Garden from Scratch: How to Choose the Type of Plants You Need in Your Landscape
Photography by Clare Coulson.
You’d think choosing plants was easy enough—just find the ones you like, right? But what about designing a border where plants need to relate to each other in a well-thought-out design?
1. Get trees in first.
My cottage garden, photographed here in midsummer, is an ever-changing tableau of favorite plants and supporting acts that lurk in the background.
Early spring in my garden and there’s still not that much flowering, but the Amelanchier lamarckii tree provides starry white blossoms.
2. Invest in evergreens.
Incorporating some trees, or even a single specimen, can instantly ground a space, bringing strong structure, height, and impact—as well as, in many cases, year-round interest. For this same reason think very carefully before removing any mature trees or shrubs from an inherited space.
There are a lot of frothy plants in this border snapshot including Valerian officinalis, hesperis, roses, Allium sphaerocephalon, catmint, and hardy geraniums.
Boxwood would have ticked all the boxes, but now that these are under the dual threat of box blight and box caterpillar, few gardeners would take a risk with them.
3. Focus on forms.
At this point in midsummer, there are only really three key plants in this border but they all work in different ways. The strong vertical spires of Verbascum chaixii ‘Album’ is the key plant but the tall hazy umbellifer, Verbena bonariensis, creates a hazy veil and pops of intense color.
Umbellifers bring elegant saucer-shaped flowers at different heights from tall (valerian, fennel, eupatorium) to short (achillea or anthriscus).
4. Embrace star plants.
Contrasting shapes all work in harmony in this border section; in the distance purple spikes of Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ set the scene for the vibrant maroon dots of ‘Munstead Wood’ roses, Knautia macedonica and the metallic blue umbels of Eryngium.
Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’, Iris germanica ‘Jane Phillips’ and Allium hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’ are all spring stalwarts and combine beautifully.
Stalwart plants can be the star players in your borders—Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’, Geranium ‘Rozanne’, Alchemilla mollis...
5. Consider the plant’s pre and post-bloom appearance.
...Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’—are a few of the thousands of plants awarded the RHS’s Award of Garden Merit because they are tried and tested resilient plants that will perform well in a garden setting.
5. Consider the plant’s pre and post-bloom appearance.
This is the youngest border in my garden, pictured here in its second summer. Pictured in early September the green mounds to the right are Asters that have yet to flower, but they provide a verdant backdrop to the other plants that have an earlier flowering season.
