Ligustrum japonicum
Photo by Michael Spencer
When designing a landscape, it’s important to consider plants in the mid story — the middle part of your garden that starts about 5 feet off the ground and goes up to about 15 to 20 feet. Mid-story plants help add stability and balance to the landscape.
Ligustrum japonicum | Ligustrum
Photo by Michael Spencer
ABOVE: Bougainvillea is a flowering plant that can add a pop of color to your mid-story landscape.
LEFT: Notice how this ligustrum japonicum adds balance between the low plants and the tall palm trees.
Assessing design and design process is one of those enterprises regarded as either simple or simplistic, chiefly by those not engaged in the exercise.While the process of design is second nature, writing about it has been a sometimes uphill endeavor. I find myself peeling away layers of my own efforts, asking myself why this or that, is done. For the most part observing my own process has been has been quite encouraging. But how to describe it to non-designers?
The middle
Since Aristotle is one of those timeless people needing no introduction, here is his take on a subtle truth about artistic excellence: the middle.
Speaking about plays, Aristotle said they are “a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.”
And as with so many things, once you read these words you realize the truth of it: It’s the middle that counts.
Now think about art class in school, where the teacher patiently explained to 11-year-olds the notion that drawings have a foreground, a midground and a background. Oddly, this idea was not discovered by the art world until quite late in history — imagine just about any Egyptian representation, or Greek, for that matter.
Egyptian carvings would have been cool with palm trees or sand dunes in the background, don’t you think?
Turn it over
You can rotate this notion, like this: background becomes “canopy,” and foreground becomes “ground plane.” And perhaps most importantly, the midground becomes “mid story.” This middle part of your garden, the part that starts perhaps 5 feet or so off the ground and goes up to 15 or 20 feet, is called the “mid story.” This is where your garden comes alive, because without the middle, it is not whole.
Many designers remember that a garden needs a canopy provided by shade trees (oaks, mahogany, black olive) or by large palms (royals, for example). These canopy plantings provide scale and shade, which is necessary on the ground plane. Think of the canopy as more than 30 feet in the air.
Shrubs, too, rarely escape attention. Shrubs are mostly 5 feet tall or less. Shrubs are what many neophytes focus attention on.
Inside the range
The mid story is the heart of your garden, populated largely by patio trees, multi-stem critters with no leaves below a small canopy, and there are dozens of examples. Among the larger patio trees are ligustum, seagrape, queen’s crape myrtle and senna (also called cassia and currently blooming with yellow flowers here in Southwest Florida). When a garden requires a smaller individual, consider jatropha, angel trumpet, pygmy date palm, or even Everglades palm (Paurotis), which is easily managed as either a large plant or a daintier individual.
The rules of design apply in your choice of mid-story plants: First, do no harm, which means horticultural requirements of the plant are the first factors to consider. Following suitability, your design is driven by texture, contrast and the other usual suspects that will help you make your choices.
Not just trees
The mid-story might be populated by garden objects other than plants — we don’t want any stifled creativity around here, do we? A large hanging staghorn fern, for example, is mid story. Those of you who appreciate statuary will find them creating a useful scale, depending on the piece. And an overhead trellis is mid story while providing shade and a place to hang vines.
As always I welcome your comments, feedback, or questions, and I answer all email: ms@msadesign.com.
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