New England Garden Ideas | Two Gardens for all Seasons

Plan your garden well, and you’ll enjoy beauty in spring, summer, fall, and winter. Get started using these New England garden ideas. With the right combination of plants, a small garden can be enchanting throughout the year, filled with the beauty of spring and summer flowers, late-summer and autumn fruits, fall foliage color, and winter form. The same garden can also be ecologically functional, nourishing beneficial insects and birds. Here we present two small gardens, each about 300 square feet in area: one for a site receiving direct sun for at least six hours each day and another for a site in the shade of tall trees, where dappled sunlight reaches the ground. For each design, we selected plants for their outstanding ornamental character and for their ability to attract pollinators, including native bees, butterflies, and birds. Each collection of plants creates a garden for all seasons. All of the recommended plants can be grown in USDA Hardiness Zones 4 through 7. Most, including some of the non-natives, provide food and shelter to insects and birds. (The few non-native plants in these designs aren’t considered invasive.) In our description of each plant, “N” stands for plants that are native to the the eastern United States, “P” for plants that attract pollinators and other beneficial insects, and “B” for plants that provide food for birds. Reeser Manley and Marjorie Peronto are the authors of The New England Gardener’s Year (Cadent Publishing, 2013).