A few tips for planting in alkaline soil

Slightly alkaline soil is the perfect home for small plants, but too much of a good thing can be detrimental to the health of many garden plants. Here's a guide for alkaline soil:

One of the side effects of arid regions is alkaline soil.

• With attention and care, you can modify garden beds to lower the pH or, more easily, you can choose plants that thrive in alkaline soil.
• Fortunately, here you'll find many low-maintenance, well-adapted performers that fill the bill.
• If you need a ground cover for shade where ample water is available, consider adaptable burgundy-leaved bugleweed or lustrous green-leaved pachysandra.
• Trumpet vine and Japanese wisteria are alkaline-tolerant vines that will happily scramble over a rustic fence or arbour.
• Many shrubs are also adaptable. Doublefile viburnum, for example, is no less beautiful when grown in slightly alkaline soil than when it's rooted in slightly acidic soil.
• Group foliage and flowering plants that prefer alkaline soil, such as lilac, peony, gypsophila, pincushion flower and sun rose.
• Save the work of amending garden soil to lower the pH for those beds destined to host annuals or perennials that need neutral or slightly acidic conditions. You can even consider growing those plants in containers filled with their favourite soil mix.

Annual flowering plants grow for only one season and are often surprisingly adaptable to soil pH, so they are ideal plants for gardens with alkaline soil.

• Make the most of annuals by combining them according to time-honoured garden design principles.
• Grow plants with a diversity of flower shapes and plant habits.
• Set rounded mounds of butter daisies alongside the upright flower plumes of celosia, for example.
• Add instant height to an annual bed by incorporating trellises for annual vines, such as scarlet runner bean, to climb. This is a design trick that adds the illusion of permanence to your garden design.
• Underneath it all, grow evergreen ground covers like licorice plant, or evergreen perennial ground covers that can tolerate alkaline soil, such as bugleweed and pachysandra.
• The beauty of annuals, for gardeners with alkaline soil, lies not only in their strong flowering performance but also in the fact that they bow out completely when their growing season is finished.
• This allows you to apply a fresh application of soil sulphur and to turn under old mulch to enrich the soil in beds with organic matter each fall when the bed is cleared of debris.
• Lay down a winter mulch of large bark chips, evergreen boughs, pine straw or some other mulch that won't blow away to protect the soil from erosion, readying it for planting first thing in spring.
• Beds dedicated to annuals can become a movable feast, allowing you to experiment with new plants in new combinations each season.

• Bedding geranium
• Bergenia
• Boston ivy
• Cockscomb
• Cotoneaster
• Dusty miller
• Fuchsia
• Golden rain tree
• Honeysuckle
• Hyacinth bean
• Lacebark pine
• Lantana
• Larkspur
• Lavender
• Plectranthus
• Purple coneflower
• Redbud
• Stock
• Sun rose
• Thyme
• Trumpet vine
• Wishbone flower
• Wisteria
• Yellowwood
• Yucca

The biggest piece of advice for planting in alkaline soil is simple to choose the right plants. Don't let alkaline soil deter you from growing a beautiful garden!