© Janet Davis
A warm breeze scudding clouds across the moon. Stars twinkling in a black velvet sky. The heady perfume of nicotiana and jasmine. Sinatra crooning out an open window. Water trickling gently gently from a stone cherub’s mouth and rippling the surface of a pond below. The intermittent droning of the evening’s last lovesick cicada.
By day, a garden might be an open
book, a place of transparent beauty full of contrasting shapes and bright
colors. But by night, a well-planned garden can be a romantic, mysterious
hideaway—a cool, leafy refuge from the heat of the house and an idyllic place
for entertaining. And if you work all day and only manage to relax in your
garden once the dishes are done and the kids are tucked in, it’s important to
squeeze every drop of potential out of that big “living room” outdoors. Don’t
be satisfied with a garden that clocks off at dusk—make it work the night
shift! That means thinking about garden
lighting, not just the electric kind, but the romantic glow of candles and
lanterns. And it means choosing plants that pay their rent 24 hours a day, not
just when the sun shines.
Night gardens should be intimate and up-close. Don’t worry about the far reaches of the yard—think patio, terrace or deck, the places where you’ll be sitting and enjoying the ambience of evening, yet close enough to the house to fetch drinks, change the music or hear the baby crying. Visually, a garden that’s a riot of color by day fades into the shadows after nightfall, but flowers that are white, ivory or palest yellow, mauve or pink stand out in the darkness. And since more white flowers have perfume than any other color (the better to attract those nocturnal moths that pollinate them), there’s often a double advantage to using pale posies.
Pale
Flowers for the Night Garden
Concentrate on choosing
mid-summer flowers that bloom in July and August when night temperatures are
warm enough for you to want to be outdoors.
Good perennial choices include Shasta daisies; the white delphinium
‘Galahad’; gooseneck loosestrife (Lysimachia clethroides); coreopsis 
‘Moonshine’ (Coreopsis
verticillata); baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata); astilbe ‘Bridal
Veil’; ‘Southern Belle’ swamp mallow (Hibiscus
moscheutos) with its plate-sized flowers in white or pale pink; a good
white summer phlox like ‘Mt. Fuji’ or ‘White Admiral’;billowing ornamental kale
(Crambe cordifolia); black snakeroot (Actaea racemosa), a
handsome Northeast native with 5-foot tall wands of tiny white July flowers;
Peegee hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata ‘Grandiflora’ with its
ivory-white trusses that turn rose in fall; airy Boltonia asteroides;
silverlace vine (Polygonum aubertii); and sweet autumn clematis (Clematis
terniflora) with its vining, 15-foot stems bearing clouds of tiny white
flowers in late summer and autumn.
Annuals for the night garden are numerous, and many are fragrant. Night-scented evening stock (Matthiola longipetala) makes up for its nondescript flowers with after-dark perfume that packs a huge punch. Try white snapdragons; sweet alyssum; tall white cosmos; white petunias and begonias; bushy ‘Star White’ or ‘Profusion White’ zinnia (both selections of Zinnia angustifolia), two superb 16-inch annuals that are covered in blooms from early June to late September; and heavily-perfumed angel’s trumpet (Datura inoxia). Best of all annuals for the night garden is tall, white-flowered tobacco (Nicotiana alata), a Brazilian native that looks downright lanky by day, but perks up as the sun goes down, when it fills the garden with the sweetest fragrance ever. (Don’t buy named cultivars like ‘Nikki White’ which are usually short and unscented; this one is a big, robust species that’s sometimes difficult to find in nurseries, but very easy to grow from seed.)
There are some excellent
white roses for the night garden, but it’s hard to beat the popular floribunda
‘Iceberg’, which stays in bloom most of the season. Some of the paler David
Austin “English” roses like light-pink ‘Heritage’ and fragrant, white ‘Fair
Bianca’ are 
good summer-bloomers, as is the
ultra-hardy Canadian-bred ‘Morden Blush’, with its flesh-pink blossoms. And
don’t forget white-flowered shrubs like smooth hydrangea (Hydrangea
arborescens ‘Grandiflora’) and old-fashioned rose-of-sharon (Hibiscus
syriacus).
Fragrant
Bulbs for Night
In the summer bulb department, make sure you plant lots of fragrant hardy lilies, either in fall or very early spring. If you situate them near doorways and windows, you have the added advantage of enjoying their scent indoors. My favorites are waxy, white regal lily (Lilium regale) for late June and early July; the pale pink trumpet lily ‘Pink Perfection’ and its yellow cousin ‘Golden Trumpet’, both tall, richly fragrant July-bloomers; and the August-flowering Oriental lilies with their white or pink flowers and spicy, clove-like scent. A fabulous, tender bulb with iris-like leaves and elegant, wine-throated, white flowers on slender three-foot stems is Ethiopian gladiolus (Gladiolus bicolor ‘Murielae’). In spring, plant the tiny bulbs by the handfuls in pots and borders near where you sit, so by August when the flowers open, you can sniff their perfume up close.
Light the Night Garden
The night garden is center
stage, but like all good stages, it must be dramatically illuminated. Look to lighting to create special effects
in the night garden, but remember that part of the magic is in having some
areas subtly lit and others in darkness. In other words, less is more. After
all, you’re not illuminating an airport runway here, you’re trying to create a
romantic mood that doesn’t blind the neighbors. (I speak from experience, being
on the receiving end of an all-night security spotlight, the worst kind of
light pollution if it’s not aimed correctly.)
Choose pinpoint uplighting to show off the white trunk of a paper birch or pick up details in a garden statue. Use downlighting to create a moonlight effect, and backlighting to silhouette a clump of swishing, ornamental grass, highlight a stand of ferns, or display the architectural branching of an attractive shrub. Spotlight one side of a Japanese stone lantern beside a lily pond so it casts a reflection on the water surface after dark. Install area lighting in a variety of styles to make paths safe and to highlight bits of flower color here and there. If you buy a low-voltage (12-volt) system, you can likely install the transformer and lights yourself, but to hardwire a 120-volt system, you’ll need expert electrical help to make sure everything is safely grounded with a GFI (ground fault interrupter) device. No money for night-lighting? Never mind. There’s something truly magical about being in a garden filled with flickering candlelight. Use votive candle holders or simple jars to hold votive candles or tea lights, placing them on tables, fences and throughout the garden. Or for a party, place votive candles and holders in a layer of sand at the bottom of white paper lunch bags and you’ll have intriguing white squares of light glowing in the dark.
Adapted
from an article that appeared originally in Canadian Gardening magazine