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Annuals steal the show

Landscape designer Louis Raymond approaches a showhouse garden as a performance piece.

IMAGINE A GARDEN THAT would thrive from spring through frost, throwing out waves of colorful flowers through summer's heat and topping 6 feet in the fall.

Louis Raymond did. He designed and grew that garden last year. It was composed entirely of annuals.

The glory of perennial borders comes and goes, with most plants having their moments for only a couple of weeks. Raymond's garden, however, kept dazzling and rising to the sun until, in September, precisely as he had planned, it reached its peak just in time for the Newport Showhouse at Mount Hope Farm, sponsored by The Newport Showhouse Guild at the former Haffenreffer estate in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Raymond, owner of Renaissance Gardening Ltd. in Hopkinton, Rhode Island, created the spectacular landscape display for the charity event, which drew thousands of visitors over a 30-day period.

A self-taught landscape designer, Raymond, 46, wanted to make an impact with the 50-by-60-foot garden, which would be planted where the estate once grew its vegetables. He also wanted a garden with height, both to draw visitors and to hide its secrets. "I didn't want people to be walking by and be able to see it all and keep going. I also am a fan of tall plants, partly because of my height," says the 6-foot-3 Raymond.

Annuals were the answer. "When skillfully chosen, annuals provide almost foolproof garden enthusiasm, without the flagging and dreaded post-bloom collapse that afflicts so many perennials," Raymond says. "They tend to get better and better throughout the growing season. And they really enjoy high heat and humidity. Try that with a delphinium!"

Raymond, who is the design manager for the New England Spring Flower Show in Boston, drew a parterre - that is, a garden design with paths and flower beds that form a pattern. He provided two paths, one around the outer edge, one further inside the plot, so visitors could experience the garden from within. The whole package was rimmed with a mix of sunflowers and other tall plants, set off by the heads of broom corn (Sorghum bicolor 'Technicum') planted in the corners. Inside were swatches of castor bean plants (Ricinus communis 'Carmencita') and cardoons (Cynara cardunculus, an artichoke), which Raymond described as having "gray, almost palm-frondy foliage, and they are as easy as zinnias," even tolerating frost.

Screens of lower-growing Verbena bonariensis let the sun through to the cardoons. Filling in throughout were patches of datura (Datura metel, angel's trumpet), with seductive, scented ever-blooming white flowers shining from the darker depths of the taller plants.

Appealing to multiple senses, Raymond paired white, richly scented tuberose under white, richly scented Nicotiana sylvestris, which was offset by taller purple castor bean plants and lower multicolored coleus and nasturtiums. In the corners of the central terrace, Salvia guarinitica 'Omaha' rose to a height of 7 feet and was festooned with intense indigo spikes.

Plants in terra cotta tubs heightened the sense of formality of the parterre that otherwise was offset by the wildness of the enormous, near tropical look of the whole. Raymond had wanted "a jungle inside," and he achieved it.

There were containers of mixed coleus - bright yellow-green 'Solar Flare' and dark, trailing 'Garnet Robe' - and variegated plectranthus (Swedish ivy). Pink-schemed pots skirted by variegated bougainvillea held 'Othello' coleus, which is very dark, mixed with gray-leafed plectranthus.

With a gazebolike main entrance and occasional sculptural elements, such as an archway composed of shovel heads, designed by Jill Nooney of Fine Garden Art in Lee, New Hampshire, Raymond emphasized a sense of whimsy, failing only to provide benches so visitors could spend more time studying this unusual garden.

"This is not a garden you would do in real life - much," Raymond says. For one thing, "there's nothing here for shade."

But there are circumstances in which an annual garden is ideal. "Once I was engaged in March to prepare a property for a wedding reception that same September," Raymond says. "There are few permanent plants that do much their first season other than get established. ... Annuals were the only solution, and so I did a border between the cocktail area and the reception tent. It looked like bare dirt (and virtually was) in May and June, but by September was 10 feet tall and busting out with energy and interest."

Raymond, who has degrees in chemistry, voice, and piano, and once worked as an opera singer in Manhattan, does gardening as theater. Certainly the flower show, which also has a goodly proportion of annuals, is theater, and so was the Mount Hope Farm garden.

"The Mount Hope garden succeeded well beyond my expectations," Raymond says. "In particular, sunflower 'Soraya,' which was the orange-yellow front hedge of multistemmed sunflowers, will be planted in any garden I can possibly include it in - an unstinting show - plus the semi-single white dahlia with bronze foliage, 'Swan Lake.' "

Not everything worked. Bush sunflowers were covered in smaller blooms, but the stereotypical large-flowered sunflowers aren't as suited to long-term display, Raymond says. And a white-flowered form of purple hyacinth bean (Dolichos lablab 'Album'), intended to cloak four arches, steadfastly refused to bloom.

Raymond attributes a recent surge in interest in annuals partly to the new species and cultivars available and partly to an awareness among gardeners that annuals are "the best way by far to ensure garden interest between mid-July and hard frost, when there are simply not enough toe-tapping perennials and blooming shrubs to keep a garden from looking tired."

Most of the plants in the Mount Hope garden were grown from seed, and Verbena bonariensis and Nicotiana alata, both huge self-seeders, "were potted up from a shovel or two of seedlings from my own garden," Raymond says. The total cost of the garden, he says, was about $750, not including the structures.

But, while the huge cost saving of growing plants from seed is a big advantage of annuals, that is offset by the expense of buying plants yearly.

"Annuals, while an essential part of any garden, are probably not the majority of it," Raymond says. "The Mount Hope garden was, in this sense, a performance piece, just to show it could be done."

Raymond's choices

• Coleus 'Garnet Robe': This plant cascades over the sides of its container with small burgundy leaves edged in gold. "It's perfect to give a 'skirt' to containers or makes a good ground cover." It requires full sun or partial shade.
• Ipomoea batatas 'Marguerite': This chartreuse-leaved ornamental sweet potato can trail 3 feet from a window box and makes "an unbeatable companion for coleus 'Garnet Robe.' It loves to crawl out onto scorching pavement, so it's good around terraces and pools." It is drought-tolerant and requires full sun.
• Hibiscus acetosella: This purple-leaved hibiscus can grow 5 feet tall by September. "No blooms when grown outside, but the upright shrubby growth, with burgundy maplelike foliage, is perfect for height." It likes sun and is drought-proof.
• Plectranthus argentatus and forsteri 'Marginatus': These are upright semi-shrubby Swedish ivies. Argentatus has large fuzzy gray/silver leaves, with spikes of small white blooms. Forsteri 'Marginatus' has bright green leaves with a white edge and doesn't bloom. "These plants are virtually maintenance-free and seem to mature from a 6-inch cutting into a bushel-basket-sized wonder in about a month."
• Salvia guarinitica 'Omaha': These can get 7 feet tall and wide, with continuous 8-inch spikes of acid-sapphire bloom. "Pinch out the branch tips religiously in May, June, and even early July to make this monster a bit lower, bushier, and even more floriferous. Late-summer salvias are at their best from September through the ... light frosts of October and can single-handedly make the fall garden."
• Sesbania grandiflora (scarlet wisteria tree): This produces nonstop pendant clusters of vermilion flowers. Hummingbirds love them. "And they are extremely easy [to grow] from seed." – Steve Hatch