Moon Garden

For a garden that lights up at night, try these plants.

In spring, when you've been itching to get outdoors, you'll welcome having "lit" a pathway or part of the garden with bright white tulips.

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In the enchanted, midsummer night of your dreams, your patio or garden nook assumes a luminescent splendor. White phlox, delphiniums, salvia and dianthus and the silky, six-inch trumpets of moonflowers glow in the moonlight. The scent of flowering tobacco fills the air.

With a little planning and a few of the many white- or night-bloomers available, you can create a moon garden that will light up your nights--summer, fall or spring. Even if there's no moonlight, or a tree canopy blots it out, there's often enough ambient, reflected light to make your garden glow. Here's how to get started:

Plan for the seasons. For a moon garden that glows over three seasons, choose a variety of white annuals and perennials, shrubs and trees that flower at different times. Freesia, snowdrops, white tulips, creamy daffodils, dogwood, fothergilla, spirea, viburnums and rhododendrons will brighten early-to late-spring nights. The white bellflower (Campanula persicifolia 'Alba'), baby's breath, astilbe and falsespires (Sorbaria sorbifolia) flower in summer. Bugbane, monkshood and boltonia (Boltonia asteroides 'Snowbank') bloom from late summer to fall. Shasta daisy (Chrysanthemum x superbum) flower from early summer to frost.

Stock up on night lights. Night bloomers include evening primrose, four o'clocks, some cactus (Cereus sp.), tropical night-blooming water lilies such as 'Texas Shell Pink' and 'Trudy Slocum', angel's trumpet and nightscented stock (Matthiola bicomis or M. incana).

Summersweet, or clethra, perfumes the midsummer garden with its very fragrant upright flowers, which also come in shades of pink.

Blend fragrances. The sweet, heavy scent of flowering tobacco (Nicotiana alata) is most evident at night; look for the white-flowering variety. Summersweet (Clethra alnifolia), a mid-sized rotund shrub, can fill the whole garden with fragrance in July and August. The late-summer flowers of night jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum) are inconspicuous, but their fragrance is divine. Try to avoid competing aromas or too many heavy scents by staggering periods of bloom or by planting in different spots in the garden.

Let your foliage glow too. The silver-gray leaves of artemisia and frosty rosettes of the century plant not only take on a new life at night but provide textural interest as well. You can create unusual effects with different types of variegation--along leaf margins, along the midrib or mottled--in liriope, hostas, heathers, caladium, euonymus and ornamental grasses.

Let the light climb. Glow-in-the-dark roses such as the lovely 'Sombreuil' that reliably reblooms, moonflower (Ipomoea alba) or sweetautumn clematis (Clematis paniculata) add interest when trained to climb a trellis.

Use sound to help set the mood. After night falls and much of the world goes to sleep, sounds become more audible. A water flute can provide soothing background music for evenings on the patio.