How to create a moon garden
by Hanna Rhoades
Gardening is one of the most popular hobbies in the world. Most of the time it heavily involves, well, the sun. If you like flowers but are not hugely impressed with the sun, what you need is a Moon Garden.
Moon Gardening - Gardening at Night
A Moon Garden (also known as a Night Garden) is a garden that is planted specifically to be enjoyed at dusk and in the moonlight. Moon Gardens typically have flowers and plants that reflect waning light or moonlight well or smell their best in the evening.
Moon Friendly Flowers
Moon friendly flowers can get lost during the daylight hours but at night they simply shine. Moon friendly flowers will be light in colour, normally white, cream or light yellow. These colours will pop out under the light of the moon and will appear to glow in low light.
Some fantastic moon friendly flowers include:
- Petunias
- Irises
- Lilies
- Peonies
- Lily of the valley
- Yucca
- Baby's breath
Many of these flowers come in multiple colours, so make sure you get a colour that will look good in the night garden.
Scent of the Night
While white and light coloured flowers are pretty, any experienced gardener will tell you that gardening is a feast for the senses (that would be plural) and so therefore you want not only to tempt the eyes, but the nose as well. There are many flowers that only produce scent at night and typically these flowers have a stronger scent than their day blooming counterparts.
Some night scented flowers include:
- Moonflower (yes, really that is its name)
- Evening primrose
- Datura
- Honeysuckle
- Nicotina
- Jasmine
- Garden heliotrope
Foliage for Dark Places
Foliage is an often overlooked element to any garden, but for a Moon Garden, foliage plants can take a lovely garden and turn it into a stunning garden. Foliage plants that do best in a Moon Garden are either silver coloured, chartreuse or variegated. The light colours of these leafy plants reflect moonlight much in the same way that light coloured flowers do but, unlike flowers, foliage does not fade quickly. Foliage will help keep your Moon Garden glowing even when you are in-between flowering flushes on your flowering plants.
Some great foliage plants for night include:
Final Thoughts on Your Moon Garden
While we have made some plant suggestions in this article, feel free to take a look around your local garden nursery (many have evening hours) for other plants and flowers that will work well in your Moon Garden. Just remember to look for plants with light coloured flowers or foliage and you can be on your way to gardening by the luminscent glow of the moon's light.
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Dogwood burns eerie silver by the light of the moon
Honeysuckle smells sweet
Every moon garden secretly wants to have a sundial.
There is also something called moon gardening, whereby one gardens according to the phases of the moon.
Hanna Rhoades is a popular garden writer, blogger and owner of the site Gardening Know How. She lives in the suburbs of Cleveland (Ohio) where she tends to her beloved garden and family.
