’s judging.

A simple foam kneeler pad, like this one from Gorilla Grip on Amazon, can make harvesting from lower beds much easier on your knees.

Choose Plants for a Productive Raised Bed

Good raised-bed design is about more than appearance. Place drought-tolerant herbs such as rosemary and thyme around the edges, where the soil dries out fastest, while moisture-loving basil will be happier closer to the center. Put tall crops, including tomatoes and trellised beans, at the back so they do not shade shorter plants.

Herbs also earn their space in a kitchen garden, adding texture, color, fragrance, and food for pollinators. For an encouraging first harvest, start with productive crops such as lettuce, kale, green beans, zucchini, strawberries, and dwarf tomatoes. Just avoid overcrowding: plants need enough room, water, light, and airflow to grow strongly.

You can keep the beds productive for longer with succession planting. As one crop finishes, replace it with another vegetable or herb, creating a garden that continues to provide fresh harvests and visual interest throughout the growing season.

Your Raised Bed To-Do List

The TL;DR version? If you're taking anything away from Gwyneth's garden besides frittata envy, make it this:

1. Keep beds under 1.2 meters wide so you never have to step into the soil. Leave at least 18–24 inches between beds for proper access.

2. Sort your drainage and water source before you build anything, not after.

3. Plant your drought-tolerant herbs at the edges, thirstier plants in the middle, and tall crops at the back so nothing's shading out its shorter neighbors.

4. Resist the urge to plant one of absolutely everything; pick a handful of fast, rewarding crops to start, and let the garden (and your confidence) grow from there.

Gardens come in so many shapes and sizes, from small, asymmetrical spaces with little nooks perfect for pots to broad acres with seemingly endless land for garden beds. The beauty of having a garden, though, is that there are always ways to make the space work for you – it's just a case of being a bit creative. And few people are more creative than Joanna Gaines when it comes to making the most of any space.

Joanna recently posted pictures of her garden on Instagram, showing her stylish and practical raised garden bed layout. As you might expect, she has created a space abundant with greenery and flowers, including dahlias, zinnias, white lace flowers, scabiosa, pink globe amaranth, and plumbago. However, they're also ideally designed for growing vegetables and herbs. Her beds feel intentionally placed, with each side of the garden mirroring the other in perfect symmetry. Each raised bed is far enough apart from its neighbor to allow for easy access when planting or watering. In fact, the overall design seems rather perfect.

If you're looking for raised garden bed ideas to add to your own yard, you've come to the right place. Here's why it's so effective – and how to get the look.

Why Joanna's Raised Beds Work So Well

Joanna's raised beds are predominantly arranged in two matching blocks of rows and columns, mirrored on either side of her garden. Towards the back of the planting area, she has also included one long planter on either side, as well as two smaller U-shaped ones.

Arranging lots of planters close together in rows and columns is a traditional approach to growing crops and is efficient when planting, harvesting, or watering. This raised bed garden layout works because everything is close by, so a gardener doesn't have to walk far to tend to each of their plants.

This approach also allows gardeners to make the most of their available space, leaving only enough room to walk comfortably between the raised beds.

The U-shaped planters towards the back are a great way to add visual variety to the yard, breaking up the repetition of the straight lines. But I love how Joanna has added one more row to bridge the gap between the main rows and the shaped raised beds, making the pattern shift feel less abrupt.

Shop Raised Beds to Get the Look

A More Comfortable Way to Garden

One simple but easily overlooked benefit of Joanna’s raised bed layout is that the beds give her plenty of convenient places to perch while working outdoors. Josiah Stoltzfus and Chris Newton of Saunders Hardscape, who design raised hardscape gardens, were quick to point this out.

They explained: “Raised beds are a great way to bring together multiple components, including hardscaping, landscaping, and crafting a functioning space. But a simple pro to having spaced raised beds like Joanna’s is that the hardscape lets you sit on the edge to work or bend over without going all the way down to ground level!”

You’ll be thanking yourself when your back hurts less in the yard, or when you’re tired and need somewhere to sit down and catch your breath.

Better Airflow for Healthier Plants

This was a major benefit pointed out to me by Kyle Turner, President and CEO of Pro Active Pest Control. Every raised bed has enough space around it to prevent the plants from becoming overcrowded, which not only looks great but also offers health benefits for your greenery.

As Kyle explained: “What I like about this raised bed layout is the spacing. When raised beds are arranged in a clean grid with wide walkways between them, you improve airflow around the plants. Better airflow helps foliage dry faster after watering or rain, which reduces the conditions that many pests and plant diseases prefer.”

Easier to Keep Clean

The clear walkways around Joanna’s raised beds also make it easier to keep the growing area clean and tidy. With plenty of room to move between the beds, gardeners can spot and remove fallen fruit, damaged vegetables, and other plant debris before they begin to attract unwanted visitors.

Kyle continued: “From a pest-control perspective, the layout also encourages better sanitation. Defined paths help keep gardeners from compacting the growing soil and make it easier to remove fallen fruit, damaged vegetables, or plant debris that can attract insects and rodents.”

Don’t Forget to Line the Bottom

If you’re keen to add raised beds to your garden, there’s one essential task Kyle recommends doing before filling your raised garden bed: lining the bottom.

He explained: “One recommendation I make, regardless of bed type, is to line the bottom with quarter-inch hardware cloth, like this Hunka wire cloth from Amazon, before filling the bed. It’s one of the most effective ways to keep burrowing pests out of vegetable gardens.”

If your raised beds are sitting on a hard surface, such as concrete or a patio, lining the base will also help protect the material underneath.

Joanna’s garden shows that raised beds can be both practical and beautiful. With thoughtful spacing, clear walkways, and a layout that makes the garden comfortable to use, even the most functional elements can become part of the overall design.

Don't tell everyone, but buying end-of-season bargains and bare root plants now will fill your garden with flowers for years to come while saving a fortune. With fall sneaking up on us, next summer probably isn’t on your radar yet. But now is a surprisingly smart time to shop for perennials to plant in fall and give your garden a head start. There are September plant bargains to be had with garden centers keen to clear the last of their summer stock. Dormant bare root plants also offer an economical way to buy without paying out for a large plant that's costly to transport, and planting bare roots is just as easy as adding a potted plant to your backyard.

The real advantage of fall planting goes way beyond price, however. Warm soil and cooler air create excellent conditions for root growth, helping perennial plants settle in with less heat and transplant stress. And while there'll be no instant show of flowers or lush foliage, what matters is that roots are busy growing in the soil. By spring, that supportive root system means perennials hit the ground running, giving you bigger, stronger plants and, in many cases, lots more flowers.

So, if you want to have a gorgeous garden on a budget, start with these 10 reliable plants with serious flower power. Every garden should have all these hard-working flowering plants that bring plenty of blooms year in, year out, in return for very little effort. All are cheaper to buy right now in both bare root and potted form, and we've hunted out the very best deals on our recommended varieties. So, whether you're starting a new yard from scratch or want to ensure existing borders are packed with blooms, all these plants make great garden investments.

Ready to know what to buy and how to give it the best possible start so that next summer your garden will be blooming lovely? Let's dive in…

1. Peony

• Zones 3-8
• Full sun to partial shade
• Flowers late spring to early summer
• Grows to 2-4 feet high and 2-3 feet wide

With their varied shapes and brilliant colors, peonies are a must for any style of yard, and planting them now is better for the plant as well as your wallet. Buy peonies now as bare roots for planting in fall and in most of the US, the soil is still warm enough for roots to grow while the top growth is shutting down. And it's so easy to do. Plant a peony bare root with the eyes – the pink or reddish buds on the root – just 1-2 inches below the soil surface; any deeper and your peonies may refuse to flower. Give them full sun and excellent drainage, and don't crowd them as good air circulation helps keep foliage healthy.

'Coral Charm' Peony, available from Dutch Grown, is a particular favorite as it brings a succession of warm shades over the summer. Or for timeless romance, ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ Peony, also available from Dutch Grown, is hard to beat with its huge, beautifully ruffled double blooms in soft rose-pink tones. Be patient as peonies can take a couple of seasons to settle in and flower generously but once established, they can live for 50 years or more!

2. Daylily

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun to partial shade
• Flowers summer into fall, depending on variety
• Grows to 1-4 feet high and 1-3 feet wide

Daylilies (Hemerocallis) are not only glorious, but they’re also wonderfully forgiving, making them one of the easiest bare root perennials to establish in fall. Planting daylilies now gives the fleshy roots time to settle into their new home while cooler weather reduces the stress of transplanting. Come spring, your daylily will start the growing season with roots that have had months to establish, for a standout show of blooms.

Set the crown – where the roots meet the leaves – about 1 inch below the soil surface, rather than burying it deeply. Water well after planting, then keep the soil reasonably moist until the ground begins to freeze. Give daylilies a sunny spot for the best flowering, although many varieties tolerate light shade.

One of the most popular varieties with garden designers is Daylily 'Black Stockings', available from Dutch Grown, with unrivalled near-black, velvety petals. It’s a reblooming variety, so you'll enjoy more blooms for your bucks. For a softer, more romantic note, Daylily 'Lavender Tutu', also available from Dutch Grown, makes a beautiful contrast to deeper purples, burgundies and pinks of other perennials.

3. Oriental Poppy

• Zones 3-7
• Full sun to partial shade
• Flowers late spring to early summer
• Grows to 2-4 feet high and 1-2 feet wide

With their huge blousy blooms, oriental poppies (Papaver orientalis) are a perennial favorite and their chunky, fleshy roots are tailormade for bare root planting in fall, giving plants time to settle in before winter. Plant the roots horizontally, following the supplier's directions, being careful not to bury them too deeply. Choose a sunny position with sharply drained soil as winter-wet ground is a bigger threat than cold. Oriental poppies don’t take kindly to being moved so choose the right spot to start with and they'll put on a spectacular display for years to come.

For drama, few poppies can rival ‘Patty’s Plum’ with its huge, crinkled blooms, and bare root poppy 'Patty's Plum' is available at Dutch Grown. To bring light and contrast to any sunny border, 'Perry's White', also available from Dutch Grown, is a winner with enormous, ruffled white flowers.

4. Sedum

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun
• Flowers summer to late fall
• Grows to 1-2½ feet high and 1½-3 feet wide

There’s a good reason why sedum (Hylotelephium) is such a reliable garden favorite, and that's because it's one of those late-season heroes that keeps on flowering when everything else has given up. It combines beautiful flowers with incredible resilience and requires hardly any looking after. These succulent-leaved perennials thrive in full sun and well-drained soil, shrugging off heat, drought and poor soil once established. So if you have a tricky too-hot area where not much wants to grow, here's your solution.

Sedum flowers are rich in nectar for bees and butterflies, and this plant earns its place in the garden well beyond its flowering season. The sturdy flowerheads look good through fall and you can leave the spent heads standing over winter to provide structure.

Buying potted plants at knock-down prices and planting them now gives sedum roots time to settle before next summer’s heat arrives. Water thoroughly after planting, then allow the soil to dry between waterings rather than keeping plants constantly moist. Autumn Joy sedum, available from Nature Hills is a must-have classic with large, flat heads of dusky pink flowers that deepen towards rich red as autumn progresses. For something a little different, Plum Dazzled sedum, available from Plant Addicts, combines sumptuous plum-purple foliage with rosy-pink flowers and adds rich color to the garden as the season begins to fade.

5. Bearded Iris

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun
• Flowers spring to early summer
• Grows to 1-2½ feet high and 1½-2 feet wide

Bold yet elegant bearded iris flowers bring vibrant color and beautiful structure to a garden, yet are far more low-maintenance and drought-tolerant that their exotic appearance suggests. Bearded iris can be bought as rhizomes – underground storage stems – at this time of the year, which is far cheaper than buying a potted ready-to-flower plant next year.

Fall planting allows the rhizome to make roots before the plant goes fully dormant, giving it a stronger launch into spring. Just be sure to give your bearded iris several weeks of root-building weather before winter arrives. Plant the rhizome at or just barely below the soil surface in a sun-baked spot with free-draining soil. Water thoroughly after planting, but don't keep the soil constantly wet.

The intense purple ruffles of bearded iris Black Knight, available from Dutch Grown, is a sophisticated choice and a worthy talking point, so add these to your front yard if you want to make your neighbors a little jealous. Bearded iris Wine and Roses, also available from Dutch Grown, offers a more romantic vibe with deliciously coloured pink and purple petals.

6. Coneflower

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun
• Flowers summer to fall
• Grows to 2-4 feet high and 1-2 feet wide

Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is a dependable perennial and will transform from a late-season nursery bargain into next summer's best pollinator magnet. By September, many container-grown coneflowers have finished their biggest floral display so garden centers drop the price – which is great news for savvy shoppers! Your garden birds will be pleased, too, as coneflowers provide plenty of homegrown seed for feathered friends.

Choose a spot with full sun and well-drained soil and water thoroughly when planting, then regularly irrigate while your coneflower is establishing without keeping the soil constantly soggy.

Magnus purple coneflower, available at Nature Hills is an unbeatable classic, offering color and sustenance to bees and butterflies throughout summer. For a sturdier habit and just as much butterfly appeal with masses of rich burgundy-red flowers, Sombrero Baja Burgundy coneflower, available from Burpee is another super choice for any garden.

7. Black-eyed Susans

• Zones 4-9/10 depending on species
• Full sun to partial shade
• Flowers summer to late fall
• Grows to 2-6 feet high and 1-3 feet wide

Black-eyed Susan is a stalwart of sunny summer borders, delivering masses of cheerful flowers with little fuss. Leave some spent flowerheads over winter and you'll also provide seeds for birds, extending the plant's usefulness well beyond its flowering season. Potted Rudbeckia plants are often discounted once their peak summer display has passed; buy them now and you should still get a few weeks of color from these late-season bloomers.

Full sun is ideal, with reasonably fertile, well-drained soil. Water deeply after planting to encourage roots to explore the surrounding soil so, once established, plants are robust and can cope with heat and periods of dry weather.

‘Prairie Glow’ black-eyed Susan, available from Nature Hills, has a fiery twist and glows through the summer and into fall – perfect for bringing warmth to the late-season garden. Or, for a variety that takes up very little border space, choose Rudbeckia Little Goldstar, also available from Nature Hills, which is perfectly compact and equally floriferous. This is also one of best perennials for patio pots if you want maximum flowers for minimum effort.

8. Yarrow

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun
• Flowers summer to fall
• Grows to 1-4 feet high and 1-3 feet wide

Achillea is one of those plants that looks deceptively delicate but is a real garden workhorse. Its flat-topped flower clusters bring butterflies and other pollinators, while the foliage has a pleasingly ferny texture. With its tough constitution and long flowering season, yarrow is a particularly useful perennial for low-maintenance borders. By fall, container-grown yarrow plants have finished flowering, making them prime candidates for end-of-season markdowns.

Especially lovely is Achillea ‘Strawberry Seduction’, available from Nature Hills, which carries domed heads of deliciously rich pink-red flowers, gradually fading to warm straw yellow as summer progresses. For the earthy warmth of a summer sunset, yarrow ‘Desert Eve Terracotta’, available at Lowe's, is a more compact choice to add glowing color to a sunny border. Give yarrow full sun and good drainage and plant it at the same depth it was growing in its pot.

9. Aster

• Zones 3-8, depending on species
• Full sun to partial shade
• Flowers late summer to fall
• Grows to 1-6 feet high and 1-4 feet wide

Native asters (Symphyotrichum) peak just as many perennials are winding down, producing clouds of daisy-like flowers in late summer and fall. That makes them particularly useful to wildlife – and easy to overlook when plant-shopping earlier in the year. Native asters are particularly useful for supporting specialist bees and are important host plants for numerous moth and butterfly caterpillars. Leaving the dried stems standing over winter will provide habitat and seed, as well as a little structure when the rest of the border has gone quiet.

Plant asters now while the soil is workable, preferably in sun and well-drained soil. Don't worry if the plant looks less than impressive once its flowers fade: the root system is busy growing to support bountiful blooms next year.

If you have a small gap to fill, try dwarf variety ‘Purple Dome’, available from Nature Hills – it’s great for being naturally pest-free too. For intensely rich, grape-purple flowers, ‘Grape Crush’, also available from Nature Hills, is the perfect antidote to fading summer color.

10. Hosta

• Zones 3-9
• Partial shade to shade
• Flowers summer
• Grows to ½–2½ feet high and ½-3 feet wide

The magic of hostas is they don't need to be in flower to be fabulous. Their leaves create structure, color and interest from spring onwards, making them wonderful for woodland gardens, shady borders, containers and naturalized planting.

Hostas are one of the easiest shade-loving perennials to establish from bare roots in fall. Plant your bargain roots in partial to full shade and rich, moisture-retentive, well-drained soil. Keep the crown level with the soil surface, water thoroughly and keep the soil consistently moist while roots establish, particularly if fall is dry. Don’t worry if there’s little to see above ground after planting as hostas naturally die back for winter before emerging in spring, when you'll need to protect tasty fresh leaves from slugs and snails with Garden Safe Slug and Snail Granules, available from Amazon.

A mixed hosta collection such as this Walmart deal is a lovely (and highly economical) way to discover just how much variety these plants can offer. Or skip straight to the showstoppers with a standout variety like hosta White Feather, available from Dutch Grown, whose cream leaves light up a shady corner. Hosta Fire & Ice, also available from Dutch Grown, is another surefire hit with stunning variegated foliage.

Top Tips for September Success

• Don't judge a plant by its flowers. End-of-season container plants can look a little scruffy but as long as the crown is firm, the foliage is reasonably healthy and the roots aren't rotten or completely pot-bound. When you're searching through a garden center's bargain corner, skip anything with obvious disease, severe pest damage or a dry, brittle root ball.
• Treat bare-root plants with care. The bare roots should arrive firm and substantial rather than dried out or brittle. Keep roots from drying out and plant as soon as practical, following the supplier's instructions for soaking and planting depth.
• Get the basics right. Always match the perennial to your USDA hardiness zone, sunlight, soil drainage and local growing conditions. The cheapest plant is no bargain if it's planted in the wrong place.
• In colder regions, aim to plant at least four to six weeks before the ground freezes, giving new arrivals time to establish before temperatures plummet.
• Water after planting. Fall rain may do some of the work but newly planted perennials still need a thorough drink and should be watered during prolonged dry spells while they establish.
• Always mulch fall-planted perennials. A 2-3 inch layer of organic mulch such as Back to Roots Organic Mulch, available from The Home Depot, laid over the soil surface helps conserve moisture and buffer temperature swings; keep it a little away from crowns and stems to prevent rot.

If you've been wondering what to plant in fall, now you know. Get busy in September and take advantage of end-of-season bargains and bare root plants and your garden will be packed full of flowers next summer, for years to come, without splashing the cash. There's no better way to save money when starting a new garden, adding another border or filling up an existing bed with extra flower power, than planting great-value perennials in fall.

Raised beds continue to reach new heights in popularity, meaning landscape designers are dreaming up ever-more innovative ideas. Whether you live in the city or the country, raised bed gardening is a practical option for housing flowers, foliage and vegetables, allowing you to create perfect growing conditions at a level that's easy to tend to. But it's time to forget about basic wooden boxes and think instead of raised beds that will work far harder as part of your garden design.

These raised bed ideas will inspire you if you're looking for fresh, on-trend solutions to reimagine your garden, that are achievable on a DIY basis. You don’t always need a big budget to grow plants in above-ground beds, especially if you get creative by repurposing. Everyday objects and materials can be turned into raised garden beds that not only look good but are productive, too, such as the old water tanks planted with a feast of foliage in this stunning designer garden.

Which of these innovative raised bed ideas will inspire you to add this essential garden design element to your backyard?

1. Create Color-Block Beds of Immersive Planting

A tranquil sanctuary within a compact urban space is the dream if you live in the city and want to escape from the bustle. By using raised beds to achieve wraparound planting and create a fully immersive experience, you'll make the most of a compact outdoor space like a balcony, terrace or courtyard. Use this idea, too, to create a hidden sanctuary in a larger garden. Taller raised beds means you can feel surrounded by nature, even if you live in the middle of the city, especially if you plant them with cold-hardy evergreen vines for privacy.

Painting raised beds in a vivid block color like the brilliant orange used here adds an uplifting, sunny holiday vibe, especially when combined with foliage plants. To give a similar look to existing planters, use Rust-Oleum Real Orange General Purpose Spray Paint, available from The Home Depot, which covers wood, metal and plastic and is suitable for exterior use.

2. Make Room for Wildlife With Upcycled Materials

As well as creating an appealing design feature, these innovative brick raised bed ideas are a low-tech, sustainable method that’s easy to install as well as being practical and affordable. To ensure stability, these raised beds were built with vertical rebar rods running through holes in vent bricks, but you could achieve the same effect by stacking regular bricks such as these from The Home Depot around cheap metal raised beds such as these from Walmart.

The nooks and crannies created between the bricks offer stylish shelters for beneficial bugs, making this an eco-friendly design that will benefit wildlife. Add nectar-rich plants for pollinators like the tall golden Verbascum blooms used here, and you have an incredibly stylish designer-look wildlife garden. Also known as mullein, verbascum is much favored by landscape designers for its elegant spikes of densely packed flower heads above silvery gray felted leaves. A drought-tolerant perennial, Southern Charm Verbascum plants are available from Burpee for blooms from spring to fall that attract butterflies and bees.

3. Use Hexagonal Beds for Geometric Appeal

Mixing hexagonal raised beds into a garden design adds a geometric vibe and allows a more complex play of light and shade. Whether you choose a sleek finish such as this Exaco Hexagonal Raised planter from Walmart or a more industrial feel with a metal planter like this Hexagon Galvanized Steel Raised Bed from Wayfair, moving away from a standard rectangle immediately creates interest. Raised beds of differing shapes also improves flexibility, allowing you to maximise space in a small garden.

This designer garden of hexagonal raised beds makes the most of the additional vertical surfaces by using an aesthetically appealing weathered metal. By adding smaller cubes amid the hexagonal planters, striking big-leafed plants that need to be moved indoors overwinter can be easily included, too, such as elephant ear (Alocasia Regal Shields is available from Nature Hills).

4. Repurpose a Stock Tank as a Raised Planter

Repurposed stock tanks are increasingly being seen in designer gardens as landscapers seek more sustainable backyard ideas. The growing popularity of galvanised metal tanks means that watertight troughs can now command a premium but, especially if you live in a rural area, you'll likely be able to pick up old, leaky tanks cheaply at yard sales and vintage stores.

Buying new can be done on a budget, too, and the range of Tarter galvanized steel stock tanks are easily smart enough to shine in any garden design, with a good variety of sizes – this 4-foot-long oval tank is available from Lowe's and holds 40 gallons, all the way to this 6-foot 170-gallon Tarter trough, also from Lowe's.

As long as the stock tank you choose has good depth and you add drainage holes, you can create a really productive growing space.

5. Create a Compact Raised-Bed Rain Garden

Climate change is affecting us all so there's never been a better time to make your garden more adaptable and resilient, especially to flooding. Start with small and simple changes to your plot such as directing rainwater into a raised bed planter. This not only slows the rush of rainwater through your garden but of course it means these plants get watered for free. Covering the planting surface of the soil with a gravel mulch protects soil from being washed away.

If you're already harvesting rainwater, it's also possible to use a raised-bed rain planter to take the overflow from a rain barrel such as this stylish Eco Bark Rain Barrel with a decorative planter top from Lowe's. Aquatic plants such as this Dutch rush Equisetum Hyemale add even more interest.

6. Turn a Raised Bed into a Water Feature

If you love the look of raised beds, try layering up your garden design elements by using one as a water feature. It's easier than you think to DIY a water feature using a solar-powered floating fountain and, if you take a tip from this designer garden and site it alongside your existing raised beds, you'll add light, movement and sound alongside the plants.

To make the planter watertight, you'll need to plug drainage holes and line seals with marine sealant such as this from Amazon or line a wooden planter with flexible pond liner such as this, also from Amazon.

7. Create a Conversation Pit to Escape to

Raised beds can be used as 'walls' to define different parts of the garden, especially those that benefit from privacy like a conversation pit or green space for yoga. By using raised beds to form a square with just an entrance gap, you effectively divide the space within it into a separate area of the garden with a clearly defined purpose, and it's visually appealing, too.

While this contemporary outdoor space uses raised beds to frame a sunken area with a granite fire-table for evening relaxation, you could create the same immersive effect without the level change. Using gabion cage planters such as these Raised Bed Planters from Amazon to form the 'walls' would add to the structural, architectural feel, and a simple mix of green foliage and grasses increases privacy, too.

8. Add Curves to a Raised Bed Design

If you're handy at DIY and are planning on constructing your own raised beds from wood, how about adding curves to create a captivating garden detail. As well as forming a backdrop for an integrated backyard bench, this design maximises planting space with its attractive sloping sides. Using striking groundcover plants that flower for months will stabilise the sloping soil and prevent it from being washed away, as well as adding vibrant color to the raised border.

9. Repurpose Finds into Contemporary Features

Who would ever guess that the raised beds in this designer garden were made from old filing cabinets? And who doesn't love the idea of finding something old and giving it new life with upcycling ideas, especially if you're designing a garden on a budget. As this garden proves, once painted in vibrant colors, upcycled items can add a contemporary feel to your garden as well as a homely, vintage aesthetic.

Be resourceful and think about adapting old baths and sinks, recycled plastic barrels or bins, or building a bed from free lumber such as railroad ties, because the only limit to upcycled raised bed ideas is your imagination. Just remember to drill plenty of drainage holes. Consider the safety and environmental impact of any materials you find, and opt for natural materials or those that haven't been chemically treated so they're suitable for growing plants.

Raised Beds to Create More Planting Space

Latest forecasts show summers will likely continue getting hotter so you'll be needing all the inspirational ideas you can find to keep your yard cool and comfortable when temperatures soar. You're no doubt familiar with instant ways to make your garden feel cooler in high summer heat, such as using a large parasol or shade sail and installing a retractable awning. But there are lots of more surprising ways that add to your landscape design as well as cool the space, creating an environment that is a pleasure to be in during the hottest months of summer. Late-season is the ideal time to add these cooling DIY landscape design ideas to your garden, as they'll be well established by the time next summer's heat arrives.

Taking a thoughtful approach that looks at all the different elements in your yard and how they interconnect is the solution to creating a cooler garden. Assessing smart shade ideas for your garden, reconsidering your planting choices and rethinking landscaping materials will collectively help to pull together a more cohesive approach that makes your yard feel cooler in heatwave conditions.

Which of these cooling landscape-design ideas will work best for your yard?

1. Choose a Planting Palette of Cool Colors

If your goal is a make your garden feel cooler in high summer heat, the color of the plants you choose is just as important as the variety. Opt for a color theme that relies predominantly on flowers and foliage in cooling shades of silver, gray, white, purple, blue and olive green, and steer clear of hot, bright colors like red, orange, and yellow, which have the opposite effect of visually warming up the garden.

Consider silver-leaved plants that reflect sunlight, too, naturally cooling the garden when temperatures rise. They also add an element of surprise with their magical sheen. Go for silver or gray-leaved perennials such as globe artichoke, eryngium and Senecio candicans.

2. Introduce Falling Water

There are many benefits of making water a part of your landscape design. The sound of trickling water is calming and boosts wellbeing, while adding a pond or water bowl also encourages biodiversity and will attract wildlife to your garden. A cascading water feature can play a key role in making your garden feel cooler in high summer heat too, both with its cooling sound and by directly pulling heat out of the air.

There are plenty of water features you can easily install yourself and the easiest option is an off-the-shelf water feature that runs on solar power. This means no landscaping work is involved, which keeps costs down if you're on a budget. Choose an unusual design such as this curved cascading solar water feature from Wayfair with a built-in planter and you create a standout patio focus, too.

3. Plant a Fast-Growing Shrub

It's always a good idea to look for lovely natural options to make your garden feel cooler. The delightful dappled shade cast by fast-growing shrubs will create changing patterns of light throughout the day as the sun moves round. This is one of the most affordable ideas for shade too, as the only outlay is the cost of the shrub.

Look for easy shade options like fast-growing crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), which adds 2 to 3 feet of height annually if conditions are right. Small to medium varieties like 'Center Stage' Pink Crepe Myrtle, available from Nature Hills, grow to a mature height between 10 to 15 feet tall.

Another great shade choice is one of the taller varieties of oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) like screening favorite 'Alice', available from Nature Hills, which grows to 12 feet tall and has reliable white-blush pink blooms throughout summer.

4. Layer up an Airy Feeling with Screening Plants

Layering the planting with a combination of evergreen structure, ornamental grasses and seasonal perennials helps create a space that feels cool, fresh and welcoming. The trick is to bring a feel of airiness to your yard using multi-level planting.

Aim for a loose arrangement with plenty of ground cover plants to keep soil cool and moist. Then mix tall native perennials like coneflowers and achillea with airy ornamental grasses that move in the slightest breeze for a shape-shifting middle layer. Shrubs and multi-stemmed trees complete the top storey and ensure the layers beneath are kept shaded and cool. Pruning the lower section of shrubs to reveal the open structure of stems is a trick many landscape designers use to give gardens an airy feel, and you can also remove the lower branches of trees to raise the crown and create a lighter vibe.

Using layered planting has the added benefit of naturally screening your garden for privacy if you're overlooked by neighbours.

5. Create Dappled Shade with a Privacy Screen

One of the quickest and most affordable ways to add cooling shade as well as adding to your landscape design is by using a decorative screen. They can be made from a range of materials including metal like the Corten steel sunburst screen in the design above, and can be customised to match the style and aesthetic of your outdoor space. You may decide on using several.

Not all privacy screens need to be fixed in place and landscape designers regularly opt for strategically placed standalone screens to add style as well as shade. Choose a lattice style that will allow light to pass through so your patio will feel airy and not boxed in. It's an easy trick to copy, and one that will add a unique design element as well as a more secluded feel.

6. Hydrate Dry Patio Air with a Solar-Powered Fountain

Landscape designers recommend positioning a water fountain on or near your patio, deck or other seating area as it hydrates the air, and you can benefit from the cooling atmosphere it creates. It's easy to DIY your own solar fountain water feature with a cheap floating pump like this from Amazon , making this one of the easiest patio ideas to try.

Solar fountains work by constantly recirculating water and this keeps the surrounding air hydrated and oxygenated. Easy to create and hypnotic to gaze at, they are just what your patio needs to cool the air, while also providing a valuable source of water for birds, bees and other visiting wildlife to enjoy. A solar fountain also prevents water from stagnating and becoming a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

7. Grow a Living Canopy

Erecting a pergola is an obvious way to add shade to the garden, but creating a living roof is one of the more surprising landscaping tricks that's bound to be a conversation point. Planting fast-growing climbers to grow up and over a pergola helps prevent heat building up in the garden. The foliage blocks the sun’s rays, creating a cooler space to enjoy.

The living canopy you create will provide natural shade that's more pleasant for relaxation or dining in hot weather. It's an easy way to make your outdoor space feel cooler in high summer heat, especially if you choose fragrant climbing varieties like rose, star jasmine or honeysuckle as you will be enveloped in clouds of heavenly scent.

8. Landscape with Light-Colored Mulch

Stretches of hardscaping such as a paved patio tend to heat up the garden, especially if the pavers are charcoal gray or black. Dark-colored pavers absorb heat during the day, releasing it later once the air temperature cools, making your patio an unpleasantly hot place to be in the evening. And the smaller your garden, the hotter it will feel.

Instead choose light-colored landscaping materials that reflect sunlight such as pale natural stone and hardscaping finishes like these bone-toned porcelain pavers from Lowe's. Combine with buff gravel and white pebbles like these decorative river stones from Lowe's and you'll find your patio is considerably cooler in high summer heat.

9. Spritz your Patio with a Mister

Patio misters are a popular option for cooling down outdoor spaces. Easy to use, these systems are connected to a hose or outdoor tap. They can hang along the edge of your roof or be freestanding. The largest systems are designed to cover an entire patio or deck area, while others – like the 15-foot misting umbrella from Wayfair pictured – are big enough to cool a seating area.

Patio misters are designed to release a fine mist that's cooling without soaking you, and a great solution if you live in a hot, dry climate and are looking for smart ideas for patio shade and cooling. Mister systems are energy-efficient, providing a cost-effective solution for beating the heat without high electricity bills.

Another option is a misting fan like this Portable Outdoor Mister from Walmart which combines air and mist to keep you cool. In addition to moving the air around like a conventional fan they release mist. If you want hydrated air without the movement, a simple freestanding mister such as the Cobra Misting System from Walmart, a versatile solution for yard work and keeping pets cool.

Gone are the days that only those living in a hot, dry climate thought about drought-tolerant gardens: after this heatwave summer, with hosepipe bans up and down the country, we all need to consider how to make our yards less dependent on water. But don't worry, that doesn't mean you have to compromise on a great-looking garden. These landscape designer tricks for drought-tolerant planting can transform your backyard while cutting the need for irrigation.

The combination of choosing the right plants and enhancing them with complementary landscaping materials can result in a sustainable design that feels right for the local climate, plus works for you. As with any good landscape design, the focus is on texture, color and repeat planting, but landscape designers rely on plants that are self-sufficient once established and tend to self-seed, as well as native plants adapted to the local climate. Using plants that practically grow themselves means that a drought-tolerant garden is also a low-maintenance garden, requiring less of your time to stay in good shape.

The best ideas for drought-tolerant gardens (also known as dry gardens and xeriscape gardens) are so much more than simply practical solutions to the challenges of climate change. Instead, they're aesthetically pleasing designs that tap into the best sustainable ideas to create a dream outdoor space despite limited water resources. It's a natural fit for hydrozoning ideas too, the landscape design method that groups plants with similar water needs together into specific zones.

If you're wondering how to design a drought-tolerant garden, or simply make part of your yard less dependent on water, these are the key tips and techniques that landscape designers use.

1. Embrace Rockscaping

Rockscaping is a modern version of the traditional rock garden that's arisen from the necessity of creating low-water gardens, as the stone effectively locks moisture in the ground and shields the soil from extreme temperatures. Rocks partner beautifully with xeriscaping, creating visual interest and helping to define different areas of the garden. Using bold sculptural planting, a rockscape can be planted less densely than a traditional border, further minimising the amount of water needed.

Building a rock garden isn't as hard as you might think. The key to successful rockscaping is to create an initial structure with larger rocks, then add smaller pebbles, crushed stone and gravel to create a full, layered design. Begin with a few well-placed larger rocks to anchor the space, then allow space between the rocks for plants to grow, and use drought-tolerant groundcover plants to spread into crevices and knit the scheme together.

Lowe's has a good selection of landscaping rocks. If you're on a budget, look on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, Craigslist and Freecycle for listings of surplus materials left over from landscaping projects. Using local stone for hardscaping wherever possible is more sustainable in terms of carbon footprint and naturally complements local planting.

2. Use A Dry River Bed as a Key Design Element

Dry river beds are an ornamental solution to drainage problems in the garden as well as being an aesthetically pleasing design. Also known as a dry creek bed, this is a type of landscaping that’s designed to resemble a pebbly stream without the water. It allows water to filter down naturally into the soil too, offering a landscaping solution where plants can thrive in drought-prone areas.

This is a budget-friendly way to improve your garden too. All you need to do is dig out a curved path to simulate the stream bed, cover the area with a landscaping fabric that allows air and water through like this weed barrier from Lowe's, then add pebbles. Use pea gravel such as this Landscape Rock from The Home Depot as it's rounded so looks more river-worn than conventional gravel, and mix in larger river pebbles such as these Landscape Pebbles, also from The Home Depot, for a natural finish.

Choose a mix of drought-tolerant planting to enhance the design. Consider tall accent plants like lavender and yarrow, softly textured ornamental grasses such as Mexican feather grass and feather tail grass, and low-growing plants that spread about in gravel like sedum.

3. Include Plant Accents as Bold Talking Points

The label 'drought-tolerant plant' doesn't sound very inspirational, but there's so much scope for including statement plants in your design without becoming dependent on regular irrigation. Adding an accent plant is a landscape designer trick that's easy to do yourself, and will give your planting design the edge.

Start your search for showstopper no-water plants with succulents, choosing from sempervivum, agave, aloe, and sedum. Crushed stone, gravel and rocks offer the perfect dry and gritty growing medium succulents like, too.

One of most spectacular succulents is aeonium, a showy plant that comes in a kaleidoscope of colors including black, red and lime green. These grow on tall arching stems that add a sculptural touch to your planting design. While known mainly for their waxy rosettes of leaves, many aeonium species naturally produce bright, star-shaped yellow flowers too. These form dramatic, cone-shaped, attention-grabbing clusters that last from late winter through summer.

4. Pair Big Planters with Resilient Plants

Although container gardens generally need more watering than plants in the ground, using resilient drought-tolerant planting choices in large planters reduces irrigation needs. To give these plants the fast-draining conditions they prefer, fill containers with a standard potting mix but mix in plenty of perlite, coarse sand or grit such as Jack's Gritty Mix from Walmart to create the right growing medium. Add a top-dressing of gravel mulch to containers to help retain moisture in the soil.

In a big-enough container, you can even grow a compact pine tree such as Pinus sylvestris ‘Watereri’, featured in the design above. This hardy, slow-growing evergreen conifer with distinctive blue-green needles and a rounded form is a dwarf variety, perfect for adding year-round structure and color to a container garden.

Standout Plants for Drought-Proof Planters

5. Plant Resilient Ground Cover that Slowly Spreads

One of the best landscape designer tricks for drought-tolerant planting is to use resilient low-growing ground cover plants that act as a living mulch in dry and xeriscape gardens. They prevent the evaporation of water from the soil and help protect against soil erosion, as well as blocking weeds that steal precious water from your plants.

Fragrant, resilient creeping thyme is a great pick for a drought-tolerant garden as it's happy in poor soil including sand, gravel and grit, and full sun, and once established requires very little water. With soft gray foliage, a touchable texture and showy pink blooms from late spring to early summer, it releases a cloud of fresh scent whenever it's stepped on, so it works well on path and driveway edges, too. At this time of the year, you'll get better results with young plants such as these 3 Red Creeping Thyme plants from Walmart, or sow Thymus Serpyllum seed, available from Amazon, in spring.

6. Blur the Edges with Distinctive Plants

When you're using lots of rocks, pebbles and gravel in addition to the usual amount of paving and paths, it's important to pay attention to softening the edges of all this hardscaping with planting. Don't fall into the trap of thinking these softening plants are the low-growing, unobtrusive ground cover we talked about in the previous idea. No, these are eye-catching plants that draw your focus away from hard lines with brightly colored leaves, airy flowers or stems that drape artfully.

There are plenty of showstopper low-water plants that landscaper designers use to soften hardscaping such as pink muhly grass, coral bells and creeping rosemary.

7. Ditch the Lawn for a Gravel Garden

It's hard to keep traditional lawns looking good when hot, dry summers regularly wreak havoc on them. With water restrictions in place in many parts of the country due to widespread seasonal droughts and heatwaves, it's no surprise lawns are out of favor, with landscape designers seeking more sustainable options.

If you're looking for an alternative to parched brown turf, consider replacing your lawn with a mix of gravel landscaping and plants. It can be surprising to learn which plants thrive with zero water once established, so it's well worth noticing what's still flourishing in your local climate in midsummer, as this will give you a wider choice of plants than simply those seemed across-the-board drought-tolerant.

It's easy enough to add this low-maintenance and water-wise choice to your garde yourself. Lift the turf, lay a weedproof membrane and cut planting holes to add the plants, then spread a thick layer of gravel. Water well while the plants grow their roots deep enough to source their own moisture but then gradually reduce irrigation.

8. Replace Water-Guzzling Grass with a Native Perennial Meadow

Another more sustainable lawn alternative is a native perennial meadow. This lovely idea is steadily growing in popularity, reflecting the shift towards our desire to create more wildlife habitats in our own backyards. This lawn alternative will enhance biodiversity and be appreciated by bees, butterflies and other beneficial pollinators, while bringing a loose, romantic and informal style to your yard.

Once you have removed your existing turf lawn, choose plants that are adapted to dry conditions, have low water requirements, and are suited to your local soil and climate, as well as the particular growing conditions in your garden. Select a diverse range of plants with different textures, colors, and sizes to create visual interest. Try native perennials like yarrow, coneflowers, black-eyed Susan and bee balm. Add fine-textured ornamental grasses as a filler to create a fuller, more layered, look.

You can also scatter the seed of perennial wildflowers to create a naturalized meadow, if you're on a tighter budget.

Meadow Flowers That Pollinators Adore

9. Add a Drought-Tolerant Tree to Shade Plants

Introducing a tree that offers dappled shade makes a beautiful addition to any outdoor space but also has a practical purpose as one of the best landscape designer tricks to shade drought-tolerant planting from the heat. Integrating trees into drought-tolerant landscapes helps protect your garden's ecosystem during dry spells. Tree canopies reduce moisture evaporation from any plants beneath them as well as the surrounding soil. They can disperse the sun’s hot rays, giving shade to cool the air and allowing life to thrive beneath them.

Choose small shade trees that are drought-tolerant themselves such as palo verde, crape myrtle and olive. Resilient varieties will perform well as the climate warms, and be able to cope with rising temperatures and drought, thriving in both urban and country gardens experiencing excessive heat in summer.

Although xeriscape and dry gardens with drought-tolerant planting are require far less maintenance than traditional gardens, they're not maintenance free. All plants need irrigating while they establish themselves in their new home and grow a supportive root system to find their own moisture source. Drought-tolerant gardens need weeding, mulching, irrigating and occasional pruning, too, to keep them looking their best.

However, creating a yard that isn't reliant on regular irrigation long-term is a smart move in our current climate, and you don't need to compromise on style.

Now is the perfect time to put a few plans in place to make sure your garden looks good for the next few months and sails into fall with style. A pretty autumn-blooming vine here, a refreshed hanging basket there, a DIY run of stepping stones to keep your lawn looking good once the rain arrives and a sprinkling of fast-to-flower bulbs, and your garden will look a thousand dollars come October. And you’ll have achieved it on a shoestring.

Acting in August means plants have time to settle their roots into the ground before flowering, and you can take advantage of late-summer sales. The weather is warm enough for freshly-planted additions to grow strongly, and for you to enjoy spending a few hours over the weekend in the garden. Wait another month before you start thinking about your fall garden, however, and you’ll have to pay more for an instant upgrade.

All these ideas are quick, easy and don’t cost a fortune: which will be best to bring late-season style to your garden on a budget?

1. Bury Bulbs in Your Lawn For Flowers in 8 Weeks

Most fall-flowering bulbs need to be planted in spring, but get Crocus sativus into the ground in September and it quickly blooms in 6-10 weeks for blooms in October to November. The flowers are small, reaching just 3-6 inches high, but they’re the most beautiful azure blue color that’s a wonderful contrast to the fiery tones of fall.

You can buy 20 Croscus sativus bulbs from Jackson & Perkins for $17.95 and, by burying them in your lawn or the front of a border, create drifts of fall flowers very cheaply. You’ll have stopped mowing your lawn by the time the bulbs flower, and they’re hardy in zones 3-8 so will bring blooms for years. You can dig up and separate the clumps every 3-4 years, too, for free plants and lots more flowers.

2. Refresh Hanging Baskets With Cheery Pansies

After the heatwave summer we’ve had, your hanging baskets will be looking pretty tired by now, but it’s a quick and easy job to freshen them for flowers all through fall. The Plentifall series of pansies flower most profusely through fall, winter and spring in zones 6 through 8, but cope with chilly temperatures down to zone 3, so simply find them a sheltered spot in colder zones for lots of blooms. The 1” flowers are edible for attractive garnishes on sweet or savoury dishes, too.

Plentifall pansies have a trailing habit so will spill from a hanging basket, growing 8-10 inches high and 18-24 inches wide. Burpee is currently offering four plants for $13.95 with three varieties to choose from: Plentifall Lavender Blue Pansies have pretty blue to deep purple petals; elegant Plentifall White Pansies have dainty yellow and purple centers; Plentifall Frost Pansies fall between the two with a range of pale tones from white to lavender.

There are so many creative ways to turn cheap bedding plants into fabulous garden details, so as well as refreshing hanging baskets, consider using Plentifall pansies to add some other accents to your fall backyard.

3. Forage for Natural Accents

Topping patio pots or borders with a pinecone mulch brings so much texture and autumn style to a garden, and doesn’t cost a penny. It’ll help insulate the soil, too, helping to protect roots from below-zero temperatures once winter arrives.

Another way to use foraged materials as fall garden decor is to wind colored yarn or twine around sticks pushed into the soil.

4. DIY a Water Feature to Light Up Evenings

Nights draw in surprisingly quickly in fall and by the end of October, the sun has set by 6pm across much of the country. A lovely way to light darker evenings on the patio is with a DIY illuminated water feature made with a solar-powered floating fountain with LEDs. All you need to is a watertight vessel such as this cheap polyresin tub from Lowe’s and a $15 floating fountain with LEDs and a built-in battery like this flower-shaped solar fountain from Amazon. Get creative and you could even make a water-feature planter to pretty-up your patio for fall.

5. Add Long-Lasting Flowers With Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’

Being a succulent, Sedum spectabile ‘Autumn Joy’ is one of the easiest fall-flowering plants to grow. It's a reliable bloomer from late summer all through autumn and practically grows itself, pretty much anywhere. The blooms change color, too, opening a pale pink before morphing into a rosier pink and finally turning a rich copper. While you can remove the faded flower stems after the first frost, most folk leave the dried flat-topped flowers as winter structure.

Happy in sun or partial shade in zones 4-9, perennial Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ plants in 1 gallon pots are available from Garden Goods Direct. If you love the long display of color-change blooms, Dutch Grown stock bare root Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ for a third of the price. While bare root sedums can be planted now, they won’t flower this year, this is an economical way to add lots of blooms for fall next year.

6. Add Fall Accents to Containers

While there are plenty of late-season heroes that reliably bloom through summer and into fall, year after year, buying full-size, ready-to-flower plants now can be expensive. Because these plants give an instant reward of bonny blooms, garden centers and online retailers are able to charge premium prices. Wait until spring to buy them, however, and fall bloomers will be far cheaper – and will establish far better in your garden to boot as they’ll have months to focus on growing a supportive root system before the stress of creating flowers.

So what to do with your patio pots if you’re on a tight budget? The solution is to buy better-value plants that rely on features other than flowers to add eye-catching details to containers.

7. Make a Foraged Wreath

It’s a quick and enjoyable task for a sunny afternoon to forage for stems to create a wreath. The advantage of doing this in August or early September is that the still-warm weather with allow the stems to dry in place and last for months. My foolproof method to create a wreath for my autumn garden is to use twine to tie small bunches of stems tegether, then attach those onto a wooden hoop with wire – the less attention I pay to making it pretty, the better it always looks!

Find a spot out of the midday sun to hang your wreath so lasts for longer, bringing fall style to your yard for very little effort or outlay.

8. Make a Stepping-Stone Path Across Your Lawn

This is a great job to do ahead of fall and winter and save your grass from being damaged as you cross your lawn in wet or frozen weather. You can often pick up end-of-line pavers very cheaply from hardware stores, or look for purpose-made stepping stones on online middleman retailers, such as this four-pack of stepping stones from Wayfair with change from $50.

Lay your stepping stones across your lawn at a comfortable stride width – and do practise walking up and down them to make sure of the distances – then use a drizzle of sand around the perimeter of each to mark their positions. Set the pavers aside then remove the turf and excavate enough soil to accommodate the depth of the paver plus around 1½ inches. Pack the holes with sharp sand then lay the paver on top so it’s a fraction below grass level, enabling you to run a lawnmower over the top.

9. Plant a Fall-Flowering Clematis

One the quickest and easiest ways to zhuzh up your garden for fall is with some fencescaping to turn a boundary from boring to beautiful. And one of the quickest and easiest ways to do that is to plant a fall-flowering clematis.

In a sunny spot, you won’t do better than the Happy Jack Purple clematis vine, available from Plant Addicts, trouble-free to grow in zones 5-9 and abundant with intensely-colored autumn flowers that turn into sculptural seedheads through winter. For a shadier spot, Samaritan Jo clematis, also available from Plant Addicts, is a surefire bet – it’s just as well-behaved and has silvery lavender-hued blooms in zones 4-9. Both these vines need cutting to a foot above the ground in spring so are easy to keep to a compact size.

10. Paint Your Shed or Fence

Late August or September is a great time of year to paint a fence or shed as wood has dried out through summer, lower humidity helps the paint dry evenly and moderate temperatures mean it doesn’t dry too fast and crack. Painting wood now also protects it from the wet weather to come, so check the forecast for a dry spell and get cracking!

Current trends are veering towards dark colors in a matt finish that make a small garden appear bigger and create a backdrop to show off flowers and foliage. Our choice for easy application and a good finish is Glidden Fundamentals Exterior Paint, available from Walmart in a wide range of attractive colors including smart Pine Forest Green, appealing Cavalry Navy Blue and go-with-everything Stone’s Throw Gray.

Do one, two or all 10 of these budget garden ideas in August or early September and your garden will look fabulous all through fall, and you'll enjoy maximum backyard style for your hard-earned bucks.

Few plants earn their place in a yard quite as elegantly as ornamental grasses, as landscape designers well know. These elegant grasses bring movement, texture, winter interest and a welcome sense of ease – some of the ingredients designers use to make planting feel intentional rather than simply filled in. August is an especially useful moment to spot what your garden lacks, whether that's privacy, a softer path edge, late-season color or connectivity – all of which can be stylishly solved with the right ornamental grass.

The design trick is to match the best ornamental grass to the job. Tall, upright grasses will screen an awkward view; blue grasses cool off a fiery color scheme; frothy grasses bring together an otherwise disjointed border. Landscape designers also use grasses where flowers cannot deliver: foliage adds structure from spring onwards, seedheads catch low fall light, and many retain their good looks through winter.

These 10 designer-favored grasses will help give any yard a more polished, professional feel, whatever its size or style. Each solves a particular design challenge, from blocking a neighbor's view to lifting a shady border or making a dry front yard feel purposeful. And don't fret: these are all non-invasive ornamental grasses, and these very well-behaved choices sill stay where they're planted so you can create a designer-worthy result with confidence this season.

1. Best Grass for Privacy: Totem Pole Switchgrass

• Zones 4-9
• Full sun
• Flowers August-October
• Grows to 6' high and 30" wide

Panicum virgatum ‘Totem Pole’ is the designer’s elegant answer to a neighbor’s all-too-visible window. Its dramatically upright habit creates a tall, leafy screen with plenty of softness and movement, but without swallowing the whole border. Stylish privacy plants to screen your garden are a great alternative to a privacy screen, and this is the best ornamental grass for privacy. Just tuck a row of these ornamental grasses beside a patio, use it to line a property boundary, or plant a small group to turn an exposed sitting area into a cosy, private retreat.

This is a clumping switchgrass so it makes a steadily fuller crown rather than sneaking across the bed underground. Give it full sun – six or more hours of direct light – and average soil; switchgrass is also more forgiving of clay than many ornamental grasses. Water regularly during its first year while roots establish, then leave the stems in place over winter for a lovely pale, airy living screen. In late winter, cut the clump back to 4-6 inches before fresh growth begins. Switchgrass Totem Pole plants are available from Plant Addicts.

2. Best Grass for Softening Hard Landscaping: Undaunted Ruby Muhly Grass

• Zones 5-9
• Full sun
• Flowers August-October
• Grows to 24" high and wide

Designers love to use Undaunted ruby muhly grass (Muhlenbergia reverchonii ‘Undaunted’) to take the edge off hardscaping, so this is one of those divine low-water plants that soften hard landscaping without all the hard work. Plant this ruby muhly grass beside a patio, driveway, retaining wall or path and its fine foliage and airy fall flowers will create a soft, almost gauzy transition between paving and planting. For maximum designer vibes, plant it in a loose drift of three, five or more, allowing the individual mounds to mingle into one soft, billowy layer. The late-season pink-to-ruby plumes are a gorgeous bonus, particularly when low afternoon sun shines through them, and this cold-hardy alternative to classic pink muhly thrives down to USDA Zone 5.

Undaunted ruby muhly grass is available from Wilson Bros Gardensand is a dense, well-behaved grass, not a runner, so will stay where you put it. Give it full sun and well-drained soil; if your soil is heavy, plant slightly raised to keep water away from its roots in winter. Water deeply and regularly during its first season, then only occasionally once established. In late winter, trim the old foliage back to about 4 inches before new growth appears.

3. Best Grass for Border Movement: Brush Strokes Little Bluestem

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun
• Flowers August-October
• Grows to 36" high and 24" wide

‘Brush Strokes’ little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium ‘Brush Strokes’) gives sunny borders the easy, breeze-catching movement designers love, without the bulk or roaming habit of larger grasses. Its tidy upright clumps weave neatly among perennials such as salvias, while slender blue-green blades slowly turn a beautiful wine-red and copper as the season unfolds.

This native grass stays where it's planted, forming a neat tuft rather than spreading through the bed. Give it full sun and well-drained, ordinary-to-dry soil; shade is what makes little bluestem flop. Skip the fertilizer, water it while it settles in, then enjoy its tawny stems and bristly seedheads through winter before cutting it back in late winter. ‘Brush Strokes’ little bluestem plants are available from Plant Addicts.

4. Best Grass for a Hot, Dry Yard: Common Blue Grama

• Zones 3-10
• Full sun
• Flowers June-September
• Grows to 24" high and wide

Ornamental grasses offer some of the best drought-tolerant plant choices, and common blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) proves a climate-resilient front yard can still be full of personality. This compact native grass forms low blue-green tufts topped in summer with wonderfully quirky, eyelash-like seedheads and is ideal for gravel gardens, curb strips and xeriscape schemes. Plant it in loose drifts for full on designer effect.

A small, clumping grass, common blue grama plants are available from Plant Addictsand deliver a naturalistic look without wandering through the bed. It thrives in full sun, heat, wind, and fast-draining soil, and is one of the best choices for a spot that bakes in summer. Water until rooted in, then water only during prolonged drought.

5. Best Grass for a Cooling Effect: Blue Fescue

• Zones 4-8
• Full sun 
• Flowers June-July
• Grows to 18" high and 24" wide

Blue fescue grass, often sold as ‘Elijah Blue’ (Festuca glauca), is the landscape designer’s little color-cooling trick for borders full of fiery reds, oranges, and yellows. Its icy blue, spiky mounds make those warm shades pop even more, while adding a crisp, modern rhythm along a path or at the front of a border.

Each blue fescue grass forms a neat, non-running tuft, so try planting five or seven together, spaced about 12 inches apart, for a deliberate, repeated look. This little lovely appreciates full sun and excellent drainage so it’s perfect for gravel gardens, raised beds and sandy soil. Comb out any dead foliage in early spring and replace individual plants that may become bare in the center after a few years. Blue fescue plants are available from Plant Addicts.

6. Best for Brightening a Border: ‘Hello Spring’ Feather Reed Grass

• Zones 4-8
• Full sun or partial shade
• Flowers June-July 
• Grows to 4' high and 2' wide

‘Hello Spring’ feather reed grass (Calamagrostis × acutiflora ‘Hello Spring’) is a designer’s answer to a border that feels a little too dark or heavy. Its bright variegated foliage catches the light, while its narrow, upright shape adds a fresh vertical accent. While it's happy in sun, it flourishes with only six hours of sunshine a day, so you can thread it through a border that moves from partial shade into sun for an instant luminous lift.

This feather reed grass is a disciplined clump-former so it stays put rather than wandering into neighboring plants. Give it reasonably moist, well-drained soil and water in dry spells, especially during its first year. Leave its soft, dried plumes standing over winter, then cut them back in late winter before new shoots appear. ‘Hello Spring’ feather reed grass plants are available from Plant Addicts.

7. Best Grass for Shade: ‘Aureola’ Japanese Forest Grass

• Zones 5-9
• Part shade to full shade
• Flowers July-August
• Grows to 3' high and wide

‘Aureola’ Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) is the designer’s way of making a shady path, set of steps or tucked-away seating spot feel brighter and more inviting. Its arching gold-striped leaves spill gently over the edge of a border, catching every bit of available light and naturally drawing your eye onward. Repeat it at intervals along a path or beneath shrubs for a subtle golden thread that makes the whole space feel more connected.

Unlike a grass that spreads by runners, ‘Aureola’ forms a low, graceful clump that slowly becomes more generous with time. Plant ‘Aureola’ Japanese forest grass, available at Nature Hills, in partial or dappled shade, in soil that stays moist but drains freely; hot afternoon sun can scorch its foliage. Water in dry spells, especially during its first year, and cut back the old leaves in late winter before fresh spring growth emerges.

8. Best Grass for Adding a Connecting Airy Layer: Golden Dew Tufted Hair Grass

• Zones 4-9
• Full sun to part shade
• Flowers July-September
• Grows to 3' high and wide

Golden Dew tufted hair grass (Deschampsia cespitosa ‘Goldtau’) is perfect when a border has lovely individual plants but still feels a little disjointed, or you have an awkwardly-shaped garden and wish to tie its various parts together. Landscape designers use its cloud-like sprays of tiny golden-green flowers to float between bolder shapes, cleverly softening the join between perennials, shrubs, and hard edges. It's particularly beautiful planted in small groups among hostas, heucheras, ferns and other plants with larger leaves.

Tufted hair grass is a tidy clump-former, not a runner, so it gives that airy meadow effect while staying beautifully contained. It is happiest in sun or part shade with reasonably moist, well-drained soil, and it is more forgiving of heavier ground than many ornamental grasses. Water during dry periods in its first season, then leave the faded flower stems for winter texture before cutting the clump back in late winter. ‘Goldtau’ tufted hair grass plants are available from Sunny Valley Farms.

9. Best Grass for an Informal Vibe: Prairie Dropseed

• Zones 3-8
• Full sun
• Flowers August-October
• Grows to 18" high and wide

Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) is the designer’s choice for creating a graceful transition from a tidy border to a looser meadow planting. Its fine, arching foliage forms low, well-behaved clumps that work beautifully repeated in a ribbon, linking your border planting with prairie-style favorites such as coneflowers, asters, and black-eyed Susans. And although this brings a relaxed, informal vibe, it's still a very well-behaved ornamental grass.

The real magic happens in late summer, when Prairie dropseed's airy flower stems release a warm, lightly sweet fragrance, often compared to coriander or buttered popcorn. This clumping native stays put, thrives in full sun and well-drained ordinary-to-dry soil, and needs regular watering only in its first season. Leave its foliage standing for winter texture, then cut it back in late winter. Prairie dropseed plants are available from Plant Addicts.

10. Best Grass for a Purple Color Scheme: Twilight Zone Little Bluestem

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun
• Flowers September-October
• Grows to 5' high and 3' wide

Landscape designers are favoring purple palettes right now, and filling borders with ravishing purple blooms. And their secret to keeping the purple color scheme going long after the flowers have peaked is the unusual ornamental grass, ‘Twilight Zone’ little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium ‘Twilight Zone’). Its cool blue foliage is brushed with purple in summer, then deepens into rich mauve, violet, and burgundy in fall. Use a few clumps through the middle of a border to echo dark dahlias, purple-leaved shrubs and plum-toned sedums.

This North American native grass forms a tall, tidy clump and is best placed in the middle or back of a sunny border as full sun brings out its richest coloring and helps it stay upright. Water regularly in its first season, then allow the soil to dry slightly between deep waterings. Leave the stems in place over winter for their handsome silhouette, cutting them back in late winter before new growth begins. ‘Twilight Zone’ little bluestem plants are available from Plant Addicts.

A polished, designer-look front yard doesn't require a major time commitment, nor risking losing expensive plants if you're too busy to water. With the right low-maintenance shrubs, you can bring color, structure and serious curb appeal without a high level of effort, for a front yard that looks great all year round.

This summer's drought and heatwave has shown us just how high maintenance some staples of landscape design are. Hydrangeas, for example, are a long-time favorite but they wilt in the summer heat and have high watering needs. And it doesn't matter how beautiful a plant can look, if it's struggling to survive, it's not doing your front yard any favors.

So, it’s time to ditch those thirsty plants and upgrade your curb appeal with these tougher, more resilient alternatives for a smart long-term strategy. Landscape designers love low-maintenance shrubs because, even if their clients aren't gardeners so don't give much in the way of TLC, they still look good. Of course, all these lovelies will need regular watering until they get established and grow a big-enough root system to source their own moisture, but plant them now or in early fall and they'll feel at home by the time next summer comes around. Which one of these resilient shrubs will suit your front yard best?

1. Blue Star Juniper

Juniperus squamata ‘Blue Star’ is a compact, slow-growing evergreen that provides year-round beauty. It’s desirable for its intense, silver-blue foliage and structured, sculptural shape. If you look down on the shrub, you’ll see that the clusters of needles at the ends of stems resemble small, blue stars.

Growing no more than three feet (0.9 m) tall and wide, this is a great option for planting under windows. Once established, Blue Star juniper is extremely drought-tolerant. In fact, it prefers light, sandy soil and is an attractive option for a small shrub in a rock garden. It grows best in full sun and is hardy in zones 4 through 8. If you’ll be planting it this year, wait until the worst heat of summer has passed.

2. Happy Face Pink Paradise Potentilla

Many of the showier flowering shrubs that gardeners love are finicky or need a lot of water. Shrubby potentilla, also known as cinquefoil, offers an easier alternative. It offers a long season of flowers on a compact, rounded, and attractive shrub that doesn’t require much maintenance as long as it gets at least partial sun and enough water after planting to get established.

Potentilla fruticose Happy Face Pink Paradise has semi-double flowers that retain color better and for longer than other potentilla varieties. It's a great choice for gardeners in cold climates as it's hardy in zones 2 through 7, and is well suited to smaller urban gardens as it grows no more than three feet high and wide. With an appealing rounded habit, it looks good planted in clumps to create loose drifts of flowering mounds. You can also use this potentilla as a low foundation planting or edging plant.

3. Kodiak Fresh Diervilla

If you’re looking for a native shrub with good tolerance to both drought and deer, Kodiak Fresh diervilla (Diervilla lonicerais) is your answer. Foliage is the star of this three-foot shrub, suitable for zones 3 to 8. New growth emerges in spring in shades of orange-red and turns chartreuse for summer, followed by a rainbow of classic fall foliage colors.

In addition to being native and suited to drought conditions once established, diervilla tolerates both sun and shade. Use it in a difficult spot where you might struggle to grow other shrubs in drier soil and shade or hot sun. Diervilla’s unique coloring looks best when grouped together, so plant a few, perhaps in a row to create an informal hedge.

4. Double Play Red Spirea

Spirea is known for being easy and reliable, and it also offers a lot of choices. Hybrid Double Play red spirea is hardy in zones 3 through 8, grows about three feet tall, and is very hands-off once established. You can plant it now, provided you give it a good start with regular watering. The soil should drain well, and a spot in full sun or partial shade is ideal.

This attractive shrub provides seasons of changing color. Spring foliage is a rich burgundy, summer flowers are reddish-pink, and the fall colors are varied and showy. If your front yard sits next to a busy road, then this spirea is a great choice as it tolerates pollution well.

5. Summer Wine Ninebark

For sophisticated color and contrast without relying on showy flowers to do all the work, choose Summer Wine ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Seward’). The foliage is a striking deep purple, which sets off the light-colored spring flowers and offers visual interest in winter. Ninebark is appropriate for zones 3 through 7 and is a native species that supports wildlife. Plant it now or in early fall in full sun and average soil. Water regularly to start it off right.

This shrub tops out around six feet (1.8 m) tall and wide and is a showstopper, so use it as a single planting and focal point in a bed where it has enough room to grow and display its graceful, arching branches.

6. Pancake Arborvitae

Evergreen option Thuja ‘Pancake’ has a low profile, growing about 18 inches (46 cm) tall, but its sage green foliage is appealingly dense and turns more blue in winter. If you’re looking for year-round interest but don't want a plant that'll grow into a massive hedge and block out the sunshine, it's a front-yard must-have. Pancake arborvitae is a favorite among designers looking for low-water plants to soften hard landscaping.

Grow this arborvitae in zones 4 through 8 and in a spot with full sun. As a drought-tolerant shrub, it prefers light, well-draining, even sandy soil. Use this arborvitae beneath windows at the front of foundation beds, or along the edges of walkways for structured, low-growing curb appeal. Now is a great time to plant arborvitae but be sure to provide plenty of water while it gets established.

7. Paraplu Violet Rose of Sharon

Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacusis) is a tall, dramatic shrub known for its pretty flowers, and Paraplu Violet has particularly large, violet-blue blooms. It'll bring a tropical look, though the plant is hardy in zones 5 through 9. Choose this Rose of Sharon for dramatic height and a long flowering period from summer to fall.

This variety grows up to 10 feet (3 m) tall with an upright structure so it's ideal for creating privacy, anchoring the corner of a bed, yard or house, and for creating height behind shorter shrubs and plants. It's a great choice if you're looking for wow-factor accent plants that are stunning yet simple to grow. You can plant it now, but give it plenty of water to get established. Later, you’ll be rewarded by its strong drought tolerance.

8. Good Vibrations Privet

Privet is an old standby for sturdy and tall – if a bit boring – hedges. This variety offers the same reliability and toughness in drought conditions but with far more personality. Ligustrum ovalifolium Good Vibrations has striking variegated foliage and only grows around two feet tall and wide, making it a better choice for more modern foundation plantings or narrow edges and beds. Its dense, compact foliage comes in slowly, too, so it doesn’t need a lot of pruning.

This privet will tolerate drought well if you give it the right start. Wait until the highest temperatures of summer have passed and plant in cooler weather, providing plenty of water leading up to winter to help it get established. It will grow best in a spot with full sun or only partial shade and is suitable for zones 6 through 9.

9. Midnight Wine Shine Weigela

Weigela shrubs are becoming increasingly popular in landscaping for their spring flowers, pretty foliage and low-maintenance needs. Of the many types, Midnight Wine Shine is a compact variety, growing less than two feet (0.6 m) tall and suitable for growing in zones 4 through 8.

This Wiegela florida has striking, glossy, and deep purplish leaves with abundant, bright pink spring and early summer flowers. Once established, it resists drought and also nibbling by rabbits and deer, while also attracting hummingbirds and other pollinators. Plant Midnight Wine Shine near plants with brighter green foliage for great contrast, a little later in the season to avoid lingering high temperatures.

10. Flower Carpet Mini Cherry Rose

Roses have a reputation for being fussy but many newer varieties are easy to grow. This pretty, low-growing shrub is more like a flowering groundcover, covered in an abundance of cherry red blooms from spring through the first frost. Once established, it's drought-tolerant and disease-resistant.

You can grow this rose in zones 5 through 10 in a spot with full sun or a little afternoon shade and rich, fertile soil. Wait until September, or when temperatures drop a little, to plant your new shrubs. They look best when planted in masses, along a walkway or the edge of a bed.

Getting designer landscaping doesn’t have to require maximum effort on your part. Choose shrubs based on form, flowers, foliage, seasonal interest, site conditions, and drought tolerance to enjoy gorgeous curb appeal without spending your entire summer watering. Just be sure to water any of these choices regularly as they get established to set them up for later success.

By August, many plants are exhausted by heat and lack of water and stop flowering – but not these tough-cookie late-season bloomers. They flower reliably all through August, September and into October, with barely any assistance from you. So don’t think you have to compromise on flower power because we’re having a hot, dry summer: you just need one of these late-season heroes in your garden.

Plants that practically grow themselves and keep flowering for months on end aren’t just appreciated by us humans, but by pollinators, too, many of whom will be fuelling up ahead of long migration journeys. Resilient plants like our superstar bloomers are particularly valuable, however. When a plant is stressed by heat or drought, one of its first responses is to limit water loss by reducing nectar production. So, by growing an array of tolerant plants that cope well with summer stressors, you not only provide flowers, but flowers that are still full to the brim of nectar.

Another factor to consider if you want plants that keep on flowering when everything else gives up is how palatable they are to deer and rabbits. As we approach the end of a long, hot summer, food becomes scarcer for herbivores so they may turn to garden plants they wouldn’t otherwise eat – and fresh flower buds are tender and packed full of nutrients. So, you’ll be happy to hear that neither deer nor rabbits like to snack on any of our plant picks.

Flower-into-Fall Blooms that Thrive on Neglect

All our late-season heroes are dependable perennials that will be back, year after year, and don’t require any fertilizing or feeding other than a spring mulch to flower well. Their highly tolerant, resilient nature means they’re suitable for a wide range of zones, so you have a great choice of plants to keep your garden packed with blooms.

1. Sneezeweed

Hitting its stride in August, Helenium autumnale is such a reliable late-season bloomer in zones 4-9 and powers through September and into October to the first frost. And what a show! The fiery shades of red, orange and yellow revive any garden, turning up the color just as many perennials fizzle out. As the flowers age, their sculptural centers become more prominent and the petals flex backwards, too.

Helenium does need to be watered, however, and taller varieties can need staking – which is why the Salud series is so appealing. Cultivars in this series are particularly heat- and drought-tolerant and, only growing to 16 inches tall, don't need staking. These are some of the heaviest- and longest-blooming sneezeweeds, and are ignored by deer and rabbits. Salud Yellow is a saturated golden tone, while Salud Embers boasts a mix of red, orange and yellow. Sneezeweed Salud Yellow plants are available from Plant Addicts, and Salud Embers plants are available from Fast Growing Trees.

2. Woodland Sage

Salvia nemorosa blooms for months because not only does it readily produce new flushes of flowers when spent stems are removed, but the individual spires bloom sequentially from bottom to top over several weeks. So, while it starts flowering way back in May, if you snipped off the flower spikes, it’ll likely be blooming now and continue through September.

There are all sorts of salvia varieties to try, generally suitable for zones 4-9 and tolerating heat and drought once established. The Marvel series is particularly valued both for its larger flowers that keep their intense color and exceptionally long bloom-time from spring to frost. ‘Blue Marvel’ is available from Nature Hills, and ‘Rose Marvel’ is available from Plant Addicts. Growing to around a foot high and spreading up to 18 inches wide, these dependable, showy salvias are just as happy in a pot as the front of a border. While pollinators will flock to the nectar-rich flowers, deer and rabbits don't appreciate the aromatic foliage.

3. Russian Sage

Russian sage is another Salvia no garden should be without. This trouble-free plant flowers summer into fall and provides a valuable nectar source when many other plants are fading. Long after your lavender spires have finished flowering, Salvia yangii will still be boasting beautiful blue blooms. While common Russian sage (available from Plant Addicts) tends to flop in late summer, those clever plant breeders have been busy creating more compact cultivars that bring even more flowers on immaculately-behaved stems.

‘Denim ‘n Lace’ is a Proven Winners cultivar available from Nature Hills that has a denser growth habit for lots more flowers, growing to 2-3 feet tall and wide in zones 4-9, with sky-blue flowers held in amethyst calyxes. ‘Blue Jean Baby’ by Plants that Work, also available from Nature Hills, brings similar benefits but with lavender-blue flowers that deepen to purple, and more finely-cut foliage. Both are simply sublime.

4. Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’

Being a succulent, Sedum spectabile ‘Autumn Joy’ isn’t phased by drought and its dense bud clusters form slowly through summer, bursting open just as most other border perennials are starting to wind down. Sedum 'Autumn Joy' blooms change color, too, opening a pale pink before morphing into a rosier pink and finally turning a rich copper.

Happy in sun or partial shade in zones 4-9, this late-season bloomer will grow pretty much anywhere, and bigger pollinators appreciated the flat-topped flowers that act as welcoming 2-foot-high landing pads. Rabbits dislike the fleshy foliage and deer are unlikely to take more than a nibble of the bitter-tasting leaves. Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ plants are available from Fast Growing Trees.

5. New England Aster

It’s not just us humans that can rely on the abundant summer-to-fall flowers of the New England aster, but migrating monarch butterflies, for whom this resilient plant provides vital fuel stops on their journey south. The vibrant daisy-like flowers begin to show their cheery faces in August and continue until the first hard frost.

While all New England asters are reliable late-season bloomers, ‘Grape Crush’ is a particularly good choice as it naturally grows into a self-supporting mound 2-3 feet high and wide – and some other varieties are guilty of flopping once stormy fall weather hits. The dark purple hue of the petals is intense, too, and looks all the more saturated against the flowers’ golden centres, delivering a good punch of color for months to come. Deer and rabbits dislike the dense foliage, too. Suitable for zones 3-8, Grape Crush New England Aster plants are available from Nature Hills.

6. Black-Eyed Susan

Want flowers in August? Flowers in September? Flowers in October? Look no further than black-eyed Susan. While older varieties of rudbeckia are often troubled by leaf spot and powdery mildew which can cut short the flower show, some modern cultivars are virtually immune and will continue blooming for months.

If you want the classic black-eyed Susan look, then American Gold Rush, available from Garden Goods Direct, should be your go-to as it has been bred for incredible disease resistance, growing to a foot high and 1-2 feet wide in zones 3-8. ‘Little Goldstar’, available from Nature Hills and suitable for zones 4-9, is a shade taller at 16" high and boasts the heaviest bloom density of all black-eyed Susans, also flowering through August and September into October.

Both have stems and leaves covered in fuzzy hairs that save it from being nibbled when food is scarce, yet pollinators adore the nectar-rich flowers.

7. Japanese anemones

It’s true, Japanese anemones can be as thuggish as they are beautiful in the garden and, though they’re not classed as invasive, do spread through underground rhizomes. In a large planter, though, they’re the most reliable bloomers and a real backyard asset.

As well as keeping these enthusiastic plants corralled in a container, you'll want to stop them self-seeding around your garden, which is easily done by choosing a modern hybrid cultivar that’s been bred to have sterile, unviable seeds. These have typically been bred to spread far more slowly, too, so you don’t have to worry about the plant escaping from its pot. Sterile variety Fall in Love Sweetly is available from Plant Addicts and grows to 2 feet high and wide in zones 4-8 with semi-double rose-pink blooms, creating a container packed with flowers for months on end.

If you'd rather grow Japanese anemones in a border, then choose a dwarf variety that won’t spread as quickly as its taller cousins, such as Fantasy Red Riding Hood, available from Nature Hills which grows 1-2 feet tall and wide in zones 5-9. Even slugs don’t tend to like chewing Japanese Anemone’s fibrous leaves, and deer and rabbits leave them well alone.

Urn planters are everywhere this summer, and there’s no doubt who’s leading this huge garden trend as Anthropologie just expanded its already-excellent range of pedestal pots. These shapely vessels have been status symbols since Romans first commandeered storage urns to decorate their swanky villas. Centuries later, once European royal families favoured using them as planters, urns became a stylish staple of landscaped gardens.

Now this classical shape is enjoying its most recent resurgence, and because of their long history and associations with high society, urn planters will bring an air of effortless elegance to any garden. As container gardening ideas go, this is such an easy upgrade that will suit every backyard.

While you may need a pretty opulent pay packet to afford Anthropologie urn planters, ravishing as they may be, there are plenty of dupes that can give your backyard the look for a whole lot less. I’ve rounded up the very best urn planters to match the dreamiest offerings from Anthropologie, so we can all enjoy this timeless trend – and the cheapest of these good value planters is currently on sale for less than $5. So, if you want to enhance your garden design on a budget, now's the time to add some iconic style to your patio without splashing the cash.

Antique Elegance

Stately Swags

Charming Chalices

Grecian Good Looks

Ancient Opulence

What to Plant in an Urn Planter

Any happy-in-a-pot perennial that brings maximum flowers for minimum effort, year after year, is an easy win in any container, and an urn will elevate the most humble of plants to stylish new heights. But urn planters invite you to break the rules, too. Their iconic shape speaks of centuries of style so you can afford to be bold with the planting. These on trend planters afford all sorts of opportunities regular pots don’t, too, so you use their height to dramatic effect.

For a start, as well as planting your usual pot thrillers and fillers, any container plants with trailing stems will spill dramatically over the rim of an urn planter. Or how about planting a fall-flowering clematis in your pedestal planter so the vine cascades over the container rim to pool in a beautiful sea of blooms around its base?

Plants with a naturally arching habit work so well in urn planters, too. Feather Falls Carex grass (available from Burpee) boasts an evergreen fountain of soft, variegated blades for a container that looks luxuriant all year round. Growing Blue Cascade Rosemary (available from Nature Hills) in an urn planter is also a delight as the stems of this low-maintenance shrub grow up as well as down, and its evergreen foliage is joined by blooms in the most beautiful blue hue from spring to fall.

Because the pedestal elevates the planting, you can create layers of vertical interest, too, especially if the urn is to be positioned on the patio – or a smaller, squatter design on a table – where it’ll be viewed from a seated height. Pair a standout evergreen ornamental grass such as Blue Whiskers Blue Fescue (available from Plant Addicts) with Plentifall Lavender Blue trailing pansies (available from Burpee) for a texture treat that’ll delight all through fall and winter.

More Dashing Dupe Urn Planters

Earthy Vibes

Beautiful Bowls

Classic White

Stately Gray

Bronze Beauties

Golden Greats

Woven Textures

Use an Urn Planter to DIY a Water Feature

A bowl-shaped urn planter can be used to make a stylish DIY water feature using a solar-powered floating fountain by sealing the drainage hole with a marine silicone sealant such as Star Brite Waterproof Sealant from Amazon. Or how about standing your urn planter in a wider container to make a standout planter with a water feature at its center?

There are so many quick and clever ideas for container planting that work in an urn planter, so get creative and treat your patio to a standout display, without breaking the budget.

Fall-flowering clematis are a joy, filling September with colorful blooms to refresh gardens after a long, hot summer. Most start blooming months earlier, so their fabulous flowers will carry a garden through that late-season gap when summer-flowering perennials are exhausted but many fall bloomers are yet to reach their peak. Some varieties even bloom through to the first frost, making these late-flowering clematis vines an indispensable element of designing a garden for great fall color.

What’s more, late-season clematis are the easiest of all vines to prune, even for beginner gardeners who’ve never picked up a pair of hand pruners before. In February or March, just as new growth appears, all the stems need snipping to around a foot or so above the ground, just above a bud – and that’s it! Because these vines all flower on new growth, this no-nonsense annual prune means blooms grow along the full length of the vining stems for a standout display. And, by reducing the stems to such a short length every year, the growth is easily controlled.

Fancy an abundance of showstopper fall flowers, year after year? Here’s our pick of the very best fall-flowering clematis vines to plant in every spot – plus the one you should never introduce to your garden.

1. Best For Fragrance: Sweet Summer Love Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Part or full sun
• Grows 10 feet high and 6-10 feet wide

Don’t be fooled by the name of this fabulous climber, because while its heavy flush of flowers in July and August earns it a spot on our pick of best clematis vines for stunning summer flowers, it steadily carries on blooming all the way into October. While the myriad 2-inch flowers are very pretty, opening a cranberry-red and maturing to purple for a fabulous color-changing effect, their divine fragrance is the reason you should add this vine to your garden.

The scent is sweet and comforting, mixing warm vanilla with a nostalgic hit of almonds and cherries that will remind you of Jergens Original Scent Cherry Almond Lotion. And when you consider the size of this vine and what a heavy bloomer it is, you can begin to imagine the wonderful cloud of fragrance it brings to any backyard.

This clematis is better grown in the ground on account of its size. Don’t worry, though, as although it’s a vigorous grower it’s not invasive and was intentionally bred to be well-behaved, and has won numerous gardening accolades. By pruning it hard in early spring, you can easily control its size, too. And use its abundance to your advantage by allowing this vine to smother a sturdy archway, scramble over a pergola or disguise an ugly shed.

2. Best for Shade: Samaritan Jo Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Full to partial shade
• Grows 4-5 feet high and 3-4 feet wide

Think all clematis need sun? Think again! Samaritan Jo clematis has been bred to flourish in full to partial shade, doing best with less than four hours of sunlight a day, and its silvery purple-edged petals light up a dark spot a treat. This vine is tough, too, and hardy down to -30°F, so don’t worry about it getting chilly in a shady corner. Because of its compact size, this beauty can be grown in a large planter as well as in the ground, adding to its versatility.

This well-behaved vine begins blooming in May and is still going strong in September, and often into early October for plenty of autumn flowers. Snipping off faded blooms and treating it to a diluted liquid tomato feed such as Espoma Organic Tomato!, available from Amazon, every couple of weeks will keep it flowering for as long as possible.

3. Best for Beginners: Happy Jack Purple Clematis

• Zones 5-9
• Part to full sun
• Grows 6-8 feet tall and 3-4 feet wide

If you’ve never grown a clematis before, or simply want an easy life, then you really can’t go wrong with Happy Jack Purple Clematis. It’s a new and improved version of the well-known Clematis ‘Jackmanii’ – which is already considered to be one of the most dependable clematis cultivars in the world!

Happy Jack Purple brings bigger flowers, measuring 3-5 inches across, and more intensely-colored plum-purple petals that almost look like they’re made of velvet. Its contrasting yellow stamens are brighter than its predecessor’s, too, and it flowers all the way from June to the first frost. And even then it’s not done! While the leaves fall from this deciduous vine as temperatures plummet, its seedheads have long, plume-like tails that become more fluffy and feathery as winter goes on.

Because Happy Jack Purple flowers on both new and old wood (yes, for double the flowers), prune it a little higher – to two feet from the ground – than our other fall picks in February or March.

This is one of those fabulous flowering plants that look like you spent hours gardening but practically grow themselves. So, if you have a friend with a birthday in August, you’ve just discovered the best-ever present!

4. Best For Flower Size: Lindsay Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Part to full sun
• Grows to 4-5 feet high and 2-3 feet wide

If you want your friends, family and neighbors to stop in their tracks when they step into your garden, Lindsay clematis is for you. The elaborate flowers measure a whopping 6 inches across with vibrant violet-purple petals and magenta-red anthers. You’ll be surprised just how many blooms this vine can fit on its compact frame, too, making this a great choice for a small garden, and one of those easy-grow accent plants that landscape designers love.

While the main blooming period of Lindsay clematis is from May to July, it reliably produces a second flush in September that can last into October. Its compact size means Lindsay clematis will flourish in a pot as well as in the ground, and just imagine these showstopper blooms in a container by your front door.

5. Best For a Patio Container: Gisella Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Full sun
• Grows 4-5 feet high and 3 feet wide

Gisella clematis is a real sun-lover, so won’t mind baking on a sundrenched patio or deck in a large container one bit. And it’ll put on quite the show, blooming from May right through September and into early fall. Because this clematis flowers on new wood, its five-inch flowers smother the plant from top to bottom, and they’re the most beautiful dusky pink hue that no cottage garden should be without. Its foliage is a darker green than most clematis vines, too, setting off those showstopper flowers a treat. As quick and clever ideas for containers go, this beauty is a winner.

Because of its compact size and shrub-like shape, Gisella clematis makes for a fabulous accent patio planter, too. And while this plant needs full sun for the most abundant display of flowers, it’ll appreciate having cool feet and well-draining but moist compost – easily achieved by regular watering and strategic positioning in the low shade cast by an outdoor sofa.

6. Best for Low-Maintenance: Jolly Good Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Part to full sun
• Grows 6-7 feet tall and 2-3 feet wide

Living up to its name, Jolly Good is one of the most easy-going clematis vines to grow, and is another hybrid of the dependable ‘Jackmanii’. While it needs something to hold onto, it happily scrambles up a fence, trellis or post, using small leaf stems called petioles that act like miniature hands to hold onto supports. Because of its natural habit to grow tall but not very wide, Jolly Good tends to stay where you want it rather than rambling off in other directions, making this one of the best fast-growing vines that don't scramble out of control.

Its lovely lavender flowers begin in June and continue through September. Plant it in the ground and, as long as the soil is well-drained and you water it regularly, it won't care a jot if you’re on clay, loam, sand or chalky ground. Jolly Good is one of the best perennials for patio pots that bring maximum flowers for minimum effort, too.

7. Best for Abundant Blooms: Pink Mink Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Partial to full sun
• Grows to 9-10 feet and 5 feet wide

Developed by Polish clematis master Szczepan Marczyński who is known for breeding hybrids with tremendous flower power, Pink Mink clematis was introduced 15 years ago. Since then, it’s certainly proved itself to be a prolific bloomer. Each of its bright pink flowers, the curved petals sporting a magenta stripe down their centres, measures 2-3 inches across, and a mature plant may boast a hundred flowers at any one time at its peak.

Pink Mink clematis starts with a heavy flush of flowers in June, then steadily repeat-blooms through till the end of September. This vine is the perfect Goldilocks size to grow over an arch or trellised garage wall, filling a once-bare spot with fabulous flowers, without ever getting out of hand.

And One Never to Plant: Sweet Autumn Clematis

While Sweet Autumn clematis isn’t classed as invasive in every state, it’s a fast and vigorous vine capable of reaching a huge 20-30 feet high and 10-20 feet wide, forming a dense blanket that can block sunlight from other plants. The real problem, however, is its overabundance of seeds that germinate far more easily and quickly than most other clematis.

Sweet Autumn clematis has become a major ecological concern across the eastern United States, Florida and parts of Canada, where it’s escaped from gardens to affect natural ecosystems, and is classed as an invasive species.

While this self-seeder is still widely sold for garden use in many states where it’s not considered invasive, it’s a thug and there are plenty of other fall-flowering clematis that are just as beautiful but won’t cause you any headaches. If you're shopping at a garden centre, be careful not to pick this Clematis terniflora up thinking it's the native Clematis virginiana, too: while the flowers of both are almost identical, the leaf margins of the native clematis are toothed while those of sweet autumn clematis are smooth.

Expert Tips For Planting Clematis in August

• All clematis need trellis or support wires to enable the vine to climb, or you can grow this vine up through a shrub or tree. Stems will twine themselves around their support, so there's no need to tie them in, unless you want to encourage them to spread out. You may need to guide new stems towards the trellis with bamboo canes.
• Clematis like moist but well-draining soil. So use a large planter that's at least 18 inches deep and wide, filled with a container potting mix such as Expert Gardener Potting Mix for Potted Plants available from Walmart. In the ground, dig a hole that's twice as wide and slightly deeper than the pot your clematis comes in, and improve the soil with compost or well-rotted manure, such as Black Kow Organic Compost and Manure available from Walmart, before planting.
• All clematis do better if their roots are kept cool, so use mulch, pebbles or low annual plants at the plant base. In a pot, you can arrange patio furniture to cast shade onto the container.
• Water deeply and regularly, immediately after planting and then once or twice a week.
• When adding a summer- and fall-flowering clematis to your garden in August, you'll want to avoid transplant shock, which may temporarily halt blooming. The more mature the plant, the less vulnerable it is, so buy the biggest container size you can afford. Stand the clematis pot in a bucket of water for 20 minutes to soak the rootball before you plant it. Try to disturb the rootball as little as possible when planting, and plant it 2-3 inches deeper than the original soil line.

A standalone privacy screen is such a cost-effective way to cool a patio while screening a seating area from neighbors’ gazes. Light enough to move around on a whim but heavy enough to stay put in a breeze, garden privacy screens add style, too, and you can choose a laser-cut pattern to suit the vibe of your backyard. Bolting together for a near-instant garden upgrade, no cursing or Quikrete required, screens are a quick fix, too.

But the best thing about privacy screens? Their versatility. Once you’re the lucky owner of a standalone screen, you’ll find all sorts of ways to put it to good use in your garden besides improving privacy. From screening a pool to zoning a patio, creating a novel trellis for a clematis, cleverly disguising an ugly aircon unit, or simply carving out a quiet nook of dappled shade to relax in, a privacy screen has endless uses. Most standalone metal designs also come with a selection of fixers for hard and soft ground, so you can also anchor them in place, and use the screen as a more permanent fixture.

No wonder, then, that a simple, stylish screen is the number one item we all want in our yards this year. Ikea’s wooden outdoor privacy screen became an overnight bestseller earlier this summer, and now Target has just dropped a ton of laser-cut metal designs and – even better! – most are currently marked down. So, how are you going to use your new outdoor privacy screen this summer?

1. Create a Cool Pool of Dappled Shade

2. Divide a Patio Into Zones

3. Disguise an Ugly AirCon Unit

4. Create a Garden Sanctuary

5. Screen an Unsightly Storage Area

6. Erect a Stylish Standalone Trellis

7. Enclose a Balcony End

8. Add a See-Through Windbreak

9. Link Indoors and Outdoors

10. Create a Pergola Wall

11. Train Climbing Vines Up a Planter Screen

12. Upgrade Poolside Privacy

13. Block Nosy Neighbors

Spraying is the reflex. It knocks down whatever is flying at that moment and does nothing about why the yard looked good to them in the first place. Ticks, ants, and mosquitoes each want something specific from a property, usually moisture or cover, and a yard can be arranged to withhold it.

Not every problem takes the same fix. The common garden pests that chew leaves are a different question from the ones that bite people, and the layout answers differ too. Three changes handle most of the biting crowd. None of them involve a sprayer.

1. Make a Three-Foot Strip Ticks Won't Cross

Ticks do not hop or fly. A blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis) climbs a stem and waits there, front legs out, for something to brush past. That habit is the weakness. Where mown lawn meets the wooded edge, a strip of gravel or wood chips about 3 feet (1m) wide leaves them nothing to climb and no moisture to sit in. Most that try to cross dry out partway. Lawns with a buffer like that tend to hold fewer ticks.

The tick barrier only works if it stays bare. Leaf litter blowing across rebuilds the humid layer ticks depend on, so raking it through a few times a season matters more than which material went down. Landscape fabric from Amazon underneath keeps weeds from stitching the two sides back together. Nothing about this is a wall. It's a border they have to cross in the open. Most never finish the trip. In addition, white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus) carry the ticks in to begin with, so woodpiles and bird feeders belong on the far side of the strip, well off the lawn.

2. Put the Scent Beside the Seats

Lavender is good for repelling pests, but a lavender plant (Lavandula angustifolia) sitting still in a pot does close to nothing. Oil has to reach the air, which happens when leaves get brushed or warmed by an afternoon sun. Placement is the whole trick. Aromatic plants earn their keep within arm's reach of a chair, or spilling over a path edge where people walk through them on the way by.

Mint (Mentha x piperita) and lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) both carry compounds that make a patio less appealing to Asian tiger mosquitoes (Aedes albopictus). Neither clears a yard. What they shift is the odds close in, which is where anyone actually sits, and that species hunts low and by day. Running a hand along the stems before sitting down puts more oil in the air than the plant manages alone. Mint can spread aggressively, so keep it in a pot to stop roots from wandering. Lemongrass is not hardy through most of the country. Treating it as a container plant that comes indoors ahead of frost solves that.

3. Leave a Dry Band Where Ants Expect Mulch

Mulch banked against a foundation is an open invitation. It keeps the seam where the wall meets the ground damp all season, which is the one condition odorous house ants (Tapinoma sessile) want. They nest in it. From there it's a short trip to any gap in the siding. Pulling the mulch back solves half of it. Filling the gap with a band of pea gravel from The Home Depot, roughly 12 inches (30cm) out from the foundation, takes the cover away too.

Depth counts for more than width. Two or three inches (5-8cm) of stone stays dry through most of the summer. A thin scatter still traps damp underneath, which defeats the point. Shrubs want cutting back from the siding for the same reason. Anything touching the house bridges the band, however wide the stone runs. None of this evicts a colony already inside a wall – but it does protect you from outside invaders.

4. Banish Standing Water

Mosquitoes need standing water to finish their life cycle, and not much of it. A bottle cap holds enough for Aedes albopictus. Saucers under pots, a sagging tarp, a clogged gutter, the rim of a wheelbarrow left face up – every one of those runs a small hatchery on roughly an eight-day turnaround in summer heat. Gutters are the one people miss, since the water sits out of sight and packed debris holds it there. Walking the property once a week and tipping things over disrupts more breeding than any spray manages.

Grading handles what cannot be tipped. A low spot still holding water a week after rain wants soil moved, or a shallow swale cut to carry it off. Point downspouts away from the house, not into the same puddle at the corner. Some water has to stay, though. A rain barrel counts. So does a birdbath nobody empties. Bti mosquito dunks from Amazon kill the larvae without harming fish or pollinators. Use them to make a mosquito bucket of doom, and you yard will be pleasant to sit in through the worst of the season.

Colors are so intrinsically linked to your gardening choices, you might not always realize you’ve got carried away until you see some of the results. Then one day, you’ll be sitting on the front patio and it will hit you: yikes. Maybe all those dozens of colors competing for attention in your flower beds and borders are a little bit much?

Maybe what started as the odd crayon-bright variety has become multi-toned chaos. But if it feels like your plants are clashing rather than cooperating, don’t panic. You needn’t settle for visual friction. A little mindful color selection will instantly help you achieve a calmer ambiance. And rethinking the way you approach front yard landscaping doesn't mean adhering to cold rules. Winning curb appeal just means simplifying your color pairings and combinations.

This sort of discipline might sound like it sucks a little of the fun out of growing flowers, but it’s quite the opposite. Limiting your palette can be freeing in terms of how you combine specific plants, textures, shapes, and sizes – and all with visual balance in mind. Find out how the 2-color trick can help you tame your yard and create high impact visuals that everyone will want to stop and admire.

Why Color Chaos Kills Curb Appeal

In color theory, pairing too many saturated warm and cool shades creates intense visual friction. When hot-pink magenta petunias, fiery orange marigolds, electric blue lobelia, and bright yellow zinnias are all squeezed into a single bed, their competing light waves bounce around chaotically. Under bright summer sunlight, this overload turns into visual noise. This jarring static makes a front yard look cluttered and messy rather than intentional. It can even make a yard look smaller.

When every bloom screams for attention, it’s hard to distinguish and appreciate their individual beauty. Collectively, it can feel like a jumble. Situated by a colored wall or front yard fence, the problems magnify, and none of this is great news for curb appeal. Instead of drawing the eye toward your entryway or porchway, an overactive color palette creates visual stops and starts. The overall effect can feel disjointed, dragging down curb allure instead of framing your property with purpose.

This doesn’t mean there is no place for a riot of blooms. Whimsical cottage gardens, meadow plantings and backyard pollinator patches can handle a colorful free-for-all, because their informal boundaries soften the impact. But landscaping for curb appeal relies on something else. This is where you need instant, clean legibility from the street, and where less can be so much more. Introducing simple curb color rules isn't about stifling expression. It’s just about giving plants room to breathe, so your front yard looks effortlessly put together. Here’s how it can work for you…

The 2-Color Trick (And Why It Works)

The two-color trick isn’t about stripping joy from your garden or banning your favorite blooms. But if your front yard feels messy rather than magical, capping your plant palette at 2 dominant hues works like a reset button. Forget the confetti mix seed pack that will create a lively mishmash of all the colors of the rainbow. Instead, select 2 colors that can play well off each other. A duo-toned front border will instantly upclass the yard, creating cohesiveness and a high-end, elegant look.

When you limit your palette with these color rules, your brain stops trying to reconcile competing color signals. The eyes shift their focus to subtle details, like variations in plant height, leaf shapes, and contrasting textures. By curbing the rainbow, you allow anchor plants, hardscaping features like brick walkways, and porch details to stand out rather than compete with your flower beds. Whether framing a tight bed beside a door or running a long border down a driveway, choosing a couple of harmonizing or opposing colors brings immediate structural focus, balance and harmony.

You don’t need to rely on just flowers to make this trick work. High-impact foliage can offer long-lasting contrast with less maintenance. For instance, planting a burgundy foliage plant alongside a lime-tinted companion creates a high-contrast border that holds its color all season without looking cluttered. Try rich burgundy Tiny Wine Ninebark from Nature Hills, and add Proven Winners Limelight Hydrangea Shrubs from Fast Growing Trees to offset those deeper wine tones.

3 Ways to Make it Work

Limiting yourself to two shades has a calming effect on the entire front yard. Instead of overwhelming passers-by with bouncing colors, a duo-tone approach focuses the attention on plant heights, leaf textures, and bloom shapes. So if you need to calm the visual turmoil and bring the harmony back, the trick is to find a simple color partnership that works for your space and aesthetic. Here are 3 smart color matches you can try. Treat these as flexible templates you can adapt according to your plant desires and your yard, to help you frame your space in style with minimal fuss.

1. Monochromatic Shift

Choosing two shades from the same color family, like a cool lilac paired with a rich violet, is the ultimate shortcut to a sophisticated yard. A monochromatic palette relies on tonal gradients to create depth across beds, borders, and containers. My favorite is monochromatic green. This approach allows you to focus on foliage plants, using a single, dominant base color while incorporating shades a bit lighter or darker. So you could pair white, off-white and silvery shades. This could blend tall Aruncus dioicus, white peonies, and trailing alyssum, backed by silver foliage.

The key to making this palette work is to vary plant shapes and heights. For a purple scheme, plant tall, dark spikes of Caradonna salvia (S. nemorosa) and airy purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis) at the back of a border. In the middle, try 'Walker's Low' catmint or drifts of Hidcote lavender. Add Supertunia Royal Velvet petunias or the lush folds of Plum Pudding heuchera at the front (or in porch pots) to tie the look together.

If you prefer a sunnier tone, try gold and chartreuse. Use medium-sized shrubs like Gold Mound spirea and variegated Emerald 'n' Gold euonymus toward the center of your bed. Surround them with butter-yellow Moonbeam coreopsis and Lime Marmalade coral bells. To soften hard driveway edges or stone steps, let golden Japanese Forest Grass and cascading creeping Jenny spill onto the paving. You can get both Lime Marmalade and Plum Pudding Coral Bells from Plant Addicts, along with a broad range of heuchera colors.

2. Clean White + Hero Color

For a crisp and sophisticated front border, use the classic aesthetic of white with another color (green works well if you aren’t sure). This is a clean, timeless look that looks cool and chic while brightening up shady corners. You might start with a snowy carpet of fragrant sweet alyssum, backed by iceberg rose varieties and white foxgloves. Fill in the corners with creamy hostas or silver ragwort.

Pairing crisp, light-reflecting white flowers, shrubs and even white flowering trees with a single, high-voltage hero color gives instant front yard curb appeal. White can act as a natural spotlight, bouncing ambient light into shaded entryways, softening dark masonry, and making fence lines pop from the street. However, using white alone can sometimes feel sterile or washed out in midday sun. The trick is layering subtle tonal variations of white, ranging from cool, apple-green whites to classic creams and soft silvers, alongside one intense accent color.

For a high-contrast “peaches and cream” scheme, try a lush Limelight panicle hydrangea or Foxy White foxgloves at the back of your border. In front, plant Tangerine Dream coneflowers (Echinacea) or compact Profusion Orange zinnias. Interweave some soft, velvety Silver Dust Dusty Miller, available from Amazon, along the edge. Then let bright white sweet alyssum spill out over walkway pavers. For a shady corner, opt for fluffy Vision in White astilbe to bring the look together.

Or, if you prefer a rich magenta-and-cream palette, frame your porch or gateway with white floribunda roses and wispy wand flowers (Gaura lindheimeri). In the middle, set punchy PowWow Wild Berry coneflowers with silvery artemisia. Pick up Perennial Farms’ PowWow Wild Berry Coneflowers from Amazon. Finish with magenta calibrachoa cascading out of front door urns. Just bear in mind that white petals and pale silver leaves show heat-browning and water spots faster than darker foliage, so select tough, self-cleaning varieties for summer planting.

3. Bold Designer Opposites

Is there room for bright colors anywhere in the 2-color universe? Absolutely! You can make this work with our color trick, as long as the eye only sees these bright shades. Backed by foliage greens, the result is upscale and elegant, which is a winning combination for curb appeal. If you want your front yard to command attention from down the block, just look to opposite sides of the color wheel.

Complementary color pairings create high-contrast energy, because our eyes process opposing wavelengths simultaneously, making both appear more saturated than they would on their own. For a look that gives balance but also feels deliberate, establish one of the pair as the dominant color across three-quarters of your bed, then sprinkle the remaining area with pops of its visual opposite.

Try one of these pairings that work in any border layout or size:

• Royal Violet & Gold: For a high-contrast classic, weave deep purple salvia or dark lavender spires with Goldsturm Rudbeckia, available from Plant Addicts, finishing with trailing Superbells Yellow calibrachoa. For an easygoing shrub, try a brilliant yellow weigela like Golden Jackpot (Weigela florida 'MonRigney').
• True Blue & Copper Orange: Another option that looks smashing is true blue and copper orange or hot coral. Offset soft nepeta 'Cat's Pajamas' or bright agapanthus with Totally Tangerine geum. You can get Hirt’s Gardens’ Cat’s Pajamas Nepeta from Walmart. Or try blue lobelia as a low-growing element, backed by coral bells, with true blue delphinium towering in the background.
• Magenta & Chartreuse: For a modern designer vibe, pair the punchy pink petals of Magnus coneflowers with the electrifying foliage of Lime Marmalade heuchera or Sambucus Lemony Lace by Proven Winners, available from Nature Hills.

Golden Rules for 2-Color Planting

Limiting the palette does raise the stakes in terms of layouts. You can’t just plant your colors willy-nilly. It’s important to plant with an eye to design, rather than just scattering seeds as you may have done in the past. This isn’t hard, though, and it’s fun to experiment. These easy rules ensure your 2-color theme feels intentional:

1. Master 60-30-10: This designer approach suggests that one color should be the primary, and over half of the bed should reflect that. The second shade takes a third of the space, while the remaining 10% is a varying texture or hue of the two primary colors. So if you had 60% green foliage, you could give 30% to sweeps of purple Walker's Low Catmint, from Nature Hills, with a 10% accent of fiery crocosmia.
2. Weave in Drifts not Blocks: Avoid static grids or rigid blocks of one species that make borders feel stiff and unnatural. Instead, use sweeping, intermingled plantings. Try feathering silver artemisia with spires of salvia, interwoven with purple coneflowers. Soften the boundaries with some purpletop vervain. You can get Perennial Farm Verbena Bonariensis from Amazon as live plants.
3. High-Contrast Textures: Color catches the eye from across the lawn, but tactile leaf forms keep it fascinating up close. Mix ferny foliage with rounded leaves, and contrast massive, powdery Halcyon hosta leaves with pops of curling wine-soaked coleus. You can buy CZ Grain Blue Halcyon Hostas from Walmart as live plants. Thoughtful diversity is key to make the most of your curb-friendly color palette.

Shop Summer Curb Heroes

Putting together a high-impact, two-color border is a lot simpler once you can hook your schemes around a clear, tidy planting plan. By focusing on a few well-chosen perennial anchors, you can set the foundation for stunning monochromatic, clean white, or bold designer contrast schemes that thrive season after season. Selected with popular color purple in mind, the following options bring instant wow factor.

Purple-Friendly Picks

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Boundary fences are an afterthought in most gardens, but integrating these backdrops into your yard design will upgrade the whole space. Fences come in all shapes, sizes and materials but all can be commandeered to help bring style and color to your garden.

Whether you opt for a decorative panel or painting the fence a dark color to show off bold border planting, or turn bare sections into textural treats with vining plants or natural screening, fence-scaping is a DIY project you can achieve yourself in a weekend. Some ideas enable you to use your fence as an extra planting area, too – a real bonus if your plot is compact.

Your boundaries serve a practical function, making your home safe and secure as well as screening you from neighbours. But once you have those essentials covered, there are all sorts of ways you can use your garden fences to improve your landscape design. And, as you'll see, you don't have to spend a fortune to get a stunning result. Here are 10 of the latest DIY fence ideas to inspire you.

1. Clad With Stylish Bamboo

Choose sturdy bamboo cladding to give a dull garden fence a natural and eco-friendly upgrade. This affordable option is quickly achieved by attaching rolled fenced panels such as this one from Wayfair to existing fence panels using cable ties or wire, making this an easy DIY garden project.

This natural bamboo fence has hollow stems that provide vital habitat for pollinators in your garden. If you love the idea of attracting bees and butterflies to your yard, design the planting around them too, choosing pollinator magnet plants such as foxgloves, salvia and yarrow. Go one step further and add a bug house to give wildlife a home and max up your green credentials.

2. Create a Focal Point With Colored Panels

Elevate your yard by slotting in decorative colored fence panels to define a seating area and add an elegant designer touch. This is an easy way to bring outdoor living vibes to your garden, giving it a more interior-led feel to match whatever style and aesthetic you want to create. It's also a budget-friendly option for upgrading standard fences into more of a feature.

DIY this idea yourself by using sections of pressure-treated plywood suitable for exterior use such as this Pine Ply from Lowe's. Priming the wood first will give you a smoother finish and richer colors, then apply two coats of an exterior paint. Take a look at the range of Glidden Fundamentals Exterior Paint at Walmart for an inspiring range of colors from Blue Oasis to Turning Oakleaf and Pepperberry Pink. There's also a range of exterior Glidden paints with primer if you want to skip that step.

Installed by pre-drilling them then fixing to the fence with screws, using a spirit level to check they're straight. A versatile option, it's easy to change the color when you want a different look, too.

3. Install Decorative Panels for Instant Results

You can buy decorative panels in so many different patterns, colors and sizes, it's easy to find a design that suits your garden style perfectly. There are tall, narrow panels and circular designs as well as the standard rectangles, so you can get creative.

Panels can be fixed to an existing boundary if it's strong enough, or how about using a panel to replace a short section of the fence? It's also possible to inset a smaller panel into a fence, as has been done here. Punctuating a long fence with several equally-spaced panels is a smart way to add rhythm and regularity to a garden.

Using the same design of decorative panel in different ways around your yard as well as fixing one to your fence brings a cohesive, prefessional look, too. Some panels are stronger than others so do check, but some are robust enough to be used between pergola struts to cast shapely shadows, or laid into gravel as a textured feature.

Decorative Fence Panels

4. Hang a Mirror to Make A Small Garden Look Bigger

If you're looking for small garden ideas, another trick designers often use is hanging a mirror on the fence. This will reflect your plants and make it seem like there are more of them, and is surely the easiest of DIY designer tricks to make a small garden look bigger. Outdoor mirrors help to bounce light around to create the illusion of space.

In this design a mirror is hung on a fence in a shady corner of the garden. It adds light and depth to brighten and open up the garden, adding the illusion that another space lies beyond. Find a round garden mirror design like this at Amazon. Most come with strong adhesive pads and are easy to fix to a clean surface, but it's smart to back that up with exterior glue.

5. Create Fence Shelves and Start a Curated Collection

A big trend at the moment is the idea of a curated garden. This means making more considered choices where plants, materials, and accessories are concerned. The aim is to achieve a cohesive look where everything fits together in a harmonious design that's entirely unique to you.

Integrating shelves into garden fence ideas is a great way of tapping into this trend, allowing you to add a unique customised finish with, for example, a collection of small potted plants similar to the look achieved with a plant theater. Or perhaps your DIY garden shelves could house your collection of rocks and other natural treasures?

It's an easy weekend DIY project, too. Attach sturdy outdoor brackets directly into fence supports, using exterior-grade deck screws, then secure pre-cut treated shelf boards.

6. Run A Raised Bed Along a Fence

The strip of ground in front of a fence often ends up as an underused space where nothing grows. But it's easy to add either an integral raised garden bed or a freestanding one right in front that allows you to maximise the space by adding a layer of planting to beautify the boundary.

Raised garden beds along fences add a visually appealing and structural element to your garden. Use a similar material for the raised bed as the fence, and the pairing will serve as a modern focal point. While it's smart to follow the recommended spacing guidelines for any plant variety to ensure there is enough room for growth to give your design longevity, it's okay to plant more densely in a raised bed as you can easily control moisture and nutrient levels.

7. Use Trellis to Add Texture

There are no rules to say trellis must be used solely to support plants and, as you can see from this small garden, it's an effective way to add an accent in its own right. Choose expandable trellis made from willow such as this Latticed Willow Trellis from Lowe's and you can use hand pruners to cut it into creative shapes.

Defining a space by fixing trellis to fence is quick and affordable, too.

8. Let Light in With Contemporary Slats

If you're gardening in a small space like a courtyard or patio garden it's important to let in as much light as possible. This is where airy wooden slat fencing comes into play, which is one of the biggest garden trends for 2026.

Characterized by neat horizontal planks that allow light to filter through, wooden slatting allows you to create a crisp, modern aesthetic while simultaneously softening the look of boundaries. This design is elegant and minimalist with the fence offering clean lines as a backdrop to the restrained planting.

There's no need to replace your entire fence, but switch out a couple of sections with modern horizontal slat panels such as these Nature's Composites Panels from Lowe's.If you're on a budget and handy at DIY, then you can cheat the look by removing a section of existing fencing and fixing treated roofing batons at intervals to fenceposts.

9. Cloak a Bare Fence With Climbing Plants

One of the easiest and most pleasing ways to turn a fence into a feature is by covering it with climbing plants. Choose the right varieties and they will grow vigorously to disguise fence panels with beautiful-looking flowers and foliage.

From fragrant climbing roses, scented honeysuckle and perfumed jasmine flowers to tropical trumpet vine and heavenly wisteria, there's a world of choice out there. When you're wondering what climber to grow on a fence, start by looking at fast-growing vines that won't scramble out of control. Clematis is always a great choice if you like flamboyant flowers, and there's a clematis vine to suit every spot.

Before making your choice take into account the aspect of your yard, and opt for either sun-loving or shade-loving plants accordingly. Next, check the plant's water and fertilizing requirements. Then be sure to offer something for them to cling to such as wires or trellis, to make their transformation of your fence even easier.

Pretty Climbing Plants For Fences

10. Paint a Black Backdrop for Dramatic Planting

The black paint trend is a big look for fence ideas right now, and one of the most dramatic garden ideas you can achieve in a weekend. Timber or metal fencing stained in shades of deep charcoal to jet black deliver a modern aesthetic that acts as a dramatic backdrop to visually enhance planting. With clever lighting and the use of accent plants that landscape designers love, you can really turn your fence into a feature.

A favorite among garden designers for offering dramatic impact and a high-end finish, black fences instantly make a garden feel more considered. It's an easy look to copy too. Choose an outdoor fence paint such as Fence Pro in Black from Lowe's that will deal with even the harshest weather conditions for a long-lasting look.

Pick up the black look elsewhere, too, with other details such as plant stands, pots and planters, and garden furniture or accessories.

There are a lot of good reasons to grow plants in raised beds. The most important is that they give you more control over soil conditions. You can create the perfect blend and ensure good drainage. Raised beds are also easier to manage, especially if you have any mobility issues.

On the other hand, raised bed gardening has one major issue: water. Like containers, the soil in a raised bed will dry out faster than soil in the ground. This means you need to spend more time watering, unless you use one of these nifty strategies or easy-to-find tools and materials to create beds that are mostly or entirely self-watering.

Here are the four easiest and most effective ways to turn your raised bed into a self-watering garden that can withstand summer heat and drought or that you can leave for vacation and not worry about wilting.

1. Build a Wicking Reservoir

A water wicking reservoir is an underground irrigation system. The reservoir stores water at the bottom of the bed. A wicking material allows the water to move upward into the dry soil as needed.

With this type of wicking raised bed system, you only need to fill the reservoir every few days or weekly, depending on the weather. It prevents overwatering and encourages strong, deep root growth.

You can find self-watering raised beds on Amazon that already have a water reservoir built in, buy a self-watering insert from Gardener's Supply Company, or make your own water wicking system from simple materials.

Line the bed with plastic sheeting or a pond liner to make it watertight. Create a reservoir on top of the liner using large, clean rocks or perforated drainpipes. Cover this with landscape fabric to act as your wicking material.

Finally, you just need a vertical PVC pipe on the side of the bed that reaches down to the reservoir. You’ll use this to refill the reservoir as needed. The wicking material allows water to be pulled upward into the soil, but only when the soil is dry so overwatering isn’t an issue.

2. Use Watering Spikes & Olla Pots

There is an even simpler solution to creating self-watering beds that is best for small raised beds. Watering spikes, olla pots, and similar products are an easy way to let your beds water themselves. They work in a similar way to a wicking reservoir, but are easier to install.

These devices are made from unglazed terracotta. You fill them with water and bury them in the raised bed soil. The clay of the terracotta is porous, so moisture slowly seeps out into the dry soil around it. This is a low-tech, easy option for watering beds. The downside, however, is that each pot or watering spike only covers a small area of soil.

One olla pot, like this one from Amazon, will cover a growing area of 4 to 6 square feet (1.2-1.8 m), so it’s a great solution for small raised beds. Watering spikes, which you can get from IKEA, are best for individual plants. So if you have a few thirsty plants, like tomatoes, a handful of spikes can keep them happy and reduce the amount of time you need to spend watering.

3. Set Up a Drip Irrigation Kit

Adding a drip irrigation setup to your raised bed turns your garden into a self-sufficient system in just one afternoon. These kits come in a range of sizes and those designed for smaller areas, like raised beds, can be as low as $30, like this simple drip irrigation kit from Home Depot that Content Editor Laura has used in her garden for years.

The kits include a hose or pipe system with multiple holes. You’ll install this in a bed and connect it to a hose. A hose-faucet timer, like this one that Laura also recommends, allows you to set the system to water at regular intervals.

Once installed, this is a hands-off watering system, so convenience is one of the biggest benefits. With some kits, you can even connect to an app and control watering from your phone.

Drip irrigation kits are also highly efficient, so if water usage is limited in your area, they are a great option. You’ll use up to 70% less water than using a regular hose and nozzle to water.

4. Create a Gravity-Fed Drip System

Instead of the pressure from a faucet and hose, you can use gravity to water your beds through a drip hose. You need an elevated source, like a rain barrel, and some tubing. Water moves down under the force of gravity and into the raised bed.

Like a drip irrigation system connected to a faucet, you get the benefit of water conservation, but you don’t need the pressure of the faucet. This is a good DIY drip irrigation option for a bed that isn’t close to the faucet.

Start with an elevated rain barrel, like this one with a built-in stand from Home Depot. If you have taller raised beds, you will need to place your rain barrel even higher. You can use cinder blocks, bricks, or old pallets to build a simple platform to lift your barrel above the height of your raised beds.

Next, add a drip irrigation system to get the water to your beds. You can make your own drip irrigation system or use a premade kit. Just make sure the kit you buy will work in a gravity-fed situation. Some drip irrigation kits need water pressure from a faucet or hose to function. But this drip irrigation kit from Amazon works with low or no water pressure.

No single solution for creating a self-watering bed is perfect, but one of these ideas might be better than others for your garden. You can also combine strategies to make watering easier. For instance, use a wicking reservoir with mulch to keep moisture in the soil longer. Or use a drip irrigation system with watering spikes for your especially thirsty plants.

Whether you install a simple drip irrigation kit, build a wicking reservoir, or just add mulch and a timer, these upgrades can dramatically reduce maintenance while keeping plants healthier and more productive. With the right setup, you can spend less time watering and more time enjoying your harvest.

A great solution for heatwave summers, low-growing groundcover plants act as a living mulch to lock moisture into the soil and protect roots from extreme temperatures. And groundcover doesn’t need to be boring! These fabulously flamboyant flowering groundcover plants will bring months of beautiful blooms to borders, and keep your garden full of color into fall.

If it’s been a while since you looked at groundcover plants, you’ll be astonished to discover some dazzling new varieties that combine all the benefits of traditional groundcover with the ornamental delights usually only seen in far taller plants. There’s even a groundcover hydrangea for goodness sake!

So forget the usual fodder of forgettable groundcover and try a showstopper instead. Here’s my pick of the most eye-catching groundcover plants to keep your soil cool and your borders packed with blooms into fall.

1. Groundbreaker Hydrangea For a Sea of Blooms

• Zones 5-8
• Full sun to partial shade
• Grows 12-16" tall and 24-32" wide

Let’s start with the plant most likely to cause serious neighbor envy, shall we? Because if you plant this groundcover carpet of color-changing hydrangea blooms, expect everyone to ask what is! The fabulous new Groundbreaker series of hydrangeas brings all the beauty of the perennial blooms we all know and love to ground level. The world’s first-ever spreading groundcover hydrangea, this plant grows out instead of up, only reaching 12-16 inches high yet spreading up to 32 inches wide. Well-branched stems mean lots of conical flowers, and the blooming period lasts a whopping 100 days.

Launched two years ago, Groundbreaker hydrangeas only became available to buy in the United States in July 2026, and they’re proving hugely popular. And no wonder: growing panicle hydrangeas is straightforward to begin with, but these have been bred to be especially low maintenance.

So if you want one, you’d better be quick as these beautiful hydrandgeas are selling out fast. At the time of writing, all three Groundbreaker hydrangea varieties are available from Plant Addicts. Groundbreaker Blush Hydrangea has large white flower panicles in midsummer that gradually develop blush pink tones. Groundbreaker Ruby Hydrangea also blooms white but its flowers deepen to a rich ruby red, while Groundbreaker Greeny Hydrangea transitions the other way with blooms opening a bright lime green then gradually softening to a creamy white.

2. Drift Rose For Three-Season Color

• Zones 4-11
• Full sun to partial shade
• Grows 1-2' tall and 3' wide

The series of Drift roses are a cross between full-size groundcover roses and miniature roses, so while they’ll bring abundant color to a border, they won’t take over. These rebloomers produce wave after wave of flowers from spring till late fall and are self-cleaning, which means you don’t need to deadhead. They’re super-easy to look after, too, being highly resilient against common rose issues including black spot and powdery mildew.

There are all sorts of fabulous colors to choose from, and some have transitioning tones. In fact, the only downside to these low-maintenance roses is that they only have a mild scent, or no fragrance at all.

Nature Hills stocks a great selection of Drift roses. Popcorn Drift blooms a golden yellow and transitions to cream, while Coral Drift, Peach Drift and Apricot Drift also have color-shifting blooms in a variety of warm tones. Sweet Drift is a ravishing pink with around 30 petals on each flower, while Pink Drift has simple single blooms that are better for pollinators. Red Drift holds its bright scarlet color even in a hot summer.

3. Blue Waterfall Bellflower for a Designer Look

• Zones 4-8
• Partial to full sun
• Grows 6-10" high and 24-36" wide

There are lots of good things to say about this pretty plant, but perhaps its finest asset is that it’s often employed by landscape designers, so instantly brings a professional look. While Campanula poscharskyana ‘Camgood’ is typically housed in a pot or a hanging basket, its trailing stems make excellent groundcover, speedily spreading around larger plants.

And this little perennial is sure to attract attention with its ice-blue star-shaped flowers that last through summer into fall.

While this perennial grows quickly, it doesn’t run out of control, and happily thrives in pretty much any soil, as long as it gets at least 5 hours of sunlight a day. The small, bright green heart-shaped leaves are super-pretty, too. Blue Waterfall Bellflower plants are available from Plant Addicts.

4. Firewitch Dianthus For a Small Garden

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun
• Grows 4-8" high and 1' wide

Yes, small gardens need groundcover too! Firewitch dianthus makes for brilliant groundcover in a small garden as it’s incredibly well-behaved but works hard to form a dense, weed-blocking mat of pretty silvery-blue leaves. With a flurry of pink flowers all through spring and summer – and fall, if you shear off faded blooms – Dianthus gratianopolitanus was bred to give maximum color for minimum effort.

What’s more, the spicy, clove-like scent of the flowers is a wonderful addition to hot summer days, while the foliage is evergreen in most climates.

Each plant spreads to around a foot wide so, depending on the size of your border, you’ll need to add a few, and single and multi-pack Firewitch Dianthus plants are available from Fast Growing Trees.

5. Silvery Sunproof Liriope For Rippling Leaves

• Zones 6-11
• Partial shade
• Grows 1-2’ high and wide

This variegated monkey grass forms clumps rather than spreads, so it makes excellent groundcover to underplant a border of bigger perennials or shrubs where controlling a more vigorous plant would be tricky. This drought-tolerant plant can even cope in dry shade once established, so it won’t mind a jot that trees and shrubs are sucking most of the moisture out of the soil.

The striped leaves are evergreen in most climates and, in midsummer, purple flower spikes add to the show and last through fall. Liriope ‘Silvery Sunproof’ plants are available from Nature Hillsand are tolerant of pollution so will thrive roadside, and is even rated as Firewise in several states. While monkey grass typically needs partial shade to thrive, this variety tolerates sunlight far better than most others.

6. Cool Wave Pansies For Instant Cheer

• All zones
• Full sun or partial shade
• 6-8" high and 24-30" wide

These little gems light up a tired border and don’t be fooled by the dainty, delicate appearance – they're tough cookies and bloom for months on end. In fact, this is one of the longest-blooming pansies available. While pansies are typically planted in patio pots and hanging baskets, this is a trailing variety so spreads to form groundcover in a border and quickly but politely fills gaps between bigger perennials. Pansies can be planted in summer in zones up to 9, so put this on your list of July garden jobs.

How Cool Wave pansies behave will depend on your climate, but they’re an excellent way to bridge the summer-to-fall gap in all zones. In zones 5 through 11 they’ll survive the winter: in zones 5-6, they’re dormant through winter but bounce back in spring; in zones 7-9, they’ll bloom pretty much continuously through all four seasons; in zones 10-11, wait for the intense heat of summer to pass before planting for endless cool-season flowers. In cooler zones 4 and below, treat these beauties as annuals and plant afresh each spring.

Pansies prefer cooler conditions and will fade in hot temperatures so, in a hotter zone, plant in a partially shady spot that doesn’t bake in the midday sun; in cooler zones, it’s fine in full sun.

Pansies can be challenging to grow from seed so it’s best to skip straight to the good bit with young plants. Cool Wave Morpho pansy plants are available from Burpee in a striking purple-blue and yellow combo, and the color intensifies as temperatures drop. Cool Wave Raspberry Swirl pansy plants are also available from Burpee, with a pretty mix of rosy, golden tones.

7. SunSparkler Dazzling Dynamite Sedum for Low Maintenance

• Zones 4-9
• Full sun
• Grows 4-8" tall and 1-2' wide

If you want to add color to a border without upping the workload, Sedum ‘Dazzling Dynamite’ should be your go-to solution. This well-behaved low-growing perennial is extremely heat- and drought-tolerant once established, and while pollinators love it, deer typically don’t touch it. That burgundy-red foliage is vibrant enough on its own, but when topped with bright pink flowers through summer and fall, SunSparkler Dazzling Dynamite Sedum is a real showstopper.

Unlike some sedums that fade in summer heat, this keeps its color well, and Dazzling Dynamite plants are available from Nature Hills. The succulent leaves slowly spread to form a dense mat, even on poor soil, making this one of the most low-maintenance groundcover plants you can get.