Perennial Garden Design
Here are things you want to consider to make your garden a great one.
Wide Beds
To begin with, ensure the flower beds are wide enough. This is critical to a good design because skimpy perennial beds are really tough to make look good.
The old Greeks had it right with their golden mean of design.
Figure on one foot of width for every three feet of length to a maximum of 12-15 feet
So, a fifteen foot long perennial bed should be at least five feet wide. The maximum width for a bed seems to be in the ten to fifteen foot width; anything wider and you can't see the flowers at the back of the bed.
Thick Plantings
A great perennial flower design doesn’t have soil showing between the plants. Leaving bare spaces between plants simply leaves the garden looking young. Or, the gardener looking cheap.
An example of thick planting in the mixed border
Reflects Gardener's Plant Preferences
A truly wonderful perennial garden design reflects the house and surroundings. There’s little sense trying to build perfectly square formal flower beds around an informal cottage type of house and equally out of place is the meandering cottage garden in a formalized setting.
But. Grow what you like - it's your garden. :-)
Structure
The better parts of my garden have wonderful structure. And "structure" means the "big stuff" or "hardscape" (anything not plants) Now, on my entranceway garden, this means that I managed to get the huge rocks situated properly to create a little bit of a hill-garden and it looks absolutely stunning completely covered with snow. With the evergreens visible year round, the perennials only make their appearance to give me colour for the summer.
In the above picture (admittedly a "rather large garden" and not mine) :-) you can see the structure of the garden rather than the flowers of the garden. I include it here to point out that this garden looks good all year round without flowers.
Avoid the dreadful line of evergreens along the front of the house; foundation plantings are well-named – they grow up to cover the foundation. Boring.
Think of taking away all the flowers; what you have left is the structure of the garden.
If it’s simply flat with nothing there to interest visitors in non-blooming times of year, well you don’t have much structure in your garden.
It's Yours
Because that’s really the last point in talking about perennial garden design. A garden is an individual thing and if you like your garden (I like mine) then that’s all the really counts.
We may disagree over what makes a garden great (narrow garden beds however never make a good garden) but we’ll never disagree over the joy we get from going out in them and knowing that, however humble, it is our own garden.
Want some tips on getting a great perennial garden?
If you want to ask a question about perennial garden design, click here
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