A problem is the rocks and those being used to interrupt the slope. It would be preferable to re-grade the area so that it has a gentle flowing contour, which it almost seems to have already (in this view). Then flowers of your choice could be planted in drifts all the way back to the shrubs behind, the shape and size of the total area being excellent for a flower border. Which perennials to use will have to be based on what is suitable for your region and site. Bulbs and annuals can also be included to maintain color over a long season. Books, magazine articles and web pages on gardening with herbaceous plants are full of tips - many others also want the same characteristics you have asked for here.

I don't want to pull out the boulders. They echo a larger retaining wall in the other half of this large backyard, which used to have some significant slope, but we terraced it with the rocks. The rocks are part of the beauty of this mountain setting, with the aspen trees in that area above them.

I know it's more narrow than an ideal border. I recently read Tracy DiSabato Aust's "The Well-Designed Mixed Garden" and got some general concepts and ideas from that, but her focus was really on deeper borders. I'm wondering what good design principles would say about designing a border that needs to stay as narrow as this is (I won't be broadening it into the lawn either, because of all the sprinkler pipe and stuff that would be too difficult to move). Would you use more uniformity and repetition because this is so narrow and long?

I wasn't suggesting moving out into the lawn. As long as you are married to the rocks being there it will be rocks with some flowers around them. To keep the rocks and have flowers as well put the flowers behind the rocks.

Don't move the lavender; large established plants do best left in place. I have not found it to transplant well even moving it when not in bloom, cutting it back and ensuring I took a huge amount of dirt beyond the roots. (However, I'm sure it has been moved successfully by others.) I'd recommend working everything else in your decided upon color scheme around the existing lavender. If you want bigger drifts, add additional lavenders. And repetition would tie it all together. Lavenders, blues, greys, and the right shades of pink go well punctuated with white. A less jarring yellow like the pure lemon yellow old fashioned Hyperion daylily works in that color mix too, used sparingly.

To me, you've got a great space to work with and even if it were possible to make it wider, I don't think that would be an improvement. Despite DiSabato, more isn't always more. But you need to work out a plan for the gap between the boulders and the back shrubs to really make the border look finished - and for the immediate front, something with a creeping and slightly cascading habit would soften the boulders without obscuring them.

Thanks Beanie. Part of the problem is that it only looks that good for a few weeks, and then the Coreopsis declines and other things get too large, and it starts to look overgrown and with too many colors.

And Duluth -- I appreciate the advice. As far as the area behind the boulders goes, I have problems with getting water there. Maybe I'll have to change my irrigation setup. Right now, that area has about 15 trees and a few shrubs, all watered by two drip irrigation soaker lines. Actually, the drip lines run out of pressure by the end of the 70' or so and I have to place a hose and sprinkler in that area every few weeks to keep a maple and some viburnum shrubs happy. I have rotor sprinklers in the lawn, and I turned some of them so their spray area includes going a few feet above the rocks for some of the area, and I planted some Delosperma iceplant which is creeping along at the tops of the rocks now.

But I'm not sure I want to plant any more flowers up in that area. Perhaps some low shrubs would do, if I got more water to the area. We first had a lot of wildflowers up there, but they turned into a weedy mess after a few years, and my wife was very happy when I finally killed most of the flowers up there by laying down weed block fabric and covering it with a composted mulch. We cut a few holes in the fabric to keep existing stands of gaillardia and a few other tough perennials, but she likes that area under the trees to be less complicated.

So anyway, back to the narrow border -- I hadn't thought about adding more lavender, but that's a good idea, particularly in one spot where there isn't much room between two existing lavender clumps. I could make that more unified by becoming one big drift of lavender.

I do have some Shasta daisies in that bed, too, and I could move them around for the white punctuations you mentioned. I was thinking of removing them all, but I could leave some limited amounts.

But how do I work out a harmonious repetition without just looking like I measured and put a coneflower every five feet or something like that? I have a hard time grasping how to implement the ideas of rhythm and repetition at the same time as varying the textures and all that. They seem like such countervailing concepts, and making them harmonize seems difficult. Maybe it's my male brain!

Add me to the group who likes your border - although I would certainly replace the gold colors with mellower things. I agree duluth re adding more lavender and the colors that go well with it. One of my favorite areas in my driveway/herb border is a combination of lavender, Rosa chinensis minima (seed grown miniature roses that come in a range of colors from white to deep pink), Catmint (Calamintha nepeta subsp. nepeta), plus Angelique tulips in the spring. The roses are the star. They are easy to grow from seed, bloom non-stop from June to hard frost and have profuse bright red hips which carry the interest into late fall and winter. They are hardy and disease resistant and require no care other than cutting off any bits that winter-killed at the ends of branches. They grow to 18-24" and can be cut back in the spring if you want them shorter. Most have single flowers but some are double; some are scented and some are not. I'm surprised that they're not more commonly grown.

For the area at the top of the rocks - would hens'n'chicks do? They need little or no water and like growing with rocks. They would certainly not get tall and floppy like the wildflowers did! They come in such fascinating shapes and habits.

Based on what's growing there now, I assume the area gets enough sun for the plants I mentioned. Your border is defintely a nice feature for your yard.

Anytime you start with the concept of a flower border, you are going to have a lifespan problem. If you think instead of plants for their foliage, you will have something you can always enjoy even if it is not all blooming at the moment in question.

Only thinking flowers, you will also always automatically have a height problem. I really like your rocks, and would personally front them at least partly with lower plants. Or at least, I'd want to put some height variation along the border.

In my own gardening I'm really moving away from the primary use of perennials to using perennials as accents for a framework of more substantial, more year-round plants with a more diverse range of attributes - evergreen foliage, winter buds on deciduous branches, fall foliage, etc. I have a sense here that you're looking not just for unity and repetition, but for structure and durability as well - which you might achieve by moving your model from a flower border to a mixed border.

If I were you I'd go to the nursery and look somewhere other than at the tables of perennials. Check out the ground covers including the shrubs such as junipers or Salix yezo-alpina, the dwarf conifers, the little mounding rhodos, the grasses, the hostas (there are lots for sun) or something other than "flowers." And on the perennial tables, look for the plants with bolder foliage and not just at blooms. Irises, maybe? Ligularia Britt Marie Crawford, if you have enough moisture?

Once you get a diverse range of plant types, you can get your unity and repetition by echoing elements, rather than repeating them - for example, using maybe three different grasses somewhere along the bed (though not at mathematical intervals!).

Somewhere around here there is an old thread in which we discussed foliage rather than flowers, with a good link to the Renegade Gardener. Maybe search this forum for 'foliage,' and it might pop up.

As for the width of the bed, I don't see this as a problem at all, especially since you don't seem to have any barriers to the plants overhanging the grass (my narrowest border is adjacent to a sidewalk, and protruding leaves are a bother). It is again something that can be addressed by using a variety of plant sizes and shapes, so that plants aren't placed soldierlike side-by-side.

KarinL

I'm not sure exactly where you are in Utah, but if you are anywhere close to SLC, have you been to Red Butte Gardens? I think you would find a lot of inspiration there, including the use of boulders and mixing flowering plants in with the boulders. In addition, I have found the personnel there to be extremely knowledgeable and helpful (I don't live there, I visit every year though). If you were to ask them what to put in an area that gets very little water, colors you want, etc. I suspect they could show you a lot that would work for you.

I also like the border.

Prairie Love - Wow, you come to Red Butte every year from North Dakota? Sounds like I have a gem here that I've never visited. I keep meaning to visit Red Butte but haven't done it yet. I work in SLC but live about 30 miles away.

Thanks to the others who responded too. If any of you have more flower suggestions, too, I'm all ears. I think I do want to stick with mostly flowers, and I'm still leaning toward annuals to keep a long bloom season. I do recognize I should look at the foliage of those flowers with a little more interest and not just focus on the flowers. Perhaps someday I'll get to the shrub stage when I am old and tired of maintenance. But for now, I'm willing to maintain an annual border, mixed with perennials.

Still not sure if I should find five plants we like and just repeat them in groups all through the border or if more variety will still look good and have the unity we think we need. It's been such a complicated mess these past few years (later in the season than that photo when more things have grown up) that we think more simplicity is needed.

Ha! Maybe a better way to word it would be that I go to SLC every year to visit friends and I dearly love to visit Red Butte while there. And as one of my friends was one of the people instrumental in its early development, my wish is quite easily accomodated!

Yes, you have a gem. If you like music, investigate the summer concert series - it's wonderful. Go wander the gardens for awhile, then lay out your picnic blanket, have a glass of wine and light supper that you packed, and enjoy top-notch musicians.

If you have children, there is a portion of the garden specifically designed for children. It has a topiary dragon that they can crawl through, it has plants that are intriguing for children to touch (lambs ear), smell, admire.

There are garden sculptures, there is a pond with ducks that want to be fed, there are native plantings, there is an herb garden, a scent garden (where I fell in love with Sweet Autumn Clematis), there is a conifer garden, there is an orangerie, there is a gift shop, etc. If you have any interest in gardening at all, which you obviously do, it is a must-go-to place!

Can you tell I love Red Butte?

My opinion is that you will not be able to create a WOW garden in a 2' wide strip. With this narrow bed all you can do is line plants up along the rocks. A 4' bed would give you a lot more options. Also, what is your general plan for above the boulders? It looks like a great opportunity for planting.

- Brent

Brent, I'm not sure what I'll do above the rocks. I'll have to change the irrigation setup to do anything else up there. It's an area planted with about a dozen aspen trees, a few firs, a spruce, and a few maples, so we're trying to keep it looking like a mountain forest. But the trees are all watered with drip soaker lines, which don't provide any water to the area in front of the trees by the rocks. There are scattered flowers up there -- mostly some gaillardia, a few coreopsis grandiflora, and some blue flax. All these are remnants of an old wildflower mix that was planted up there, but when it became weedy and was hard to keep watered, we covered the area with landscape fabric and covered that with the compost mulch, punching a few holes where a good stand of the gaillardia, etc. could poke through. Most of the flowers up there get no water, except that along the edge of the rocks some overspray is provided by the lawn sprinklers. We have separate sprinklers in the narrow flowerbed, too, but I turned some of the lawn rotors so they would partially go above the rocks to water some Delosperma iceplant that I put just above the rocks.

We're actually pretty happy with the area up there the way it is now. It looks nice and neat with the mulch and keeps the focus on the pretty trees up there. We really just want to focus on the narrow flowerbed. Maybe someday we'll come around to wanting to change the upper area, but that's not a focus for next season.

So, yeah, I think we are going to keep the focus on just the narrow flowerbed, but I want to make it as attractive as possible. Maybe the landscape design forum was the wrong place to post this, since a lot of folks here want to see me do a more extensive project than I'm really asking for. Perhaps I should have just asked the annuals forum and the perennials forum for some flower selection advice?

I did get some gems that I appreciate here -- like adding some more lavender, focusing on foliage as much as or more than flowers, considering including some grey foliage with white punctuations, looking at some low evergreens, ornamental grasses, and finding some bold foliage plants. This was all good advice. Thank you very much!

As oft happens, issues not in question are addressed. I suppose it comes with the territory in trying to look at the total package and its easy to note columns aren't in scale with a house, a porch should be moved, driveway reconfigured to make everything fall into place in a landscape.

I, for one, would love to have your boulders and border - which to my mind only needs a tweak as opposed to a major regrading, boulder moving, bed widening overhaul. Even Vita Sackville-West admitted Sissinghurst (the 'white garden' notwithstanding) was a "rumpus of color". If that look is a little bothersome, replacing some of the more orangy yellow with something subtler would immediately change the look.

I don't look at your border and see "plants in a row", but you can add volume - without more space - with something as simple and non flopping as impatiens or alyssum (the white "Snow Crystals" has a larger flower and grows in low mounds; reseeds freely but is easy to manage) planted in front. Dianthus would do the same and comes in a variety of pinks, reds, salmons, whites with mounding grey-green foliage. There are short sedums with different foliage and flower colors. Artemesia Schmidtiana "Silver Mound" might be worth a look.

During the transition and while you're deciding, experimenting with annuals might be the way to go - cost effective and reliable all season bloom, dizzying array to choose from at any garden center. It would be an easier way to find a color scheme, sizes and shapes that appeal to you.

First, I find the rocks to be a wonderful structural element and if the trees have grown above them for any length of time, a regrade (as one poster suggested) would affect their health. You can't pile soil on top of existing roots in such a dramatic fashion. Second, you mentioned the irrigation set up prevents moving into the lawn. Could you make the border softly undulating to come out a bit where there aren't sprinkler heads to give you a wider space here and there? That would be more interesting visually and give you some room for shrubs and larger grasses. And third, I like the idea of yellow with the lavender, so perhaps changing to Coreopsis verticillata 'Moonbeam' would be better than the C. grandiflora. It provides more of a 'cloud' of softer yellow. No flopping. And OK, fourth, just for example you could put in dwarf chamaecyparis with yellow foliage and a striped ornamental grass. There's a start on the repetition that will pull it together.

Here is a link that might be useful: Coreopsis verticillata 'Moonbeam'