Stalwart companions
A handful of good perennials provide long-term underpinning in border schemes, partnering a series of less enduring plant stars. Leathery-leaved bergenias with creeping rhizomes flower as winter turns to spring. Most are an undistinguished purplish-pink, but B. `Silberliche bears white flowers tinged with pink as they age. Mainly evergreen, with the leaves of some forms suffused with purple tones after frost, bergenias give good winter ground cover and may be planted in drifts or even as edging, formally setting off neighboring flower groups of hellebores, Brunnera macrophylla, perennial or biennial honesties and overhead canopies of flowering cherries. Gertrude Jekyll Used bergenias in many of her planting schemes. In the Great Plat at Hestercombe, B. x schmidtii lines flower beds set in the mown grass where roses, lilies and delphiniums flower later in the season. For early-autumn effects Miss Jekyll allowed Aster divaricatus with starry white daisy-flowers on floppy black stems to cascade over bergenias along the edge of a north-facing bed.
Many perennials grown for -beautiful flowers contribute foliage interest over a much longer period. The grass-like leaves of day-lilies make a good foil to neighboring plants: those of the old favorite Hemerocallis fulva 'Fiore Pleno' emerge golden-yellow in spring. Such leaf colors look wonderful against sweeps of blue-flowered bulbs or forget-me-nots. Earliest to flower is H. hlio-asphodelus (until recently more familiar as H. flava) with clear yellow flowers: although each flower lasts only a day, a succession of blooms ensures a long flowering period. Mid- to late-summer species and cultivars produce coarser leaves and lemon-yellow, bronze or orange flowers, which are attractive with neighboring blues or more startling in 'hot' red and yellow schemes.
Herbaceous peonies flower at the same time as the first roses, to give a border early summer color and interest, and also look good under the skirts of gracefully arching deciduous shrubs. Both the old-fashioned Paeonia officinalis, with its blowzy heads of cottage- garden luxuriance, and the more aristocratic P. lactiflora hybrids have valuable foliage that remains decorative — especially if sprayed at intervals against botrytis — through the summer months.
Some of the hardy cranesbill geraniums are more suitable for massing, but the less vigorous associate well with shrub roses and may be planted to make front-of border drifts in sun and shade. Cutting back after early flowering produces new leafy growth that remains attractive all summer and sometimes colors with the first frosts. Geranium renardii has gray-green leaves and white flowers veined appealingly with streaks of maroon. Revelling in full sun, it contrasts with the more architectural leaves of irises. G. x magnificum has deeply cut hairy green leaves, which tint red in autumn, and violet-blue flowers. It grows well under the arching branches of the pale yellow Rosa Triihlingsgold' and around the base of some of the fan- shaped Hybrid Musks such as pale pink R. 'Penelope' or subtle apricot-tinged R. 'Buff Beauty'. The taller more upright Geranium psilostemon also has leaves that color, but we grow it for its glorious black-center magenta flowers, which glow next to silvery-leaved artemisias or tower above neighboring frothy- flowered alchemillas.
Both their light green leaves and their feathery lime- yellow flower-sprays make alchemillas indispensable as low-profile companion plants over a long season. They perform at the same time as pink- or red-flowered heucheras and heucherellas, creating garden pictures when combined with tall glaucous-leaved Thalictrum flavum glaucum with fluffy yellow plumes, and groups of blue-flowered delphiniums. Sedums also furnish sunny front-of-border situations with handsome gray-green foliage and have flower-heads composed of a myriad small stars, which are much beloved by butterflies. They look attractive when bronzed by frosts in winter. Above decorative fleshy leaves, the stiff stems of Sedum `Herbstfreude' hold large pink flower-heads which later turn coppery-red.
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