“High Country Heaven” — Southern Living, July 2011
North Carolina Perennial Garden Design
The latest project from garden designer Troy Rhone is a blissfully content perennial garden design in the mountains near Mount Airy, North Carolina. Here jubilant flowers reign supreme. Stone steps and walks descend the hillside, linking terraces overflowing with flowers, lending the garden’s year-round structure. Anchored by stone paths, stunning planting beds stair-step down the slope.
At first glance, the wide array of varying sizes, shapes, and colors appear to be random. Hydrangeas, summer phlox, daisies, lilies, black-eyed Susans, tiny boxwoods and Queen Anne’s lace test boundaries, forget rules and jostle for our attention. In reality, however, the displays result from careful garden design planning. Troy Rhone uses four factors to ensure their appeal: color sweeps, continuity, climate, and cutting.
Read the full article “High Country Heaven” to learn more about this perennial garden design plan and see images. Also included in this full article is a handy chart to “keep flowers coming”—a plan for succession of colors throughout the growing season.
Created by garden designer Troy Rhone of Birmingham and landscape architect Chip Callaway of Greensboro, North Carolina.