I suppose the idea of a White Flower Border began years ago when I read about Vita Sackville-West and her white flower garden at Sissinghurst Castle, so many years ago.
If you ever get a chance to read about her, she was an interesting person to say the least.
So I am only copying the idea of white border, not actually copying an English garden. I do not have the room (no castle grounds), the help, or the climate. We get snow here every winter, and some in late fall and early spring, as well as moderately hot summers. Not quite as hot as valley temperatures, since we are in the Sierra foothills. The USDA climate map puts us in zone 8, but not at all like other parts of the country that falls within zone 8 territory.
So a few years back, I planted a white lilac (Syringa vulgaris 'Madame Lemoine') and a white sage-leaf rock-rose (Cistus salviifolius). This was before we got the deer fence, and so both plants did get nibbled quite a bit. So, finally when we got the fence up, it was a different story. Over the years, through a few operations and such, it became neglected. My husband did get the weed-wacker to the area, and mowed the weeds in the middle, just occasionally watering.
There were other plants in there, but what had survived the neglect was the rock-rose, the lilac and the peony.
Oh, and my strawberries were not doing well in the Square Foot Gardens, so I just piled them up there one day, hoping to find them a home, and yes, I actually left them there in a pile! Every now and then, I would water the pile, if they started looking dry.
At the time I was recovering from a knee replacement, and then following that a rotator cuff replacement. So all I was able to do at the time was water. I was very frustrated at the state of affairs...the weeds, that is, and my inability to do anything but water. In some areas where there were few flowers, my husband just weed-whacked in there, at that was the state of the garden for a time.
Eventually I began to recover, and yes, I had literally, a lot of ground to cover. So, I did have a lot on my hands. I was working full-time and so I watered and weeded before and after work.
Now back to the White Flower Border...it was the last one to get weeded, as every year I started all around the house first, then worked my way out from there. Buy the time I got to the "bare bones" of the white garden, you guessed it! Yes, weeds! There were strawberries everywhere, as the weeds didn't bother them at all. And the birds loved them, as I had not protected them in any way from the birds. When we did get a few, oh my, they were delicious! And, of course, they had white flowers, so I just left them in there..."for now".
