How To Create A Night Garden

We live halfway up the side of a mountain in the UpperFraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada free from the glow of imitation startwinkles sparkling from city lights. Whenwe moved here three and a half years ago we found that on most summer nights weare bathed in moonlight. First appearing first between peaks and then high overthe mountain its silvery light shines down onto our home and our gardens. One night last summer I noticed our whiteclematis reflected in the moonlight  and as I admired it a thought came to me(once in awhile that happens), “I could plant more white flowering plants andhave a that I could enjoy day and night.” It is not as if it was the first time I hadseen moonlight reflecting off white flowers, in our other gardens over theyears we had dogwoods, snowball trees, white hydrangeas, white lilac bushes andan assortment of other white this and that. It was however the first time it occurred to me to deliberately plant aNight Garden.

Having made the decision to do so, I wanted to do it in such a way that my daytime garden did not suffer as a consequence. I wanted it to be beautiful from the time the sun came up until the moon went down. I began doing a little research as to what would do best in our climate and armed with that little knowledge I set off to the nurseries. Being that we live in an agricultural community I had many nurseries to choose from and as it turned out the same held true for the plants as well. The other thing that I discovered, in one of those blazing A DUH moments is that the white flowers brought out the hues and “punched up” the shades in the coloured flowers. I could have a daytime garden and a night garden - I could literally have my "cake and eat it too"!

Adding colour to the whites or whites to the colours,whichever, made this “planting a Night Garden” idea easy. I went for colourful petunias and whitepetunias plus shades of red and pink geraniums and white geraniums. I did the same with the cosmos, found abeautiful jasmine and some hollyhocks. As we have now “downsized” into a town home I did not have the room togo “nuts” but the selections and varieties of flowers and plants would haveenabled me to keep right on going had I not been limited by the size of myflower beds. To my flats of flowers Iadded some foliage plants that had greyor silvery leaves. These two also servedto set off the coloured flowers nicely and the silver, I thought, would reflectthe moonlight. One of those times inlife when I get to be right – they did.

I then bought a few strings of solar powered butterflylights and another solar powered light with a big ball that changed colour fromblue, to green, to red, to purple. Theglobe sits atop a thin metal pipe and a top the orb sits a metal butterfly inthe same colour as the pipe. I was readyto give my Clematis some night time company. The finished product was, if I do say so myself, quite stunning – as inbeautiful not as in what the heck just hit me!

Driving up to our home in the darkness last summer ourgarden greeted us, when we looked out our windows after the sun had gone down, ourgarden waved at us in the gentle mountain breezes and when we sat out on ourdeck enjoying the lights from the city below, the reflected light from ourflowers and our twinkling butterfly lights never failed to catch our eyes andthe gentle scent of jasmine brushes past our noses.

Planting a Night Garden is simple to do and veryrewarding. White amongst the colours,silver and grey tinted foliage a touch of fragrance, a few twinkling lights,the moon the stars, and the night is yours. This year I think I might add a little water feature just to completethe mood.