Gardens get much of their personality from the interplay of plant sizes, colors and textures, as well as from plant shapes. While plants are an integral part of any garden landscape, they play an especially important role when you’re planning a garden – especially a “natural” one. Trying to copy Mother Nature’s subtle shades, bold colors and varied textures in all their seasonal glory can be a bit daunting. But taking the time to make the right selections can transform your outdoor space into a place you can’t wait to visit.
A blazing fire of a mounded azalea dominates this meadow of blue-eyed grass along a woodland boundary. While the azalea’s springtime color will soon fade, highlights of tiny blue, yellow and white flowers will dot the field for summer.
Photo Credit: ©2001 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
A color wheel can help you discover which blooms will look naturally harmonious in your garden. Your first selection should be from the primary colors, followed by an analogous hue, then by its complement. Here, ‘Cherry Pink’ Million Bells® is the primary color, with a golden bush lantana as an analogous color, and ‘Homestead Purple’ vervain and ‘Harmony’ Swan River daisy chosen for their complementary hues.
Photo Credit: ©2001 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
Choosing plants with a distinctive shape helps a natural garden mirror its environment. The distinctive round form of a desert plant is a natural complement to the round, natural boulders and rough-hewn stone steps.
Photo Credit: ©2001 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
Creating texture in a garden balances color, foliage and form. Here, a coastal garden erupts with blooming ice plant and perennial herbs, a textural counterpoint to nearby salt-bleached driftwood.
Photo Credit: ©2001 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
Paving can make a strong statement in a garden. The massive pavers used here convey their permanence and strength, while finely textured baby’s-tears soften the chiseled edges.
Photo Credit: ©2001 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
Of the shade plants renowned for their shape and form, hostas reign supreme.
Photo Credit: ©2000 Dolezal Publishing/Reed Estabrook
Combining different textures and forms lends visual interest and unique personality to a shade garden. Asparagus fern and colorful impatiens provide one good example.
Photo Credit: ©2000 Dolezal Publishing/Yvonne Williams
Before you start picking any plants, imagine the colors you’d like to see in your garden. Then consider the foliage and flowers alongside the colors of your home and paving, finishing materials and other structural features. You’ll want to make sure they all work together in a harmonious scheme.
Not sure how to pick colors that work well together? Then use a color wheel (available at art-supply stores). Colors that appear next to each other on the color wheel are analogous – they blend together harmoniously and create a restful feeling. Colors across from each other on the wheel are complementary – they create contrast and add excitement to a design.
Make sure to include color in every season. While you naturally think of spring and summer’s blooming flowers and fall’s changing leaves, don’t forget to include one of nature’s favorite colors: green. Foliage unifies the garden and provides a backdrop for seasonal color. Evergreen plants add color in winter. And in arid regions, gray-green and silver-gray foliage becomes a noteworthy addition to the landscape.
You can also use color to create visual movement in your garden. Strong, vibrant colors draw the eye, while pastels tend to blend into the background. Light affects color as well. Strong, sunlit areas need bold colors, while shady nooks are well-served by pastels.
One you’ve got an idea of color combinations, you need to consider plant form and texture. Form is the plant’s shape and growth habit. A mix of shapes – tall and skinny, round and squat, low and rangy, short and compact – can be used to great effect. Repetitive use of a plant shape also makes for an interesting design, particularly if it either mimics the planting bed’s shape or contrasts with it. Your choice of plant shape can mirror the architecture of your home or other outdoor structures, emphasize hardscape features like patios and walks, and even compensate for overly wide or narrow lots.
Is your yard wide and wandering? A centrally placed bed, planted pyramid style with low to tall plants at the midpoint, can pull a yard together visually and give it a focal point. Would you like to accentuate the width of your yard? A series of low-mounding shrubs or plants set in curved beds across the width of the yard can achieve this. Would you like to echo the tall buildings surrounding your city garden? Tall, spire-like cypress helps lead the eye upward.
A formal French country style house calls for manicured plants – in fact, the more formal the architecture, the more clean the shape of the foundation plantings should be. Other architectural styles – English cottage and Spanish hacienda, for example – lend themselves to a softer, wilder style of planting. (Rangy, billowing plants typically do well in such settings.)
If your house lacks a distinct style, the plantings can help create one, allowing you to be playful with plant forms. A small house can get a tongue-in-cheek touch from a planting of giant sunflowers that seem to dwarf it. A 50s-style box house in a Southern clime can take on a South Seas touch with a planting of a tropical “forest” around it.
Distinctive forms are described as upright, mounded, spreading, arching and bushy. A plant’s form is often what makes it useful for specific functions. For example, low-spreading plants make great groundcovers, while dense, upright selections make superior screens.
You can use plant form to create harmony, contrast and lend authenticity to your garden theme. Remember, repetition of form provides unity and gives certain natural landscapes their unique quality. For example, some plants are associated with geographic regions the way upright grasses and wildflowers are associated with prairies and straight tree trunks are associated with woodlands.
Texture also plays an important role in the garden. Texture refers to the visual and tactile quality of a plant’s leaves and surfaces. It’s often defined as fine, medium or coarse, and words commonly used to describe differing textures include soft, prickly, smooth, rough and bold. While color and form have a dramatic influence in your garden, texture also makes a big difference because a plant’s texture helps define its role in the garden.
Aim for an attractive interplay of fine, medium and coarse textures in your garden. Use fine-textured plants to soften the hard lines and surfaces of structural features. Install these plants at boundary and building edges to help blend structures into a natural garden. Plants with fine textures often have masses of tiny leaves or fernlike, branching foliage that also make striking accents. Think of a glade of ferns in a woodland garden or meadow grasses among bright wildflowers.
Plant masses of fine- or medium-textured selections to lead the eye through your garden design. Arrange a group of the same plant along a path or at the back of the garden to encourage people to move through the space. Use coarse-textured accent plants to arrest the eye and cause visitors to pause. They’re great for creating focal points, or place a coarse-textured plant near a bench to provide a place for both the eye and body to rest.
Of course there are other textural elements to foliage. Some are soft and fuzzy, like lamb’s ear. Others are glossy and stand out in a background of shrubs, like some tropicals. And some leaves sport interesting variegation that make the foliage really pop – especially in shady spots.
Choosing the specific plants that will work for your site is the final step before getting your plan on paper. Remember the principle of “the right plant for the right place.” Selecting plants that are well-adapted to your USDA Hardiness Zone, climate, microclimate, soil and growing conditions will serve you in the long run.
Once you’ve got all your idea about plants down, you’re ready to document your ideas on a garden plan.
