11 Ideas to Steal for a Moonlight Garden

Moonlight gardens–planted with white and silvery flowers that glow after dark–became an early 20th century fad in both the US and Europe. After having a dream about a garden that shimmered in twilight, in the 1950s Vita Sackville-West created a white garden at Sissinghurst Castle that today remains England’s most visited garden.

And when archeologists stumbled recently upon the ruins of a lost garden at the Taj Mahal where night-blooming white flowers filled the air with perfume in the 17th century, the evidence helped solve a mystery dating to ancient Persia: What makes a moonlight garden?

Among the clues found at the Taj Mahal were charred bits of ancient flowering fruit trees, shards of pale sandstone decorated with a delicate lotus design, and the faint outline of an octagonal pool where more than two dozen fountains once sprayed water into the night air. The idea then, as now, was to create a luminous glow of white, silver, and gray to reflect moonlight.

Here are 10 garden ideas to steal for a modern moonlight garden:

Billowy Bowers

At Sissinghurst Castle, Sackville-West and husband Harold Nicolson reworked the design of their former rose garden (after moving the roses elsewhere) to create a  series of small beds bordered by circuitous boxwood hedges and pathways that would encourage passersby to wander among the plants. The maze and the high hedges lend a secret-garden air to an after-hours stroll.

For more of Sissinghurst’s gardens, see Garden Visit: Vita’s Sunset Garden.

Mirror Images

In garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith’s white garden at the 2010 Chelsea Flower Show, the surface of the water in large zinc water troughs reflects and emphasizes the white flowers blooming nearby.

Stuart-Smith’s planting list for his 2010 Chelsea garden included: Epimedium, Hosta ‘Devon Green’, Asarum, and Rodgersia. Different shapes, textures, and leaf colors added interest and layers to a monochromatic garden.

Pale Planters

White clay pots and planters look luminous by moonlight and will convey a feeling of “whiteness” in the garden even when flowers are not in bloom.

Silver Slivers

At Sissinghurst, one of the white garden’s secrets is a preponderance of gray and silver, colors that make nearby whites look whiter. For more, see tomorrow’s Expert Advice post, in which Petersham Nursersies head gardener Thomas Broom helps Kendra compile a plant list of favorite white flowers for a moonlight garden.

Whitescapes

Paint hardscape elements and materials white to add an extra dimension of white to a moonlight garden.

Tapestry Of Texture

For more of this garden, see Landscape Architect Visit: “Sex in the City” Meets Edith Wharton in Manhattan.

A Pleasing Perfume

For more of this garden, see Grandeur in the Hamptons: A Sprawling Estate Garden.

Add Annuals

Fill in the gaps when roses and other perennials aren’t blooming with potted annuals such as white impatiens, begonias, and nicotiana.

Shadowy Giants

For more of this garden, see Grandeur in the Hamptons: A Sprawling Estate Garden.

Tall shrubs and hedges serve the same purpose as sculpture in a moonlight garden–strong, geometric shapes are visible even in the dark.

Vines And Climbers

Successive Bloomers

Plant flowers that bloom successively over the course of a season. When Sackville-West designed the white garden at Sissinghurst, the plant list included spring flowers, such as irises; June roses; lilies “seen by twilight or moonlight gleaming under the shadow of a thick wood,” and summer stalwarts such as gladiolas and late-season pompom dahlias.

N.B.: This post is an update; it was first published April 2017.

For more ways to add white to a garden, see:

• Trend Alert: 5 Scented Night Bloomers.
• Pots and Planters Iced with a White Glaze.
• 10 Garden Ideas to Steal from India.