'More than merely interesting': Making white a theme in your garden

Vita Sackville-West was an English garden journalist, designer, poet, and novelist of some fame and with her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson owned over 400 acres of land where they lived in Sissinghurst Castle.

In the winter of 1950, she wrote a column that only the colors of white, green, grey, and silver were to be allowed to grow in this new pale garden room thus creating what is now known as the White Garden, one of the most famous gardens of Sissinghurst. It is now part of the National Trust: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/sissinghurst-castle-kent.

She had already designed the Cottage Garden with a narrow range of hot colors. Restricting the color to white she realized that more interest need be created by using different shapes, textures and forms. Most garden designs have this in common. She planted grey, white, silver blooming and foliage plants like Artemisia, grey Santolina and Achillea and white flowering plants like Regal Lily (Lilium regale), baby’s breath (Gypsophila) and white spires of foxgloves, foxtail lily (Eremurus) and Delphiniums.

"It is something more than merely interesting," she later wrote. "It is great fun and endlessly amusing as an experiment, capable of perennial improvement, as you take away the things that don’t fit in, or that don’t satisfy you, and replace them by something you like better."

This sounds like the confession of a true gardener as don’t we all do this?

I don’t have a totally white-themed garden, but I have definitely enjoyed a very white spring at my home. First to bloom were the two Bradford flowering pears in early March. Since then I have recently removed one of them which was a tough decision because the tree is beautiful in bloom and the shade was desirable. However, the tree has the annoying production of a trillion little pears that drop on the sidewalk and driveway over a long period of time and require constant sweeping and cleaning up. The tree was also vulnerable to fireblight and was often shedding dead branches.

We planted an Oklahoma redbud tree in its place so we will someday enjoy a different color. Redbuds hold a special place in my gardening heart as my previous homestead was named ‘Redbud Farm’ because there were 13 mature redbuds on the farm which made spring there a pink delight. One has to wonder why this tree was not named ‘Pinkbud’ instead of ‘Redbud.’

Sorry, I got sidetracked by the pear tree.

Next to bloom were three large lush white blooming Spirea bushes, a pink jasmine (Jasminum polyanthum) which I planted when I first moved here on a 6-foot tall steel pyramid trellis that I had welded together years ago. Pink jasmine buds are pink but the flowers are white. Also blooming was a large white Camellia and several white Calla lilies so I enjoyed a wall of white for about three weeks.

More recently a snowball is blooming. I did not know what kind of snowball bush it was, so I had to do a little research which I will share with you see: bit.ly/3P9XPaV.

There are several kinds of plants referred to as snowball shrubs. It turns out that mine is likely the European snowball bush (Viburnum opulus ‘Sterile) which has medium-sized 3-5 inch bloom at the end of branches and the leaves have three major lobes like a maple

Another white flower I have enjoyed is Candytuft (Iberis sempervirens) a short plant that is in the forefront of my borders. It is a lovely long flowering white that attracts the eye. There are also several white azaleas as well as some stunning pink and red ones. Santa Barbara daisies, also known as fleabane, have white petals, attract beneficial insects, and pollinators and also add a subtle attraction to the eye.

I will soon enjoy Gardenias, Star Jasmine and a hybrid rugose white rose named ‘Polar Ice.’ It was hybridized by Dr. Dzidra Alfredovna Rieksta in 1963 in Latvia and was introduced into Germany in 1991 as 'Polareis' and in 2005 to the US by Star Roses as ‘Polar Ice.’ It has come a long way to get to my back garden so I enjoy the provenance and flowers!

I hope you can happily enjoy many whiter flowers in your gardens too.

If you have a gardening-related question you can contact the UC Master Gardeners at (209) 953-6112. More information can be found on our website: sjmastergardeners.ucanr.edu/CONTACT_US.

This article originally appeared on The Record: Ideas for flowers, trees to make a white-themed garden