The three plants I’m sticking to this year for an easy-to-maintain and bloom-filled garden
I'm focusing on fewer plants but with a big impact
Interior designer and content creator Rebecca Constable is one of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on demystifying the process of designing and decorating a home, and helping people work out where to spend and where to save.
Following the buzz and excitement of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the annual horticultural extravaganza, I always come away filled with ideas and ambitious plans for my own garden, only to return home and realise that I don’t possess the skill or patience of the talented horticulturalists who create these beautiful spaces.
Over the years, I’ve therefore found myself looking for planting solutions that are more befitting of my skill and ability, whilst still creating a garden that feels beautiful and abundant, to both us and the pollinators.
And so this year in my garden I am really trying to focus on less plants but with more impact. With that in mind I have managed to find three plants that give me an immense amount of pleasure, repeat flowering all summer, whilst requiring very little input from me, which is probably what most of us are looking for. Personally I think you could make a very sweet garden using just these three plants, plus a few shrubs and some evergreen structure for the winter months.
They are all perennial so they come back each year, dying back in the winter and coming up again in spring, often bigger and better than the year before. And once they get to a certain size I can easily divide them and replant them elsewhere in my garden or give them to neighbours and friends. After all, who doesn’t love free plants?
Erigeron karvinskianus (Mexican fleabane)
The first plant is Erigeron karvinskianus, also known as Mexican fleabane. This daisy-like plant seems happy growing pretty much anywhere, even in between the cracks in the pavement, which makes it ideal if you haven’t got brilliant soil. I live in London so we’ve got quite a bit of clay and if I'm honest I haven’t really got the patience to improve it.
What I love most about Erigeron is that it forms these lovely mounds of daisies and easily spreads, but in a charming way (rather than an invasive one). The flowers are a mixture of white and pink which I think feels playful and fun, and so it looks equally good in a cottage style garden as well as a city courtyard.
The pollinators absolutely love it and I have found mine flowering all the way from April to October so you can’t really ask for more. I’ve planted it along the edge of my borders so it spills over onto the path and I’ve also used it to underplant an olive tree which is in a large pot.
Geranium Rozanne
The second plant is Geranium Rozanne, a perennial that forms lovely big green domes dotted with violet-blue flowers. This is possibly one of my all time favourite plants as I love the combination of the green foliage against the rich purple blooms.
I have found it to be pretty much impossible to kill and each year it comes back even bigger and more abundant. I use Geranium Rozanne to fill any gaps in my borders and like the Erigeron, it looks beautiful when it spills out onto the path.
Again, this will flower from late spring to autumn with a continuous cycle of blooms providing wonderful colour with very little effort required. I’ve planted this on the sunny and shady sides of my garden and so far both are doing very well.
Alchemilla mollis (Lady's mantle)
Finally I have been increasingly drawn to Alchemilla mollis, also known as Lady's mantle. It’s one of those plants that I see often in gardens but didn’t know what it was until a few years ago. I like it because it’s not your traditional flowering plant. It has these greeny-yellow sprays of flowers that appear out of the mid green foliage, creating a very striking, almost neon colour combination.
I love that in the morning when the plant is covered in dew, it looks like it's got drops of silver on it due to its repellant leaves. It feels quite magical. Again what also draws me to this plant is how easily it thrives, the way it flowers over many months and the fact that it spreads. For some, its tendency to spread might be a drawback but I just love the idea of it finding new places to settle in the garden. And like I said before, who doesn’t love free plants?
My plan this summer is to simplify the garden by mainly relying on these three plants. I’ll be removing anything that isn’t thriving and replacing it with one of these reliable performers. Between them, their different flowers and foliage provide enough variety for me. And their easy going nature seems to match my gardening capacity at this point in my life.
