An all-year border for the West's cold climates

Sunset, Nov, 1988

It's a cold-climate idea-let tall and lowgrowing conifers form a border's backbone, then fill in around them with annuals and perennials for summer color.

This year-round border in Anchorage, Alaska-adaptable to intermountain and high-elevation gardens in the rest of the West-doubles as entry garden and privacy screen. Three spruce trees and seven low-growing mugho pines-planted eight years ago from 5-gallon cans-straddle the berm's 4 1/2-foot-tall crest (to build the berm, the owners brought in three truckloads of soil). In winter, snow blankets their bases and cloaks their branches, creating a green-and-white privacy screen. In summer, blooming annuals and perennials around them greet visitors and passersby with a riot of color.

For maximum effect, the owners plant annuals and perennials according to height tallest ones, such as delphiniums, near the berm's crest, shortest ones spilling over the brick-edged outer borders. They also combine plants by flower color; complementary colors go side by side in one area, plants in subtle shadings of one color go together in another.

Lady ferns (Athyrium filix-femina) flank conifers in summer; they die back each winter but return with warm weather.

Late each spring, the owners dig steer manure into the soil around the conifers and let it sit for a few days before planting. They plant seedlings from sixpacks (in coldest areas, wait until after last freeze to set out heat lovers like marigolds), but you can direct-sow seeds of many annuals now.

Seedlings are spaced 4 inches apart. Plants get watered about once a week; spent blooms are clipped regularly.