Plants shine in moonlight bringing life to your garden after dark

One of life's simplest pleasures is a garden and in a garden, color is often king. Hot colors, reds and oranges and yellows, and regal purples and blues are the stars of a daytime stroll through the garden. But at night everything changes. Ambient light and moonbeams call forth shadowy whites and silvers, pale pinks and yellows. Dark flowers and foliage fade into the background as whites, silvers and pastels stand out serenely in the moonlight.

Midsummer is a great time to spend evening hours in the garden. Twilight lingers and the evening air is warm. It's the perfect time to enjoy a moonlit garden and there is a plethora of excellent plants with which to create your own.

Presented here is just a small sampling for a midsummer moonlight garden. One key to high visual impact is the combination of plants that have the same flowering time. Trees, shrubs and perennials tend to have a set time period for flowering. Choose high, mid and low plants that flower at approximately the same time and then mix flowering annuals throughout to tie the plantings together.

As a rule of thumb in choosing "stars" for the moonlight garden, look for white or pale pink, pale green or pale yellow flowers, silvery foliage or flowers with a pleasant evening fragrance.

A nice place to start an after-work stroll is on the deck or patio where night-flowering jasmine and orange trees in containers perfume the air.

Night blooming water lilies like Juno Texas Shell Pink and Trudy Slocum make great tub or pond plants, extending the available palette of night flowering and fragrant plants.

Moving into the mixed border: Plants for a midsummer moonlight garden.

For the top tier and background choose small trees or tall shrubs. Evergreens make a nice daytime backdrop for white flowered plants and will become nearly invisible in the dark. Japanese tree lilac and several hydrangea varieties bear showy white flowers in midsummer.

Hydrangea Annabelle is a medium-sized shrub easily recognized by its arching stems spilling over with 6-to 10-inch spheres of white flowers. Hydrangea Quick Fire is an upright shrub with conical white flower clusters that later fade to pink and old rose and are beautiful holding snow in the winter.

Other good white-flowered shrubs include Rosa rugosa Blanc Double de Colbert (an intimidating name for a tremendously carefree, fragrant shrub rose), mock orange and Hibiscus White Chiffon. White roses are always beautiful in the evening and two of the nicest intermediate climbing types are Sombreuil and Sally Holmes, both of which are well-behaved and disease-resistant. The cream and grayish green foliage of Cornus alba Elegantissima will light up a partly shady spot, especially at night.

Moving down in size and working from mid-border to the lower front edging, look for a nice mix of smaller shrubs, annuals and perennials. For a change of pace in day lilies, look for the night flowering Hemerocallis citrine. Its fragrant lemon yellow flowers open in the afternoon and stay open until the next morning. Pale orchid Catherine Woodbury, and near-white, diamond dusted Joan Senior are both extended bloomers that open during the day and remain open well into the night.

Choose white flowered varieties of annual marigold, nicotiana, cleome, zinnia and angelonia. Flowering tobacco (either Nicotiana alate or N. sylvestris) grows well in sun or part shade. Achillea Moonshine' and dusty miller have gray foliage and pale yellow flowers that glow softly in the moonlight. Other good perennials are Coreopsis Crème Brulee, Shasta daisy, evening primrose, Bath's Pink dianthus, white Carpathian bellflower and white Veronica.

Lower growing plants that can light up the ground in shady areas include perennials Brunnera Jack Frost, Pulmonaria Majesté and Trevi Fountain, all of which boast silvery foliage, and numerous hosta varieties. Look for hostas with white variegated leaves and/or fragrant flowers. Hosta plantaginea, though it has solid green leaves also has large deliciously fragrant white flowers.

Fill in strategic open spaces with white impatiens or begonias for nonstop flowers. An outstanding ground cover for moonlit nights in the shade is Lamium White Nancy with silver-marked leaves and pure white flowers. Annual white or pink Madness petunias grow well in full sun or part shade and have a lovely evening fragrance.

Moon vine is one of the most fascinating of evening plants, if you can start it early enough so that it matures before early fall frosts cut it down. Fragrant white trumpets unfurl slowly, as evening sets in, and remain open until the following morning.

Two clematis make the shortlist for nighttime showiness; the very vigorous sweet autumn clematis with its profuse masses of starry white flowers and Clematis Henryi, an 8 to 10 foot hybrid with big, flat shimmering white flowers. Sweet autumn clematis is suitable for larger areas only, as it tends to be a large and rampant grower and does attract bees. Henryi is more demure and suitable for a trellis in the mixed border or near the house.

•Beth Gollan is a horticulturalist with The Planter's Palette, 28W571 Roosevelt Road, Winfield, Ill. 60190. Call (630) 293-1040 or visit planterspalette.com.