Planning and Planting a Border - What Do You Do?

There is quite a lot in gardening magazines and TV gardening programmes on planning small gardens, but rarely anything on planning big gardens. I suppose small gardens are limited so each plant has to be chosen more carefully. I've always had a big garden at the 5 houses I've lived in since I was 21. I would have liked some advice. Each garden needed renewing or starting from scratch. So did the houses!

 

I've had various sizes and types of garden - the big ones had lots of grass with planting nearer the house, which is the easiest method, and the blank canvases were always fun, with lost of playing around and learning as you go along.
If you have a large plot and don't have 'staff' to help, it has to be easier to manage, and cutting grass is usually the best solution rather than endlessly having to maintain lots of different planting areas

 

That's what I am trying to cope with now: a large garden, lots of beds cut out of the lawn, when I was fitter and very labour intensive planting. I love it, but am getting more infirm by the day, so problems ahead.

 

I'm probably bonkers. I made a big garden at my last house, opened it to the public with the French Open Gardens, it got too much (the house even more so), sold it, bought a much smaller house with 2 1/2 acres. Now turning 1/4 acre into a garden, digging out beds. The farmer mows the field bit every year. In my 70s, back and knee problems. Wonder if I'll still be planting in my 80s. A friend still is and she's 86.

 

I tend to plant in odd number too @Perki as well as drifts and blocks. I'm also a fan of orange, purple, magenta and blue but green is the main colour in my garden as I find it relaxing and it serves as a good backdrop for my grasses. I did see your thread @Perki, it encouraged me to be bolder with colour!

 

I should have a go at adding annuals to my borders. I don't grow any at the moment as I don't have the indoor space to sow seeds and I'm also impatient! I sometimes buy trays of Cosmos which are good fillers but the last time I used them they got munched! I think the lack of juicy stems here has encouraged any slugs to go elsewhere. Since removing two large beds of Bergenias, I haven't actually seen any slugs for a couple of years. Now that's tempting fate!

 

I'm with you there @fairygirl, without evergreens and the faded stems of grasses in winter my garden would be desolate!

 

I think you'll keep going like most committed gardeners and plantaholics @Busy-Lizzie! Planning and planting a garden means you are always thinking about the future and enjoying the results of your years of intensive labour and creative output! You feel indebted to your plants to keep them going and can't stop until you have to!

 

I think you're right, @Plantminded.

I wonder if the reason you don't have slugs is the sandy soil. There are very few in OH's garden in Norfolk. The soil is sandy there and I have unmunched hostas.

 

This is a very interesting thread @Plantminded
I got my first own garden in 2016 with the flat that we bought. It's tiny, just 10x10 meters and has got a 2m wide concrete path (water, canalisation underneath) on 2 sides. In other words, I have just 8m x 6m to play with.
It took me years to find out what plants like the soil. During that learning period, I had no idea about planning and what I want from the garden.
Normally, you come into a garden from your house -> patio -> garden. What you see from the patio gives the direction. That is not what we have. Our flat doesn't even have a window to the garden. Therefore, the entrance to the garden is one thing, but enjoying it that happens from two opposite sides. Try to imagine your stairs have the only purpose to lead you to the place where you enjoy the garden. Your entire planting suddenly turns 180 degrees. I have to make the garden enjoyable from all sides. There is no such thing like "put the highest plants into the back of a border".
In 2020, I had a cottage garden as a result of the lockdown when only wildflowers were available in February.
In 2021, after visiting Hidcote and Kiftsgate and other gardens, I thought why not some shrubs, but I had no plan how all plants could fit. Partly it was the wrong plant (one Euphorbia grew enormous, took a quarter of the entire bed), or if it was the right plant, then it was in the wrong place.
So it comes that many plants had to move again or were taken out. The top on the list is a Deutzia, bought in 2021, which is now in it's 4th position before it got in Autumn 2022 it's final position (unbelievable, but it has forgiven me and grows now marvellous).
The biggest mishap I always did was to plant too close. That took me years to learn.
I have never planted in groups (how boring), but this year, I had the idea of continuing into the bigger bed what I had started in the smaller bed (Deutzia -> Geraniums -> Path -> Geraniums -> Deutzia). I think that is the first time after 8 years that I had developed a plan, not just bought a plant and dropped it into the ground.
I love having different flower plants, all colours (apart from Heuchera and other dark colours).

 

Your experience and lessons learned are well reflected in your garden now @simone_in_wiltshire! I also plant too closely because I don't like to see bare soil and it keeps the weeds away! Most of my plants are perennials and grasses that can easily be divided and moved when they outgrow their space. I take more time thinking about trees and shrubs though. I also experimented with dark colours, both flowers and leaves, and found them too depressing so they are now banned!

 

Yes, I think that as sandy soil is dry it is unattractive for slugs @Busy-Lizzie. Plus, I try to avoid planting tender plants with juicy stems and leaves and slugs don’t like grasses. I also removed two large beds of Bergenias a few years ago that were popular retreats for slugs! I’m convinced that blackbirds help to control the slug population too. I have a pair of regular visitors that inspect the borders at all times of the day, as well as pacing up and down the lawn for worms.

 

We had those discussions in the GW forum how awful Monty Don's garden looks when he cramps the plants into any of his overcrowded not good looking beds.
I learned from one of the episodes from Adam Frost when he planted a shady part in his garden and there were tiny shrubs/plants with 1 meter distance.
I also remember that one episode from 2020, when the wildlife idea really took off. In the same episode was a lady who worked with her husband for 40 years on her garden. It looked very old fashioned, everything was in groups to the sides and in the middle the lawn. They had to stand 10 meters on the other side of the lawn to see the groups as effect. That in itself looked very boring despite that the hard work they had put into creating the bed. Planting into groups distracts from seeing the individual plant. Planting individual different plants forces me to look at each of them. But getting that right is a challenge for an amateur/beginner.
With my accident and not being able to do anything, and seeing my neighbour who can't no longer do anything in his garden (knee issue, can hardly walk), I decided to have plants that I can easily manage like cutting down once a year even with one arm only available.

BTW: Is it really just 2 months since the GW forum closed? It feels to me like ages ago.

 

Depending on the effect you are trying to achieve, I think that planting in groups can accentuate the features of some plants though @simone_in_wiltshire. For example, I have block planted Calamagrostis Karl Foerster to create a hedge in my front garden. Last year I repeated Salvia Amistad in a bed on my bank to achieve an informal drift. You may already have seen these photos:





I also struggled to find anything that would tolerate the shady bed under the Acer in my lower garden. I tried all the traditional shade lovers, it looked fine in spring when most of them flowered but was a mess for the rest of the year. I copied an arrangement that Knoll Gardens had in their gallery with a block planting of Hakonechloa aureola:



Lots of different plants, flower colours and shapes can inject energy into a garden, but they can also be a distraction. I like a bold coloured border near my seating area, along with some containers, but lots of green with limited colour elsewhere. It's really down to personal preference and available space, soil type and growing conditions I think.

I actually like MD's method of planting, it's not unlike how plants place themselves in the wild, settling into unoccupied spaces, but with some gentle guidance. I find his planting loose and relaxing but also considered. Too much regimentation can make a garden static and lacking in character and the gardener is always on the alert to correct anything that steps out of line!

I do like formal topiary and knot gardens though. Just some of my thoughts!

 

Your garden is miles ahead of what I have seen and meant to express @Plantminded
I remember when we went to Tyntesfield, a must have seen I was told. What an awful house, that Gothic style left nightmares in me.
The garden was strange too.
They had 3 rows of bed-lawn-bed like below. There were I believe just 5 plants on each side, repeating, and in groups. Standing at the beginning was enough and I had seen everything.



What MD concerns, over the years, I have had the impression he was looking for a Hidcote 2 in his garden, but nice to see that he seems to have a more relaxed approach developed since last year and made changes. He had eventually seen our comments in the forum because he no longer shows these beds that look really tatty.