There are literally hundreds of possible choices....maybe even thousands! I would suggest you visit your local garden center/retail nursery (not a box store!!) and see what you like and what they recommend for your area. Not all perennials do well in all parts of the country! (geographical location is more important than zone info)

That is not a very big area so you will want to pay close attention to mature sizes, more so especially if you want a variety of plants with different seasons of interest. In my area, garden phlox spreads rather aggressively so I would be reluctant to include in such a tiny area with other plants.

Winter interest with herbaceous perennials is going to be a challenge.....most die back to the ground in winter, leaving the area bare and the soil exposed to weed infiltration. There are some that will retain foliage all year, but that is a pretty short list and your local sources will be best able to make any suggestions in that direction.

Thank you. I am going to our local garden center next weekend - just wasn't sure if there were any "go to" suggestions for what goes well with daffodils, something that would hide the dying foliage and give summer interest. Thanks for the heads up about the phlox, maybe i'll have to eliminate that from my plan.

Welcome! If you let us know your closest big city that will be helpful to those that are familiar with your area.

I'm in the Raleigh, NC area.

When you go visit the garden center, be sure to take the bed measurements with you. They look pretty small - maybe 4’ x 4’?

And here’s a hint I gave my daughter in law about daffodils: no, they’ll never bloom if you cut the green foliage off. Leave it till it shrivels and turns brown and you can easily pull it off. In my area, that’s about July 4 every year.

Thanks, I'll be sure to take those measurements with me. Off the top of my head I know it's 9 feet from the corner where the bricks meet the curb to the corner where they meet the driveway.

I do know about needing to leave the leaves on the daffodils as I looked into it last year when they didn't bloom, so I left them all until they were wilted and brown with high hopes for this year, but they still didn't bloom. I figure it has to be that they're not getting enough sun where they are and hoping moving to the end of the driveway we'll finally get blooms next year. I don't even know if they're yellow or a mix of yellow and white since we've only been in the house two years and they haven't bloomed either of those two.

For good impact I would use a flowering ground cover that does well in your area. I would not do a variety. Just one type.

For more specific help try the Perennial Forum. They are very helpful and there may be someone in your area.

how far is the water.. from the end of the driveway ...

if its of any distance.. you might not want to plant water hogs out there.. that require you to either hoik the hose out there every day ... or worse.. leave the hose laying there all summer ...

and keep in mind.. even drought tolerant plants.. need water.. the first year .. to settle in.. and grow the root mass needed to become rather drought resistant ...

nice brick work ... but you may have created a lawn mowing conundrum ... requiring the weedwhip ..... and in the long run.. you might extend the design to reduce said need ....

in my world.. i would just go buy a selection of low and medium height plants from a local nursery [rather than bigbox] ... and just plant them all ... and see what works out .. and then next season ... just continue experimenting ... imo .. too many newbs think in terms of interior design ... and immediate impact.. whereas i found.. over the years ... that a garden tends to be more of an evolution ... based on many more variables than might be in a static indoor situation .... e.g. the pavement.. will be a heat sink ... getting hotter than if not there.. but it will also hold heat.. deeper into the night... reducing any potential night recovery time ... so .. plant selection MIGHT need to take that into account ... depending on the level of daily care you are willing to invest ... meaning the watering issue mentioned above ....

also ... if you see something in the general area ... snap some pix.. and we can ID things here ... local inspiration can be much easier to replicate.. as compared to wandering the WWW and hoping it will work in your area ...

welcome to the forums ... and as noted.. add your location in every post ...

ken

I also live in NC and have a mailbox bed. Mine is a bit far from the hose so it gets dry. I have concerns about not growing things that will block my view of the road. My driveway is right beside this bed. I have daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and a big mound of white candytuft right next to the street, draping over the curb. I love the candytuft. It's tough, drought tolerant once established, and blooms a long time. Stays low. It's blooming right now. Later in summer, I think late June or July, a groundcover type of electric blue plumbago chimes in. It's also very tough and drought tolerant. It blooms several weeks. I have daylilies a little further back, some Stargazer lilies, a couple of rose plants, iris, sedum, and a twice blooming azalea. Those don't interfere with seeing the street. I have room for a few annuals which would be nice for constant color. I grew these morning glories on my mailbox a couple of years ago but they took forever to come into bloom and needed watering often.

It looks to me like you could add a little topsoil or compost to your mailbox garden.

Another perennial I like a lot which is drought tolerant and stays pretty all summer is Powis Castle artemesia. It has lacy silver foliage. Can get a little taller if you let it but you don't have to let it. Oh, I have some lamb's ear and rose campion in that bed also. Both drought tolerant. I like some silver leaved contrast.

ken_adrian, thank you for all that info! I do have a long driveway, so will definitely look for something that doesn't need constant watering. That was my reasoning for not wanting to put any annuals there. I figured (maybe correctly, maybe not) that perennials would be more resistant since they're used to surviving through many natural conditions throughout the seasons. I like the idea about experimenting to start, rather than focusing on a finished design. Thanks for that!

erasmus_gw, great to hear some local suggestions! I wish I had a larger bed to include all the wonderful plants you listed! On the mailbox side, that's as large as we can go before we hit the property line, and then we just mirrored it on the other side. I'm going to do some more research on the ones you listed and try to narrow down what I might be able to include in that space...and that list may change of course based on what I can find at my local garden center.

As far as the topsoil/compost you mentioned, I took the pic I included after we outlined the space with bricks. I haven't taken an updated pic since we finished prepping it and am not home to do so, but we did dig up the top layer of grass, till the "soil" (clay really), and mixed in a good portion of compost (Soil3 if you're familiar). We also made sure to mound it up a bit since we're lower on a slope than the neighbors and do get some water runoff there during heavy rains, so are hoping between the brick border and mounded soil, we can protect the plantings.

Yeah, my mailbox bed is bigger, about 12' long, shaped like a lozenge. Salvia is a good , drought tolerant plant. I like Russian sage also.

Erasmus, when you say candytuft, do you mean the annual or the perennial (Iberia semperviren)? Just helping to clarify.

I would suggest this type of upright black-eyed Susans. You get large flowers but can still see the traffic. And they love a hot dry spot with very little watering involved. I grow these nearby in Danville Virginia and have many seeds on hand. My messaging is turned on, so drop me a note sometime. Good luck with your project.

Appreciate the suggestion, Harold. I actually finished it up last weekend. Took some advice from earlier up and tried not to stress too much and treat it as a bit of an experiment. The amount of sun is questionable - 4 or 5 hours was an estimate, but it might be less, especially on the mailbox side. However, it's afternoon sun in North Carolina, so it's intense. So I have a bit of a variety in there as far as sun needs, and we'll see what does well. On the right side of the driveway, I'm not thrilled with the placement of the yellow/green plants in back, as I ran out of room and really wish the bed was just a bit deeper so I could've spaced them out. I know they're crowded and don't look great, and it might not be great for the plants. However, I already bought them and didn't want to leave them out as they are evergreen and thought that would be important to keeping the area looking nice in the winter, so I figured we'd start there, I can see what does well, and maybe move stuff around later on. I went to the nursery with not much of a plan, just having a basic sense of my sun situation and talking to one of the employees about what might work.

I have white phlox in front (might need more sun, so we'll see), Gaura (had never of heard of it, but it was recommended for my partial sun requirement and blooms later in the season when the Columbine behind it is no longer blooming), and then behind the Columbine is Euphorbia.

Time will tell how it all works out, and I'm keeping an open mind about needing to find replacements if something doesn't really get the sun/shade it needs.

They all look happily tucked in. Babs, I am referring to perennial candytuft. Mine is very hardy here, and is a pretty old plant. Someone ran over it with a car or truck and knocked my mailbox 15' down the road but my candytuft came back. It's one of my favorite plants.

The planting looks very nice! I am just a scosh concerned about the placement of the euphorbia with respect to the columbines. That looks like Ascot Rainbow and that (and any other xmartinii cultivar) will easily grow to 2'x2'. I think it may become a bit crowded by the end of the season.......

ETA: perennial candytuft is one of my favorite plants as well. Tough as nails and right now, a solid cloud of pure white!! Even the deer leave it alone!

Glad to see you left a good margin between plants and road. I have found this year that neighbors walking their dogs have allowed their pets to contribute rather more nitrogen and salts to my curbside flowers than they can handle.