Add some Victoria Blue Salvia if you can. They are perfect for a Cottage Garden and grow tall and full of blue flowers all summer until frost. Very easy to grow. Needs full sun.

I don't put bulbs in my garden because they're pretty much done with by summer. I do have some Daylillies though, but they only bloom for a month or so.

I have had that in past years. But I prefer Indigo Spires and for a smaller blue salvia, Black and Blue. I grow both as annuals because they don't come back for me overwinter. Thise I have in other area of the garden.

Are you planning to use any shrubs for winter interest? Most of the plants you mention will disappear in late fall unless I don't understand your climate, which is quite possible. :-)

I'm planning a new bed which DH tilled last week and here in zone 3 I need to have something either deciduous with interesting twigs or evergreen or it will be bare by November. I like to see snow on twigs at the least altho I know your winter is much shorter than mine. My biggest problem is using deer resistant plants as this bed is a distance from the house. I'm using a mix of shrubs, perennials, and annuals, maybe some bulbs.

I have plenty of shrubs in my yard. I don't want to see shrubs in a flowerbed that is in the middle of my backyard. This is a spring and summer color flowerbed. Who cares what it looks like in the middle of winter?

i have wooden building from bali and i did like yours...make very awesome....

Here is a link that might be useful: bali wooden building

Rita,
I don't want shrubs in the flowerbeds either. But this just shows how differently plants behave in different parts of the country. My black and blue salvia grows monstrously large. It can grow 5 feet tall! Smaller? Nope, not likely here.
kay

Here is a picture of the area I am working on. Mostly all bare in the middle. It will bring together this daylily garden I have at the end of this bed pictured here. That I have had for two years.

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It will tie in to the far end of the bed which already has a garden started pictured here. Those are my serviceberry shrubs in bloom. They make purple summer berries that the birds are nuts over. I find them bland compaired to blueberries.

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