Shades of spring, unleashed

IMAGINE a garden that never fades, lush and green in any season, with flowers that are always in bloom. Sound like paradise? Well, not to me. I want a garden that builds in spring like a floral crescendo, exploding into song by May before fading to a few quiet blooms in fall. My garden can sleep with the bears in winter, for all I care. I want one that changes with the seasons and I want spring flowers and lots of them.

In California, the high desert lies brown and barren for most of the year, then, for a few short weeks in spring, boils over with orange poppies and blue lupine, with yellow coreopsis and pink owl’s clover, before fading away for another year. The hills may be a serene olive drab most of the time, but they too are washed with color as ceanothus and other shrubs come into bloom.

In my garden, the show starts about now, with fragrant white freesias and a creamy native iris named ‘Chimes.’ A lovely lavender-flowered common heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens) attracts butterflies later in the season. This is one of the few things that is always in bloom. Correa ‘Ivory Bells,’ one of my favorite small shrubs, lean out and over my spreading iris. Pale yellow and a red sparaxis are in full bloom, and the brighter yellow homeria, another spring blooming bulb, are coming along nicely.

Then there are the true geraniums (what most people call geraniums are actually pelargoniums), such as the lovely blue and white ‘Roxanne’ and the useful ground-covering kinds with dainty pinkish-lavender flowers. The garden brightens up when the colors of alstroemeria come into bloom, without a doubt the most floriferous flower, despised as a garden cliche by some, loved by others. If you like big, thundering color, it’s the Bloom Daddy.

In April and into May the beat quickens: baby’s breath, bearded iris, bidens, coral bells, wild columbine, coreopsis, daylily, Jerusalem sage, penstemon, Santa Barbara daisy, our native seaside daisy, sisyrinchium, two kinds of perennial verbena, watsonia, and yarrow -- one after another like floral firecrackers.

That’s a lot of flowers at one time, at least in a small urban garden, and to keep it from looking like a combination pizza, it takes some planning and a lot of experimentation to find what goes with what and where it looks best. You can try moving an offender to another spot, but a gardener needs to know when to yank things out as well as when to nurture. Plants that won’t get along end up on the compost pile, earth to earth, flower to flower.

The easiest to move are what gardeners call perennials. These are generally plants with soft stems. The stems may come and go, but the roots remain. A few of the most flowery plants in my garden are actually small shrubs or shrub-like plants with woody stems, and they don’t like being moved. The fringe flower (Loropetalum chinense) is a good example, all pretty in pink in spring, but stunning at all times, thanks to elegant reddish foliage. Flowers are wonderful, but remember the importance of foliage. Without the flowering shrubs, the garden would have little or no form in fall and winter.

The sunrose is another little shrublet, so low and so stunning in spring. I grow three varieties: a pale yellow, a deep orange and a good red named ‘Mesa Wine.’ Unfortunately, it looks as if the orange is about to move on to that great garden in the sky. I may replant it or try something else instead.

Many plants that flower heavily don’t live long -- too much time making blossoms, too little spent making strong roots and stems. But hey, that’s cool. Party till you drop, then grow something else. A garden can change so much through the years that it’s unrecognizable in old snapshots.

Trying out new flowers is the fun in gardening. Plant something you barely know the name of, then wait to see what the flowers look like, or how it gets along with others in the garden. An example: There’s a new coreopsis named ‘Limerock Ruby’ that I planted as a little slip early last spring, and it grew and grew like credit card debt until it burst into mind-numbing bloom. Then it died. Oh well, it was so spectacular and such a delicious shade of red, I’ll plant another.

Years ago the garden was mostly pinks and blues, then yellows and purple. Now it’s reds with some yellow and a little lavender-blue. If I had enough space, I’d keep them all and just group colors in various sections, but in this little garden it’s easier to stick to one scheme at a time.

I’ll probably plant my latest nursery discoveries in a few days. It’s a good time to plant perennial flowers. Some may bloom later in the year, but for most I’ll have to wait until next spring to see if the flowers were worth it or not. I can hardly wait.

Robert Smaus also writes “The Monthly Gardener” for Home. He can be reached at home@latimes.com.

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A lasting flourish

Here are 10 perennial plants that flower mightily and are easy to grow. Plant them now or in fall.

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Alstroemeria hybrids. You’ve seen them in vases on white restaurant tablecloths. New kinds are so colorful they make you squint. Bloom spring-fall with armfuls of flowers.

Aster frikartii. Lots of lilac daisies on a lovely, trouble-free plant. Blooms early summer-fall.

Bidens. Several heights but most are golden yellow and spread like weeds. New kinds are said to be less aggressive, but keep an eye on them. Spring-fall.

Coreopsis. Well-mannered, yellow to red daisies. Summer bloom. Most short-lived.

Japanese anemone. These wait until late summer to flower and they really put on a show. Impossible to get rid of once established, so be careful where you plant. The only ones in this list that tolerate shade.

Penstemon. Many kinds and some are tough and floriferous, others not so much.

Pentas. Soft shrublets in several colors. Lots of flowers all the time. You’ll get bored with their company before they call it quits.

Santa Barbara daisy (Erigeron karvinskianus). Little white daisies that keep coming like ants after sugar. Seeds about, but not a problem.

Verbena bonariensis and V. rigida. OK, so they’re weeds when let loose, but who cares? They fill all those little bare spots where you forgot to plant something. It’s as if they’re clairvoyant. How do they know?

Yarrow. Slowly spreading, summer blooming, they come in some really classy colors.

-- Robert Smaus