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Plants for a white garden

White-flowered plants for a white garden or moon garden: the beds that glow at dusk.

The most famous white garden is Vita Sackville-West's at Sissinghurst, planted in the 1950s: white flowers, grey and silver leaves and green, nothing else. Without colour to look at, the eye reads shape and texture, and the bed looks calm and cool in the heat of the day. At dusk white is the last colour to fade, which is why a white garden by a terrace is called a moon garden.

Every plant here has white flowers, or comes in white. A white bed needs plenty of green and grey between the flowers, and some variety of white: cream, green-white and pure white side by side are more alive than one white repeated.

332 plants: 174 perennials, 45 bulbs, 2 grasses and 111 shrubs.

The dozen to start with

  • Rose of Sharon

    Rose of Sharon

    10 ft · mid July to mid September

    An upright shrub with hollyhock-like flowers in pink, purple, white or violet-blue from midsummer to autumn, when few shrubs flower.

  • Siberian iris

    Siberian iris

    2½ ft · late May to late June

    Elegant, butterfly-like flowers in early summer above clumps of slender, grassy leaves.

  • Japanese anemone

    Japanese anemone

    3 ft · mid August to early October

    Graceful, simple flowers on tall stems that bring fresh colour to late summer and fall.

  • Common lilac

    Common lilac

    11½ ft · early May to late May · host plant

    The lilac of old farmyards: large, heavily scented flower trusses in lilac, purple, white or pink in mid-spring, on a tall, suckering shrub that can live for a century.

  • Hollyhock

    Hollyhock

    6 ft · early July to late August

    Towering spires of wide, open flowers in almost every colour, the signature plant of the cottage garden.

  • Bigleaf hydrangea

    Bigleaf hydrangea

    5 ft · late June to late August

    The classic mophead and lacecap hydrangea, with big, glossy leaves and large flower heads.

  • Mountain laurel

    Mountain laurel

    8 ft · late May to late June

    A native evergreen with crimped, sugar-icing buds that open into cup-shaped flowers of white, pink or red in late spring, in clusters that cover the plant.

  • Peony

    Peony

    3 ft · late May to late June

    Large, often fragrant blooms in late spring on a long-lived plant that can thrive for decades.

  • Hyacinth

    Hyacinth

    10 in · mid April to early May

    Dense, waxy spikes of intensely fragrant flowers in blue, purple, pink, white or soft yellow, in mid-spring.

  • Calla lily

    Calla lily

    2½ ft · mid May to mid July

    Pure white, funnel-shaped flowers of great elegance, each wrapped around a yellow spike, above glossy, arrow-shaped leaves.

  • Snowdrop

    Snowdrop

    6 in · early March to late March

    Nodding white bells that push up through the last of the snow, weeks before anything else.

  • Crocus

    Crocus

    5 in · late March to mid April

    Goblet-shaped flowers that open wide in early spring sun and feed the first bees of the year.

A bed planned only from these plants

The planner was given only the plants on this page that suit zone 6 and full sun, and designed this 16 × 8 ft (4.9 × 2.4 m) bed from them when the page was made.

A 16 × 8 ft (4.9 × 2.4 m) bed at eye level in early May: Sea thrift, Muhly grass 'White Cloud', Wild quinine, Red valerian, Winter heath, Heather, Spring starflower, Dutch iris, Daffodil.
A 16 × 8 ft (4.9 × 2.4 m) formal bed in zone 6, full sun, seen from the path in early May.
2. Muhly grass 'White Cloud'21. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift11. Sea thrift15. Winter heath55. Winter heath55. Winter heath55. Winter heath55. Winter heath55. Winter heath55. Winter heath55. Winter heath55. Winter heath55. Winter heath56. Heather66. Heather66. Heather66. Heather66. Heather66. Heather64. Red valerian44. Red valerian44. Red valerian44. Red valerian44. Red valerian44. Red valerian45. Winter heath55. Winter heath55. Winter heath53. Wild quinine33. Wild quinine33. Wild quinine33. Wild quinine33. Wild quinine33. Wild quinine35. Winter heath55. Winter heath55. Winter heath58. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris8. Dutch iris9. Daffodil9. Daffodil9. Daffodil9. Daffodil9. Daffodil9. Daffodil7. Spring starflower7. Spring starflower7. Spring starflower7. Spring starflower7. Spring starflower7. Spring starflower
From above, to scale. Each circle is one plant, as wide as the room it needs.

The plants

  1. 1 Sea thrift × 19, pink
  2. 2 Muhly grass 'White Cloud' × 1, white
  3. 3 Wild quinine × 6, white
  4. 4 Red valerian × 6, red
  5. 5 Winter heath × 16, purple
  6. 6 Heather × 6, purple
  7. 7 Spring starflower × 6, blue
  8. 8 Dutch iris × 14, yellow
  9. 9 Daffodil × 6, orange

Planned as a formal bed: 80 of the 80 plants (100%) are mirrored across the middle of the bed: each stands on the middle line or has a twin of its own kind opposite it. The bed is tied together by its repeats: four kinds come round again along it, among them winter heath and wild quinine. Sea thrift and winter heath finish the front edge.

The planner's own design check: 12 Excellent, 5 Good. It flags one thing to watch: Nothing on this plan is highly poisonous or an aggressive spreader.

Open this bed in the planner Change its size, the sun or the style, move plants about, or swap one for another.

All 332 plants

Show all 332, by where they go in a bed

Front of a bed 111

Middle of a bed 92

Back of a bed 129

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