English Ivy and Virginia Creeper — nice combination. That tapestry idea works well in a hedge, too, or in a bank planting. We have privet hedges in which birds have seeded a little Euonymus alata and some Forsythia. The leaves are similar sizes, but slightly different textures and shades of green, and of course, in spring and fall we get a bit of yellow here, a bit of red there. Because we’re keeping them sheared (twice a summer), we prevent seeds from developing. All three plants are pretty vigorous, so the form of the hedge stays constant.
I did a planting on a bank of glacial till to which we added a short layer of loam. It’s in full sun most of the day, and unirrigated, so it needed some tough-customer plants. The final concept was to make a tapestry of heathers, heaths, old-field perennials, grasses, and creeping junipers, and as with the mayapple/Alleghany spurge combo, to let the plants decide where to creep and colonize. As the year rolls along, the planting’s owners see an always-changing combination of colors, textures, and forms: green-grey yarrow develops pale pink umbels, bright green creeping heath suddenly springs into bright white bloom, dry wispy crowns of dormant grass fill with pale spikes that in weeks push out luxuriant, upright stands of little bluestem.
The nice thing is to set up an idea, design and plant it, and then let each plant follow its nature. The sublety comes not so much from what we do, but what the plants choose to do once we step back.
Deborah Howe
Toby Wolf
