DANVILLE — Dianne Noland — instructor, author, talk show host and esteemed gardener — offers sage advice about keeping a garden in bloom.

“Remember, nothing you do in your garden is wrong,” she said. “Just tell people, ‘My garden is a work in progress. I have so many ideas…’

“Choose flowers and colors for your garden that make you happy,” Noland added. “Let your personality show through.”

Noland entertained about 30 garden enthusiasts recently with her talk on “Flowers for the Landscape,” amusing the group with her easy humor, down-to-earth explanations and showy landscape pictures.

Noland is a University of Illinois Master Gardener and host of the Illinois Gardener show on WILL-TV. Her program, sponsored by the Vermilion County Master Gardeners, was held at the U of I Extension Office in Danville.

Noland playfully referred to herself and other serious gardeners as “a group of plant fanatics,” adding that she insisted on a 40-foot porch when she and her husband built their present house.

“I group my pots of new plants on the porch until I put them in the ground,” Noland said. “When they’re still on the porch I consider them as art,” she added, “but once they’re planted in the ground, they become part of the landscape.”

The gardening show host said she groups dozens of different-sized containers and baskets on the porch at her home in St. Joseph. Every container holds a pleasing mixture of florals and foliage, such as Silver Mountain Artemisia, florist hydrangeas, and foxglove.

Noland still lives by the rule that at least one plant should reach 1½ times the height of the container to balance arrangements. She also recommends stair-stepping container plants down the porch steps, which gives the illusion of various heights without a lot of extra work.

“It’s important to plan your garden ahead of time so you can include a variety of colors and textures that please you,” Noland said. “Plant a yellow bulb amidst a bed of ivy and see how the color looks to you before you decide to plant your yellow annuals in that spot.”

Noland recommends using the “interplanting” method to create attractive, like-colored flowers both in the spring and again in the summer, so they coordinate with the overall color scheme.

Noland refers to bulb plants as “the jewels of spring.” But this gardener does not dig up her daffodil and tulip bulbs each year to keep her yard looking nice. Instead, she just deadheads the blossoms and camouflages the dying leaves by planting late spring and summer annuals in the foreground.

Noland frequently hides the bulb foliage from her spent daffodils and tulips with tall, leafy flowers such as daylilies. Shrub roses and Shasta daisies are other good choices for camouflaging the drying foliage, she said.

To make her job easier when transplanting some of her bulbs in the fall, Noland simply writes the color and variety of the bulb group on the backside of the leaf of one representative flower — when it’s still in bloom.

This way she knows, without a doubt, the color and variety of all her individual bulb flower clusters.

“I’m always thinning my beds for transplanting or sharing my perennials with others,” Noland said. “Gardeners usually have perennials given to them by so many other gardeners that your garden becomes kind of a scrapbook of the other gardens you’ve seen along the way.”

“When you look at your flower garden you want to see shapes, patterns and swirls,” Noland said. She recommends grouping different plants of the same colors together, in order to create a showy mass of color.

“Summer is the time of year for perennials — and lots of them,” Noland said. She suggests building a pathway between beds filled with colors and textures, including obedient plants, coneflowers, trillium and sedum. For different textures choose artemisia, astilbe, catnip, phlox and lavender.

She also recommends planting lilies right next to yellow yarrow and spicing up the look with bright-colored poppies or the spiky “red hot poker” flowers.

This gardening expert also recommends mixing flowers and herbs in with vegetables.

“It’s fun to landscape a vegetable garden,” Noland said. She suggests planting blue salvia in between green peppers and intermingling marigolds with herbs and ornamental pigweed.

“We gardeners have had a very challenging year (with constant freezing and thawing),” she said. “So don’t be surprised if one of your favorite plants doesn’t surface this year and you have to start it all over again.”

Gloria Young of Danville said, “I still learn something new every time I talk with her (Noland). She’s down to earth and very friendly.”

Sandra and Bob McElroy of Westville are master gardener “trainees.”

“My husband and I both love her (Dianne’s) show,” Sandra said. “I have four dogs, so I put flower pots in between my annuals in the garden so the dogs don’t run over everything,” she added. “After listening to Dianne, now I know I’m on the right track with my garden.”

Susan Garner and Robbie Berg drove to Danville from Urbana to listen to Noland’s presentation.

“Dianne is the best of the best when it comes to gardening,” Berg said.

Ron Shaffer of Covington said, “Dianne is both knowledgeable and fun. I usually try to follow the advice she gives on her show, but I don’t always succeed,” he laughed.

Gary Stuhr of Danville was pleased to hear from Noland that his 40 containers of dahlias in different stages of growth can be considered as “art” in his backyard. “I guess they do have a purpose, even before I plant them in the ground,” he chuckled.



FYI

WILL-TV’s Illinois Gardener features experts with extensive knowledge of horticulture, landscape design and entomology. The program is aired at 7 p.m. on Thursdays and repeated at 11 a.m. on Saturdays. Dianne Noland and her panel of experts answer viewer questions about gardening.