Choosing Plant Combinations For Your Garden

Choosing Plant Combinations: 501 beautiful ways to mix and match color and shape in the garden (Better Homes & Gardens)
For those gardeners intimidated by the thought of planning color symphonies, creating color echoes, or applying any color theory to the garden as a whole, Choosing Plant Combinations will come as a welcome relief. Granted, color is the single most important effect gardeners work with--nothing is more important to the first impression a garden gives and the emotional response it evokes. However, color can be a challenge to work with, as it depends greatly on surrounding colors, quality of light, and individual perception.

The author, Cathy Wilkinson Barash, describes her book as "a non-designer's garden design book." Her idea, and it is a good one, is that pleasing gardens are built combination by combination. You don't need an overall scheme, but rather dozens of workable combos of two or three plants that, seen as a whole, make up a garden. All plants are clearly identified in 250 full-color photographs that illustrate ideas for effective combinations. Barash also explores the role colored and variegated foliages, architecturally shaped plants, and ornamental grasses play in creating pleasing, long-lasting combinations.

Creating a garden retreat and patio design that's beautiful year-round, and takes minimum fuss. How is it possible? With carefree plants that continuously bloom, and a well-planned garden structure.

You don't need to be a lawn and garden expert or landscape designer to do this. Here are a few tips for creating a super yet simple garden and patio design that will be a knockout!

Decide what style or theme is right for you... formal, casual, rustic, Southwestern, Japanese... there are enormous possibilities. Then stay with that style and theme so the overall effect does not become confusing.

Some say the secret to a beautiful garden and patio design is having a good amount of hard structure. This is what landscape designers refer to as "good bones" - walls, fences, garden bridges, gates, garden arbors, landscape statues, garden fountains ... even a strong line of evergreen plants.

Garden structures such as these create forms and lines, giving your garden and patio design definition and dimension. Plus, in the winter when most plants are empty and bare, your garden will preserve its shape and sense of completeness. It's amazing how just one or two structures can produce this satisfying effect.

Create private semi-open patios in your garden. This is a great place to sit around and chat with your loved ones and also can be used as a small deck during a small party.

If you love pets, then try rabbits, ducks along with a small pond, in the backyard. These pets have very fresh colors and add great amount of liveliness in the garden.

If possible plant flowerings trees with fragrance. This is a free and absolutely amazing way to keep your garden fresh.

Create levels in your garden to distinguish various areas as per the function of the garden. A leveled garden always creates interest and curiosity.

If walls confine your garden, the color of your walls can actually have some impact on how spacious your garden feels. Darker colors alone have more depth. When used behind planting schemes, they blend and help make the boundary seem invisible. Overall, darker colored elements help create more depth in confined areas.

Adding curves to your walkways, flowerbeds, walls, etc. can give the illusion of more distance and travel. The human eye can detect that there actually is more distance involved and so the mind interprets the actual occupied space as being greater.

If you have unused hard corners, make good use of them. An arch or entryway placed in a corner that otherwise goes nowhere is a nice element and opportunity to frame a focal. It also creates the illusion of something more beyond.

Creating levels can give the illusion of more space.

Rocks with their intriguing patterns and shapes, mosses and small and low shrubs are extensively used in designing this type of Japanese gardens. A “dry landscape” (Karesansui) type Japanese garden contains no water and few plants, still they invoke an atmosphere of water, which is created by using pebbles and sand or raked gravel.

Spend your money wisely by planning the type of shrubs and trees you will purchase in conjunction with the type of home you own.

I find that the planning stage of the process to be hugely enjoyable. You can let your imagination run wild, but eventually you must fit your ideas into your available time and budget. So let your imagination run wild, plan your dream garden and then start refining, however remember failing to plan is like planning to fail.

So to help you along on your way to your dream garden, we recommend

Gardens by Design

Gardeners looking for advice from a who's who of top designers will revel in the insights Kingsbury has collected. Having put together a circle of creative thinkers, Kingsbury draws out from each individual a rich dialogue filled with ideas and concepts that will have readers thinking about exactly what it is they want in a garden.

The aesthetic notion of a formal approach versus a naturalistic asymmetry is illuminated, and such elements as paths and borders, plant choices, and water features are discussed; and all suggestions are shown in a profusion of color photographs. A great sourcebook that promises to inspire budding green thumbs while stimulating those with experience.