How to Create a Dreamy Moon Garden That Comes to Life After Dark

Gardens are typically at their most glorious in the morning and the late afternoon. And where are you when the delphiniums are dazzling? Carpooling, commuting, counting beans, running errands. But you don’t have to work the graveyard shift to enjoy your garden during its peak blooming season. Just a few plants with pale flowers and silvery or chartreuse foliage will shimmer beautifully in the evening hours, so you’ll never have to race home to sit back and smell the roses.

Whether you have a green thumb or are partial to just a couple of pots, you can create an evening garden that grows—and glows—beautifully.

How to Plant an Evening Garden

Transform your outdoor space with a garden that comes alive under the moonlight.

Decide on a location

Before you pick a spot for your after-six garden, observe the moon’s path for several nights and note where it is least obstructed by trees and casts the fewest shadows. Peacefulness is paramount, so be sure to keep a safe distance from traffic noise and neighbors.

Choose Your Flowers and Foliage

To ensure the greatest nocturnal visibility, settle on a palette of pale petals and foliage that really stands out at night. Consider whites, pastels, chartreuse, and silver gray plants and flowers, which typically appear wan under the sun’s brightest light but come into their own at dusk and into the evening.

Cleome and other tall plants lend drama and dimension. Another option: fragrant nicotiana (flowering tobacco). Fans of petunias know the flower comes in a rainbow of colors, but in this garden, the variety known as ‘White Wave’ really pops. It also has nonstop blooms and is easy to grow, spreading as much as 3 feet in one season.

Some plants, such as angels’ trumpets, which are fragrant only after dark, have the added benefit of attracting night pollinators (mainly moths). Sweet alyssum’s masses of tiny white flowers are at their best in the moonlight.

Install Your Garden

Plant the front edge of the garden bed with low ground covers. In the middle, use plants that stand between 12 and 24 inches tall. Anchor the back of the garden with plants that are at least 2 feet high. (Read plant tags to check their height specs.) Make sure soil and light are adequate: To do their job in the evening hours, these nighttime performers need good growing conditions during the day.

How to Plant an Evening Container Garden

Even a small space works for a nighttime container garden. Just be sure to use several different plants for a mix of textures.

Decide on a Location

If you would rather use pots or other containers for your evening garden, you can arrange them virtually anywhere—on a patio or a deck, near a walkway, along the edge of your existing garden, or in a corner of the lawn.

Choose Your Flowers and Foliage

Most nighttime plants, especially annuals, are suited to container gardening. When it comes to deciding what to put in your pots, remember that a little bit of fragrance goes a long way. Be sparing in your use of aromatic blooms, and put some distance between them. They should perfume the night, not overpower one another.

Cleome, also known as spider flower, tolerates heat well and doesn’t need staking. Green-and-white caladium and chartreuse bacopa seem to glow in the dark.

Designate one plant to be the garden’s showstopper. White cosmos is a prolific bloomer and makes a great cutting flower. At least one plant in your evening garden, like this vanilla-scented white heliotrope, should have a heavenly perfume.

Install Your Garden

As with a standard evening garden, you’ll want to vary the heights of the plants to create visual interest. Settle on a mix of attractive containers in different shapes, sizes, and materials (such as wood, metal, resin, ceramic, fiberglass, and clay), or consider repurposing vessels you already own, such as an old bucket. Black and dark-colored pots accentuate plant colors at night and make the blooms look as if they’re floating.

Additional Light Sources

The Victorians called after-six gardens “dream gardens” because of the way moonlight played up their magical, mystical appeal. Even on cloudy or moonless nights, you can enjoy them by using candles, path lights, lanterns, or strings of twinkle lights to help illuminate the pale plant colors. Keep the light soft and diffused to mimic the moon’s subtle glow. Solar-powered lights are an ideal way to avoid a costly installation and steep electric bills.