Planting Tips
Style
Before you begin selecting plants, it is imperative that you first of all have committed to a specific style that you are trying to create in your garden. This is often influenced by the architecture of your home, built structures which on a site or potentially the natural landscape. The clearer the vision you have of the overall style you are working towards, the better your plant selections will be and ultimately this will reflect in the final product of your garden.
Restraint
Possibly the biggest mistake that people often make in their garden is using too many different types of plants. This is a critical mistake because you lose sight of any recognisable planting scheme. If you want to have a seamless flow in your garden, select a small number of species and be discipline to stick to those selected. The design of the garden often suffers because people are insistent on cramming in all of their favourite plants. When designing a space it is important to note that not all plants fit well together. Therefore utilising a restrained palette of plants which work together will significantly enhance the overall look and feel of any landscape. The extent of a palette is strongly linked to the size of your garden. The larger the garden, the greater the number of species that your palette can support. Since the majority of the population now live in small inner city properties, my recommendation would be to try and limit your garden to a maximum of only 5 or 6 different species.
Quantity
When creating a garden, people often try to stretch their budgets and almost always, this means people cut back on the quantity of plants. This is not an ideal solution, as your garden will be left looking scarce and vacant. You want your planting beds to be full and dense in appearance to provide the most impact. Therefore my suggestion is, when taking on a garden it may be necessary to break up your yard into separate projects and plant out what you can afford at one time and make sure that each area is planted out with the appropriate number of plants required to adequately fill the space. I understand commission the services of a designer, two tips that I could provide:
Study your plants and ensure that you know the heights and widths that your plants will reach at maturity. This will help determine the quantities you need per square metre to fill a bed. Don’t be alarmed when your garden bed looks bare to begin with, have patience and faith that the plants will mature and will achieve the desired look within a few years.
If you are ever unsure on quantities tend to stick towards the side of more rather than less. There really is nothing worse than waiting patiently for several years for your garden to transition into your vision, only to realise that your plants don’t fill the space as desired.
Repetition
If you want to build a cohesive garden that has a strong visual style and identity, repetition is critical. Choose your limited palette of quality plants and repeat them throughout your garden from your front entry, side walkway all the way through to your back boundary. If you follow this advice, no matter how you design or arrange the plants you can’t go wrong and your garden will appear as on overall scheme.
Layering
When structuring your garden beds, always consider the layuering of your plants in regards to the height and the longevity of their peak display throughout the year. I often like to use evergreen hedges to define the front and rear of the bed to define the structure of the garden. This structure is critical to creating a garden that looks impressive year round. It also has the benefit of allowing you to fill the centre with stunning perennials and shrubs which may not necessarily look great all year. However, because they are nestleed within an evergreen structure, you can get away with having these plants which may need to be cut back or die back for months at a time.
