Published on 10/06/2025 & Updated on 04/10/2025.
If you dream of a flower-filled garden that buzzes with pollinators in the summer, and provides natural structure and hibernation homes for wildlife in the winter, the good news is that a beautiful border planting scheme is achievable, even for the most inexperienced gardeners.
With the RHS listing over 64,000 plant varieties available in the UK, there has never been so much choice for your garden. However, as we’ll share, choosing the right plants for your garden border is a creative project that requires you to think about colours, shapes and rhythm.
Perennial Planting Ideas
Here are our top six perennial planting ideas you’ll need to know to transform your garden borders:
1. Choose a Colour Palette
While your plants will only flower for part of the year and, as you’ll learn, a lot of the beauty is in their foliage, choosing a colour palette is an easy way to narrow down your planting choice for your border.
Just picture your home. You wouldn’t fill it with every colour you find! The same goes for your garden.
A simple tip is to start with one colour you love, whether that is pink, purple-blue, bright yellow or a deep red. Or, you might be starting with the colour of one plant that’s caught your eye or something you already have and love in your border.
Either way, take this colour and use it to work out a complementary palette you will stick to. If you need help, the Adobe colour wheel can suggest shades to work with your starting colour.
2. Use Shape to Create Rhythm
From astrantias to roses to sea holly, perennial flowers come in many different shapes. In designing your garden, you can use these shapes to create rhythm.
When choosing planting ideas, you’re likely to come across the following shapes:
- Umbellifers – Like little umbrellas, these flowers have smaller blooms radiating from a main stem. Think anthriscus and mathiasella, for example.
- Spikes – These flowers create a vertical line with small blooms growing on straight stems, like nepeta and salvia.
- Dots – Think small button-like flowers, sometimes surrounded by petals, such as anemones and echinaceas.
- Flatheads – These are flowers made up of hundreds of florets that make a flat surface, like achillea and sedum.
- Panicles – Imagine clouds of tiny flowers on airy stems, from thalictrum to verbena.
- Grasses – Not strictly flowers, but grasses provide airiness and cohesion in your garden.
- Bulbs and Tubers – Think alliums, dahlias, tulips, and nectaroscordum for dramatic flowers that you often have to plant the year ahead.
While you might be tempted to include them all, we’d recommend you go for just two to three shapes in your garden border planting. Once you’ve chosen these, you can then pick plant species within the shape categories that echo each other and provide a rhythm in your garden.
If you have a specific garden in mind, or are working on a larger or commercial garden and need help, we can support you with expert plant selection and planning. Learn more about our planting plans and book a free initial consultation here.
3. Use Repetition for Cohesion
Here’s a secret good garden designers know: plants look best next to their own kind.
While there’s always the temptation to come home with the latest plants you’ve found at the garden centre, the truth is that planting two or three of the same species together and repeating them through your garden will result in a more confident and cohesive design.
Using repetition is also a good move for pollinators, who find it easier to spot swathes of colour. It’s said that across England, we’ve lost flower-rich grasslands the size of Wales since the 1930s. Repetition isn’t only good for your design: it’ll also help you create a more eco-friendly garden.
4. Don’t Underestimate Height
If you were a florist designing a bouquet, you wouldn’t make all your stems the same height. The same goes for your planting plan.
As you start to pull together your list of favourite plants to include, it’s worth thinking about their height. To work on all levels, a planting plan may need:
- Short plants: less than 0.6m
- Medium plants: 0.6-1.2m
- Tall plants: over 1.2m
When choosing perennials, it helps to think of shorter plants as your base to prevent the earth showing through. Medium plants add undulations and structure to your garden design.
Lastly, tall plants tend to have long, thin stems and will grow through your shorter plants. This means you can ‘look through’ them, creating a garden with layers of texture.
5. Consider Flowering Time
For a garden border that’s flowering as long as possible throughout the year, make sure to consider the flowering time for each species.
The best way to do this is to make a table with your planned species as row headings and each month of the year as column headings. Then, tick each month you can expect each species to be flowering. This will help you spot any gaps.
It’s also worth mentioning that some species, like spikes and alliums, can have beautiful seed heads. Leave these to add structure to your garden and hibernation areas for wildlife through the winter, waiting till around February (or once the plant has begun growing again) to cut them back.
Learn more about how to have a year-round garden in our guide.
6. Include Foliage for Structure and Longevity
You’re nearly there! We hope you’re learning something new and enjoying coming together with your planting plan.
Lastly, think beyond flowers. While blooms bring bursts of colour and joy to your garden, it’s often the foliage that provides the backbone of a truly well-designed border. Leaf shape, texture and tone all play a powerful role in giving structure, contrast and seasonal interest.
Choose plants with architectural leaves, such as bergenia, hosta or ferns, to create strong visual anchors throughout your planting. Incorporate evergreen perennials such as brunnera, euphorbia, or heuchera to ensure your border looks grounded and full even in the cooler months.
If you want to add pops of colour with your foliage but still create a cohesive planting arrangement, add foliage in tones of silver, burgundy or chartreuse to help tie together your colour palette.
Planting Ideas to Transform Your Garden
By now, you’ll probably have lots of planting ideas for your garden border. At this point, it’s time to sketch everything out. Feel free to get creative and use colour to help you visualise your planting plan.
A final tip when you get planting is to invest in 9cm pots, which are often better value. Lay these out before you plant for a final check, and then you’re ready to get started with your bed.
If your garden feels like a blank page and you’re interested in transforming it, Raine can help you bring your ideas to life with planting plans tailored to your outdoor space.
See more gardens we’ve designed here and get in touch to book a free initial consultation.
If you’d like to transform your garden further, read our blogs on ‘How to Break Up a Large Garden‘, ‘How to Create a Cosy Outdoor Seating Area‘ and ‘How to Prepare Your Garden for Autumn‘.
