shrubs, vines, ornamental grasses, and trees nearby. A deck or patio without plants may look fine in summer surrounded by lawn grass, but in winter, it can look pretty bleak without a few natural plant forms to anchor it to the earth.If you live in a milder climate, winter is still a more subdued time of year. Inject color where you can, whether with cushions or pillows on your outdoor seating or on your the deck, patio, or front porch with pots of annuals (calendulas, pansies, primroses, and snapdragons are a few bright and cheery options).
Be prepared for sticker shock when you’re shopping for hardscape and the related materials. Bricks, arbors, benches, fences, and all those other extras can be a much bigger investment than the plants. Considering how valuable they are in transforming an average garden into a great one, though, hardscape is well worth the investment. Search out the most beautiful arbor in the world, and you’ll love your garden forever. Skimp on the deck, and you’ll rue your miserly impulse for years.
Make sure you maintain your hardscape. You’ve been thinking about caring for all the plants, but hardscape also requires regular attention. Sweep and yank out encroaching weeds in season. Paint or stain, perhaps annually. Invest in quality materials and build well.
Keeping an Eye on the Details
You may have some favorite plants that you want to include in your new landscape. Acquire an appreciation of the subtler details of those plants before you plant, including the following:
Look at the leaves with an eye toward design attributes. After all, unless you’re growing only annuals, your plants will be mostly leaves much of the time.
Begin to notice the texture of foliage. Examples include broad and strappy, flat and wide, ferny and delicate, fuzzy, velvety, or shiny.
Consider the form of the flower. For instance, is it simple and flat like a daisy, emphatically spiky like gayfeather, or soft and wide like yarrow? Also, consider that most perennials bloom for just a few short weeks. What will they add to your garden the rest of the time?
Consider the form and habit of the full plant. That young plant at the garden center will grow into a garden member of distinct height and shape. Cast a critical eye toward the mature form, which may end up being upright, mounded, arching, single-stemmed, branching, or swordlike. Find out if the plant stays in a clump or expands over time to form a colony.
When you make your choices, contrast and combine plants so they make the most of one another. Put frilly ferns next to plain-leaved hostas, so they can both show off without competing with each other. Partner upright growers like iris or yucca with mound-forming plants and sprawlers so that they can stand like punctuation points. Echo colors, leaf shapes, and forms to create beds of delicious texture.
In other words, play with your plants. Don’t worry if you don’t get it picture-perfect on the first try. The best part of gardening is that if you decide you don’t like a combination, hey, there’s the shovel. Part 3 gives you the ins and outs on different plants you can include.
The Goldilocks Theory: Choosing Plants That Fit
Not too big, not too small — just right. That’s the strategy behind selecting plants that are the right scale for your yard and the right proportions to each other. Fill a small yard with great big plants, and you create a feeling of being overwhelmed. Instead, use small-leafed plants of small stature to stay in scale and make the most of your limited space. If you must have that large plant or tree, make it a focal point by partnering it with low-key plants that don’t compete in size and stature.
Choosing the right trees for your yard is where the Goldilocks rule must be obeyed. Judging by the number of mismatched, butchered, hacked-off trees that you see in some places, and the number of houses swamped in blue spruces or hemlocks planted too close to the dwelling, many folks apparently think the cute little tree they’re planting stays that size forever. Alas, no.
Read the nursery tag to find the ultimate size of the plant. Remember what happened to the Three Bears and choose trees that fit your yard. Big yard, big tree. Small yard, small tree.
Avoid flawed plants. Stay away from invasive and weak-wooded plants that tend to split like Callery pears and silver maples and ones that produce nuisance seed balls or pods like sweetgums and locusts.
Think about the role the plants will play and choose plants to fill a spot. Need shade? Plant a tree or trees that will provide dense overhead foliage, or erect a structure (trellis, arch, pergola) and plan for vines blanket it. Want a living fence? That’s a good job for a hedge (do you want it to have flowers? Thorns to deter unwanted visitors?). Wishing to nurture butterflies? Seek out plants that also support their caterpillars.
Create a spot in your landscaping with a certain plant in mind. You’ve always wanted a white-flowered clematis. Or a yellow rose. Or a weeping evergreen tree. Discover what conditions (light, space, soil, especially) it will need and clear out or create its perfect home.
Layering Plants to Add Interest
Layering your landscape with plants of different heights definitely improves its look and, indeed, makes it a more comfortable place to be. Groundcovers and grass form the lowest layer, followed by flowering perennials and annuals, then shrubs, then small trees, then medium trees, and then venerable tall trees.
You can also substitute structures for any of the plants: a pedestal birdbath for a mid-height shrub, for instance, or a vine-covered wall or fence for a small tree. A side benefit of this technique is that it leaves room for filtered sunlight and walking paths. (Refer to the section, “Adding Décor to Your Design: How Many Pink Flamingos Are Enough?,” earlier in this chapter if you do add décor.)
When layering plants in your landscape, keep these suggestions in mind:
Anchor large, old shade trees to your garden. Big, old shade trees are a great asset, but they can be frustrating to work into a landscape plan because their size makes them stick out. An easy solution is to set up some nonplant items underneath, such as a bench, bistro table and chairs, or a hammock to help integrate it into its surroundings.
Plant smaller trees beside your giant tree and shrubs beside the shorter trees. This is a little trick called stepping down, effectively connecting your big tree to the rest of the garden so your gaze makes a transition to the tops of the trees in graduated steps instead of one giant leap. For instance, consider planting redbuds beneath a big maple tree. You can also use horizontal visual weight to balance height.
Layered planting has another