Just as you update your wardrobe by periodically purging clothes that you no longer like and adding new favorites, you can similarly tune up your garden from time to time. And that’s the idea behind Rebecca Sweet’s new book, “Refresh Your Garden Design with Color, Texture Form” (FW Media; $20).
After working with hundreds of clients over the years, the Bay Area landscape designer, author and speaker set out to answer the question she’s most often asked: How do I take my garden to the next level without a complete overhaul?
“A lot of people have existing gardens, or buy a new house, and don’t know what to remove, keep and relocate,” Sweet says. “It’s easy to start from scratch, but harder to work around keeping 75 percent of what’s already there and having it tie together. People get stuck in a rut, just like with their wardrobes, and the hardest part is seeing their gardens with fresh eyes.”
By using simple techniques, she says, you can weave disjointed parts of your landscape back together again. The first step is to home in on one or a few things that you really like, such as specific flowers, shrubs or trees. “The best way to do this is to take a photo, print it, and look at it inside your house,” Sweet says. “Things look a lot different on paper than they do in person.”
Circle areas that you like on the photo, then take the color, texture or form of those elements and start incorporating them into your garden, working in one small area at a time so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Repeat these favorite components throughout your yard to create a pulled-together look, but as you go along, be sure to inject a few contrasting plants. “Otherwise things get monotonous,” Sweet says.
Sweet realizes that, by sharing tricks of the trade in her book, she may be writing herself out of a job. But her overarching goal is to help gardeners take charge.
“I want people to get their confidence back,” Sweet says. “They’re so afraid they’re making the wrong choice, and that it’s not going to look good. But I want them to feel that there’s a lot they can do themselves, and to experiment and have fun. There are no hard and fast rules. It really, truly is about empowering people.”
Design: Rebecca Sweet, www.harmonyinthegarden.com.
Steal these looks
Rebecca Sweet’s design ethos revolves around balancing the use of color, texture and form. These vignettes break down ideas that you can incorporate into your spring garden.
All-over contrast
Without a flower in sight, this bed’s varied leaf shapes, colors and textures create a beautiful tapestry using prickly blue ‘Globosa’ spruce, chartreuse ‘Mikawa Yatsubusa’ Japanese maple, wispy Japanese forest grass, lacey maroon ‘Pipa’s Red’ loropetalum and white-edged ‘Silver and Gold’ dogwood. “What really makes this combination stand out is the contrast,” Sweet says, adding that, while a combo this diverse has the potential to look chaotic, what keeps it under control is the bulk of each plant. “If each plant was smaller in mass, it would start to look busier.” Design: Proscape Landscape Design, Freeland and Sabrina Tanner, (707) 226-2540.
Dash of color
Though they vary dramatically in texture, fine-bladed ‘Elijah Blue’ fescue and broad-leaved verbascum are similar enough in their soft silvery hue that they might fade away in the landscape, especially against a deep green backdrop of juniper. But a bright crimson burst of ‘Red Riding Hood’ penstemon adds energy and keeps the otherwise cool green-and-gray combo from lulling you to sleep. “If you’re sticking within a limited color range, make sure you occasionally wake up the eye with a pop of contrasting color,” Sweet says.
Same form, different hues
“If you’re combining plants that are similar in texture and form, you need them to be different colors,” Sweet says. “Otherwise, they’ll all meld together.” This bed full of spiky, upright growers – pale blue lavender in the front, purple fountain grass in the middle and blond Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ in the rear – is a perfect example. If using all green grasses, for instance, the bed would look flat. But because warm colors advance visually, the rich burgundy patch of fountain grass jumps forward, making each plant layer distinct and causing the bed to look deeper than it is.
Cool look for a hot space
Sweet uses a lot of drought-tolerant plants in her designs and says that many low-water choices – such as lamb’s ears, dymondia, santolina and the artemisia shown here – have gray foliage. The problem with having too much of that shade in a design, she cautions, is that it can look washed out. So, when planting light gray or silver, Sweet advises using the pale hues for roughly a third of the design, and balancing it with darker tones, such as deep purple verbena blooms and rich green carex, for the remaining two-thirds of the plants. “It doesn’t look hot and parched which is a common side effect of very drought-tolerant gardens,” Sweet says.
In-your-face form
These textures and shapes are so bold, it’s hard to take your eyes off of them, and together they make a perfect focal point. An overflowing tabletop pot of pale green cobweb sempervivum gives way to giant blue, puckery hosta leaves that are topped by super sharp Puya that looks like giant, spinning pinwheels and adds a subtle sense of motion. “If going for a really dramatic texture or shape contrast, simplify the color palette,” Sweet says. “Because there’s so much going on, using all cool colors helps this combination look serene. If it had a lot of bright colors, this might be a visual headache.” Design: Proscape Landscape Design, Freeland and Sabrina Tanner, (707) 226-2540.
Perfect harmony
Here, both repetition and contrast flow through every plant choice. Mounding burgundy heuchera and Japanese maple coordinate with both the hues in the coppery-colored stones and the vibrant magenta ‘Red Eye’ rhododendron blooms while setting off the deep-green pulmonaria and lime ‘Angelina’ sedum. In terms of texture, the frilly heuchera echoes the ruffly rhododendron flowers while standing out against the lance-shaped pulmonaria leaves, feathery sedum, and finely serrated Japanese maple foliage. And because the plants are mostly evergreen in Northern California, this display looks good all year round. “This has lots of contrast and lots of repetition,” Sweet says. “You could stand here and look at this for a long time – it’s very engaging.”
Julie Chai is a Mountain View freelance writer. E-mail: home@sfchronicle.com
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