You may be familiar with the phrase succession planting from vegetable gardening where it is used to ensure a constant supply of fresh produce, especially for quick summer crops grown from seed. In the ornamental garden we grow fewer annuals – although I will come back to these very useful contributors to the summer borders – and the term succession planting requires a different approach. The objective is much the same, to have a succession of colour and interest throughout the year in each area of the garden and this is particularly important in domestic gardens where there simply is not space for a whole border that looks great in winter but pretty green the rest of the time. Of course, the difference for an ornamental bed is that the vast majority of the plants are there permanently and you may not even be the person who planted them in the first place. So it can be quite a challenge to get that year round effect. But I will describe the ideal situation and you will quickly be able to pick out the seasons where colour is lacking in your own garden. Then it is a case of either deciding to go for a fairly major update, maybe a single border to start with, or using the upcoming spring planting season to add or replace a few key plants to fill gaps in time, instead of space.

I like the word Succession in this context because it makes clear that we are not just choosing plants that are above ground and green all year round, and by this of course, I mean evergreen trees and shrubs. Before there is an outcry, let me say that there is an important place for evergreens in any garden to give height and structure all year round and they can be key features in winter; all the better if they carry flowers and maybe berries too. But the point of succession planting is that the garden changes from season to season as leaves, flowers, fruit, stems appear and fade like tides ebb and flow. So how is this possible in a small bed, how can there be space for such a changing palette of plants all in the same few square metres?

Well the answer lies in another planting term, this time Layered Planting. This means thinking of your borders in 3D – including the vertical – instead of 2D, just the flat area of soil, to make best use of the space. So that you have low growing plants covering the ground, bulbs that will push through, perennials to obscure dying bulb foliage, shrubs to flower at 1-1.5m high, climbers, and the occasional small tree to link your garden to the surrounding landscape. You can only have one plant emerging from the soil at each particular spot of course but the actual ground level footprint of most plants is much smaller than the above ground space they occupy. Shrubs are a great subject where there is a single point of entry the width of the trunk(s) and potential space for other plants around that. It does mean that you need to thin out or ‘raise the canopy’ to allow light and water to the lower level plants or choose a climber that will scramble up to reach the light and offer a second season of flowers. Summer flowering Clematis through Rhododendron is a good example.

And the annuals that I promised I would come back to? Well, fabulous summer colour amongst permanent planting, to provide flowers for cutting, to experiment with a colour scheme, to fill any gaps as you wait for plants to establish and fill the space or simply because you love them!

Once you include the vertical space in your plant planning then you have more plants to play with to provide colour from flowers, leaves, berries and bark at all seasons of the year. Of course this style of gardening is more intensive than you find in nature and the soil needs to be well looked after. A mulch of well-rotted organic matter over an annual dose of a balanced fertiliser is ideal to add nutrients and preserve water in the soil.

Happy Gardening from Alison

I took the photographs at two great gardens in Sussex: Denmans Garden in the West and Pashley Manor in the East.