The pictures you see of beautiful gardens reflect just a moment in time. The perfect light, peak color and faultless relationships don’t last. Gardens are a work in progress. They change and evolve.
You don’t need to beat yourself up trying to make your garden picture-perfect. You can create an enviable landscape with the help of a few garden design principles and a lot of looking at other gardens.
Balance
Develop your garden based on a real or imaginary axis (central reference point). Strive to make both sides equal in visual weight.
Symmetrical gardens are formal with each side a mirror image of the other.
Asymmetrical plans are designed with equal weight on both sides of the axis, but different plants. For example, an asymmetrical scheme might include a large plant on one side and three small plants on the other to give a sense of balance.
Numbers
Buy and plant in odd numbers up to nine plants. With 10 or more the eye no longer comprehends how many plants are in the group. A single plant is usually lost in the garden unless it is large plant that is used as a focal point.
If you are partial to a certain plant, try using multiple varieties of it – one of a kind can sometimes work in this instance. For example, combine different varieties of shade-loving hosta. The large leaves add coarse texture to the garden, and the plants deliver an attractive mix of sizes and foliage color.
Sun-loving salvias provide a block of fine, textured, airy color as they bloom. The plants offer the opportunity to stagger height as well as select bloom time and color. The viewer won’t be able to determine how many plants make up the many stalks.
Texture
Include different plant textures in your garden. A garden full of small-leafed plants with tiny blooms is boring. You don’t need to use every leaf shape and size, but contrast makes a garden more interesting – big and small, shiny and fuzzy leaves, spiky, round, elongated and toothed shapes. The same is true for blooms: big and small, drooping and upright, airy and dense.
Colors
Too many different colors look chaotic. Choose a color scheme. Limit your palette to colors that relate well to one another. Know that bright colors hold up in the bright sun; they don’t wash out.
Silvery foliage and white blooms show up in the evening.
Remember that color in the garden does not come from just blooms; it comes from foliage, too. In addition to green, add orange yellow, lime, silver-gray, pink, red, purple burgundy, almost-black and variegated foliage to the garden.
Height
In a border, install taller plants in the rear and decreasingly shorter plants in front. In an island garden all plants become visible when taller plants are sited in the middle and decreasingly shorter plants surround the center spot.
Always consider the mature size of a plant when you include it in your design.
Pay attention to shapes. Plants form triangles, lollipops, balls, columns, mounds; they trail and weep. Various shapes are not just for the back row; work appropriately sized plants with these shapes into your garden at different levels.
Repetition
Repeat colors, shapes, textures and patterns to unify your landscape. Remember, less can be more. Avoid too many disparate elements.
If a plant doesn’t work, dig it up and move it, recycle it in a container or give it away. You don’t have to leave it in the garden for the entire season, or even a week.
Look at other gardens, the good and the bad; you will see what works and what doesn’t. Take the insight home and apply it to your own garden.
Each year brings another opportunity to create a picture-perfect garden. Try not to miss the magic moment when it all comes together.
Reach DEBBIE MENCHEK, a Clemson Master Gardener, at dmgha3@aol.com.
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