White gardens can be planned for any location but they are perhaps best for shady areas as they will brighten up a those areas of your property.
To avoid monotony, white gardens should be designed to take advantage other plant characteristics. Size, form and texture as well as the many different shades of green foliage are as important here as in any garden. Dark evergreen backdrops contrast sharply with the white theme. In the white garden, the shape, color and texture of the foliage become much more important characteristics and help keep the garden interesting. Juxtaposing a plant with finely cut foliage, such as a maiden hair fern, against a larger leafed rhododendron, is an effective way to draw the attention of one’s eye. Specimen trees or shrubs with unique shapes, such as dwarf evergreens, also capture the attention of garden visitors.
Variegated plants, such as the variegated boxleaf euonymus (Euonymus japonicus ‘Microphylla Variegatus’), brighten up the landscape and add splashes of white to the garden. Silver and gray foliage, such as that of lamb’s ear and artemisia, also works well in the white garden as they provide a transition between the white flowers and various greens of the garden’s foliage.
A number of plants can make your white garden a year-round attraction. Bulbs such as snow drops, tulips, daffodils offer some of the earliest blooms of the year. A well planned mix perennials can provide the garden with white flowers from spring through the fall and annuals, though they last only one season, bloom continually throughout the growing season.
Trees and shrubs also play an important role in the white garden. The early blooming star magnolia (Magnolia stellata) offers large, stunning flowers while various varieties of white blooming cherries and crab apples have abundant flowers and are great additions to any garden. Both the Korean spice viburnum (Viburnum carlesi) and the Cummingham white rhododendron (Rhododendron x ‘Cunningham’s White’) are spring blooming shrubs with showy white flowers. Some varieties of hydrangeas, such as the ‘endless summer’ and ‘oak leaf hydrangea’, offer white flowers from mid summer through the fall.
Consider a plant’s bark or berries when designing your garden. For example, the white birch (Betula papyrifera) has beautiful white bark. White winterberry (Ilex serrata leucocarpa), for instance, is a deciduous shrub with clusters of white berries form in the fall and last throughout winter.
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