If you Google "Gertrude Jekyll Plant Palette" you can get to a really, really large version of this photograph, if that would help.

There are many books on Gertrude Jekyll which show the design plans and plant lists for her gardens. Some even transcribe them into more readable script. Your school probably has these books in the library. I borrowed them from my public library system in Georgia.
I visited Upton Grey two years ago--there are two books on that garden alone with plant lists. I saw many asters, heleniums, eryngiums, lambs ears, lilies as well as roses and peonies.

i am leery of doing a high schoolers homework ...

let alone a college senior thesis ...

crikey ...

i am pretty sure.. the green stuff is grass...

i wish you luck on the rest ... you will learn a lot .. doing it yourself...

ken

Thanks to the first response. I actually have a giant stack of Jekyll books sitting beside me right now, but I'm a bit short on time. I've never delved much into English garden styles but hopefully after this project I'll have some time to study them further.

Second response, if I had to guess the grass is a thin bladed fescue. Hard to tell without closer evaluation. I have plenty more to say, but I'll keep that to myself. Best of luck with that parenting and those hostas.

This post was edited by hrigsby on Tue, Nov 11, 14 at 22:08

This forum is specifically for posting a photo of a plant and getting an ID. It's really not for anything much more than that.

If you want to have a discussion about what potentially works in your zone, look at the list of regional forums--I think there is a "Southern Gardening" and a "Southern Coastal Gardening" which might be similar enough to SC to be of use. The Perennials forum should be of use as well.

Since the original message has now disappeared I don't know what everyone is talking about. I Googled as suggested and found a whole stack of photographs of Jekyll Gardens. Which picture is the topic?

Upton Grey produces a plant list and I'm sure they'd be happy to end one to you.

If you have some pictures of individual plants we're happy to help. GJ used a fairly limited number of plants compared with what's around now so id shouldn't be too hard.

Flora, the link below is to the garden, Hestercombe.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:368389}}

Thanks Carol. I'm afraid your link gives me a 404 message. Is it correct? Just looking at images of Hestercombe I'm still not clear what the OP was asking about. Which area of the garden was the subject of the question? And what was the question? Just intrigued.

This was a student of architectural design wishing to find plants suitable as substitutes in zone 7b. That was the basic gist of it. Hope memory is serving me correctly.

That's correct, but due to the...shall I say snide retort I got I decided to take the photo down, as I'm aware of what the majority of the plants are.

My reasoning was to foster a discussion on what could be done to replicate the feel of this garden in Zone 7, but I was told this is the incorrect location for that discussion (although to be fair this forum has way too many subsections). So I took the image down and decided to search elsewhere.

Thanks for the info. people. Maybe the Perennials Forum would be a more suitable place for the question. However, much of the stuff GJ used was pretty hardy so I don't think that many substitutions would be necessary. She was very keen on Bergenia for example. As tough as old boots.

If you can put up another picture I'm happy to have a go at naming the plants if possible.

The issue is heat--the Bergenia in the UK is awsome but pitiful here in my part of Georgia where the summer nights are so warm.
When I visited Upton Grey in September 2012 the snapdragons were still blooming --that's not happening in the American south.
I have had success with various asters, eryngium, erigeron, and the few heleniums available on the market here. GJ also used yucca for focal points and they love it here. It is possible to create a similar design with different plants. The details of the color gradations are harder to replicate in my experience.

To the OP, will this garden be planted in Clemson SC?

Thanks for the further information, junco. I was thinking the problem was likely to be hard winters rather than hot summers in z7. Not so, it seems.

try this link, click on the photo beneath that of Gertrude Jekyll

Here is a link that might be useful: gardens

Thanks, carol23. Well there's pretty clearly a bunch of Eryngium in the foreground for starters. And Stachys all around too. Both GJ favourites. Would those do in NC?

My link shows a closer view of one corner. Bergenia around the edges. Gladioli in the beds. Canna foliage in the middles. (Both Gladioli and Cannas would need lifting in the winter. Nepeta in foreground. Not sure if the random Aconitum/Delphiniums are intentional or not.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:368390}}

Floral_uk, from what I can tell all of that is right. I believe the Delphiniums were intentional.

The difficult part about this is that all of this is hypothetical. I have a thread in the Perennials forum, which is getting a lot of "trial and error" feedback, but this project is for a public park that will probably never be built in its entirety. On the other hand, it will be judged critically and I want to have a rationale for the plants that I have "chosen." There's a long winded reasoning for why I want to mimic this planting style (in an entirely different hardscape context), but the real goal is to keep it relatively simple and low maintenance. Lifting bulbs isn't a problem, but I don't think I'll get someone to comb through 50 rose plants every Spring.

Thank you for these responses thus far. Oh, and the garden will be in the NC foothills, not Clemson. This got off to a rocky start but all of the latter responses have been very helpful. If you have any questions for me please don't hesitate to ask!

Another thing that I am struggling with is combining this sort of perennial style bed with a mixed border that will serve to define spaces within the park (even in the winter months). As you can surely tell, my plant knowledge is a bit lacking as my focus and career goals don't center in this realm. It is something that I am looking forward to learning about and beginning to understand.

This post was edited by hrigsby on Wed, Nov 12, 14 at 14:55

I only had time to skim this...it's kind of counter-productive to entirely delete an original post no matter how annoying a response was.

Another problem though with replicating the so-called English border style in the States is that, even if you can manage to grow the plants...they will be over in a flash and never all bloom together as you see them doing in pictures there. Our springs are too warm and sunny...too much like the UK summer. Then when our actual summers come, of course they are too hot for many of those plants to bloom well. I actually can't think of a really good example off the top of my head, although, for example, in a warm spring the wild foxgloves I used to allow to grow in a part of my garden seemed to completely finish blooming in less than two weeks. I suspect they can usually last much longer in the UK.

And of course it depends on the plants, as well. Some people in the south would argue that they can substitute plants to give a similar effect, for example Lantanas can have a long bloom period. But of course those are different plants and have a different look to them. A handful of US gardens have replicated the style well - ones in better climates like Filoli's huge English border - and obviously there are some in the PNW too. The Cresson Garden in suburban Philadelphia pretty remarkably feels like a miniaturized English estate garden. Where summers are mild on the east coast like Martha's Vineyard I sometimes see pictures that look pretty darn close to English summer gardens, minus of course the lush broad leaved evergreens. Although some people fight that tendency like the Sakonnet Garden in coastal RI, which is pretty mild by northeastern standards and has some of the classic UK rhododendron cultivars like 'Aladdin'.

This post was edited by davidrt28 on Wed, Nov 12, 14 at 16:44

One of the Chicago Botanic GardenâÂÂs most enchanting and popular places is the English Walled Garden, which was designed by renowned English landscape architect John Brookes, Member of the British Empire (MBE)

Here is a link that might be useful: English Walled Garden

Thanks bboy. It must seem very droll to anyone from the British Isles the way they spell out what MBE means. I've never seen that in decades of reading UK books or media. Anyhow the gardens looks very nice, I'll have to check that out if I'm ever in the windy city again. Chicago's summers are usually pretty reasonable by US standards, cooler and slightly less muggy than Philadelphia's. The windiness might actually help a walled garden prove its worth on cooler spring and fall days. I remember having to leave a Cubs baseball game in spring because we hadn't anticipated the wind chill factor in our clothing choices. We had left from the university my brother attended that morning, and it was much warmer 1-2 hours away from the lake.

I can think of a good example now - I've grown Centranthus ruber. It grows just fine on the east coast. However like most perennials it blooms for 2-3 weeks in summer and is done for the year. I'm a bit of a fan of the UK program 'Doc Martin'. Now, it's possible they just so happen to always schedule the shoots when it is blooming. But I'm pretty sure I've never seen an episode where it wasn't in bloom. My guess would be that along the very mild west coast of the UK, in particular, it probably blooms for about 1/2 of the year.

This post was edited by davidrt28 on Wed, Nov 12, 14 at 19:18

Make that 3/4 of the year. And occasionally in mild periods in winter. It's an abundant self sower around here. As is Campanula portenschlagiana.
{{gwi:168631}}

Thanks floral. I suspected that, if anything, the correction of my post would have been that I'd underestimated, not over estimated.

Plants that are highly hybridized sometimes are better at being ever blooming in our climate. This is another reason I'm so annoyed about Digitalis 'Spice Island' no longer being sold in the US. In addition to great looking, well saturated yellow flowers, being almost truly perennial (lasted 4 years), it tended to repeat bloom if we had even a slightly cool period in summer or autumn. The new so called Digiplexus wasn't so much repeat blooming, but the spike lasted an amazingly long time, especially considering how much hotter our summers are than the UK. (or the islands where the foxglove section Isoplexis hail from)

This post was edited by davidrt28 on Thu, Nov 13, 14 at 15:14

I appreciate your difficulty with this, hrigsby.... ten years ago when I was designing a garden for our yard, Gertrude Jekyll was my inspiration for our zone 6b garden in Massachusetts. It took me forever to plan the perennials so that they bloomed in waves throughout spring, summer and fall while being mindful of the height of the blooms, the blooming period, and the color.

We recently moved cross country and left that property, garden, and hardiness zone behind. We blogged extensively about it, however and you might find some ideas on our blog. I often posted on the 15th of the month for "Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day" so you can see what's in bloom..

One of my most invaluable resources was Miss Jekyll's book "Colour in the Garden" published in 1908, which I am blessed to have an original copy of. Long a fan of her cottage gardens, my husband gave it to me for a birthday many years ago. Harvard has digitized it and you can get it as a free ebook by Googling Colour in the Garden 1908 Jekkyl. I went back to it time and time again for ideas. One of the things we did was to edge all of the beds in our English garden with Munstead Lavender, which was first introduced in her garden at Munstead Wood. (All of our many individual flower beds have names and we named our cottage beds Munstead Wood after her estate.)

The Munstead lavender available today is probably descended from the original Munstead lavender, not identical to what she grew originally, but like the original Munstead lavender, it's a shrubby lavender with a wonderful fagrance and flavor that grows equally well in cold and warm climates. I saw entire farms of it when we were visiting Texas so I'm sure it will grow well in your garden in Georgia.

Here is a link that might be useful: Our Garden Journal