Garden Design by Plant Layout
You can create a successful garden by using a well thought-out plant layout. By designing your garden with groups of plants with similar growth habits, colors, textures or growth needs you not only create interesting designs, but make maintenance easier.
There are many advantages to creating garden areas that group plants with similar growth habits or families. For example, it is practical to group azaleas, gardenias, camellias and hydrangeas in the same garden as they all need acid soil and shade. There is sufficient diversity within these varieties to create a lovely setting which will bloom for a long period of time. There are a number of other acid lovers you can pepper in to add other shapes or colors. An all acid-loving shade garden will need less care since the whole area has the same requirements.
Ponds and other water gardens force us to use plants with similar needs. Natives and drought-tolerant plantings work best with the same principle.
But you can also plant gardens of all one type of plant. Bulbs would be less successful due to the relatively short flowering habit of most bulbs when compared to the time the foliage looks less attractive. These are best inter-planted with other plants that can hide foliage when flowering is done. But daisy gardens would be a good choice as there is a wide range of daisy-flowered plants from tall sunflowers to shrubby Euonymus to colorful chrysanthemums to bright Gerbera daisies to tiny Bellis daisies. And many more. Daisies come in a huge variety of colors and forms – enough to create really interesting groupings for a plant layout.
Grass gardens also create their own ambiance. Since grasses come in so many sizes, shapes and colors, you can create a whole picture without any other types of plants. And in areas with winds, grasses sway gracefully adding motion and sound to the visual garden design.
The number of grasses is awesome. We tend to think of grass as lawn, but there are all kinds of ornamental grasses available. Although they do not have colorful flowers, some have dramatic inflorescences (seed heads) that fluff out to make splendid 2-second cat toys. Pampas grass is probably one of the best known ornamental grasses. Unfortunately, it self-seeds so readily in parts of California that it has been declared an official state pest. So make sure you buy a sterile variety like ‘Gold Band’ if this can be a problem in your area.
There are many other grasses with better manners you can try. Try the Miscanthus family of grasses for large colorful foliage in varieties with a whole variety of marvelous patterns. The fountain grasses come in reds and greens, large and small. (Watch out for the large green varieties: most self-seed like crazy all over the place!) Blue tints are available in fescues, oat and lyme grasses. And the Carix family offers grasses short or tall, curly or straight and in almost every color.
If you design a layout with these grasses in their own garden, you can create a patchwork of colors and textures. Mix evergreens with deciduous grasses for a colorful, yet wintry looking garden in the cool months. Some grasses even turn colors in the autumn. Build in paths to wander through grass gardens so you can see all the denizens. Easy to care for and graceful in breezes, a grass garden can be an experiment in delight.
So as you layout your garden design, consider creating all-of-a-kind, group gardens. They make for eye-catching designs and easy care.
Also check out this iris poster!
And other plants to group like Verbena and other groundcovers and Roses for spectacular rose gardens.
In Defense of Ponds
In some parts of the country there was ample rain to lift water rationing this year whereas in others drought settled in like the ancient plague. The weather patterns certainly do seem to be changing no matter who or what you choose to blame. And the increasing population of the world continues to make disproportionate demands on fresh water supplies.
Although I am a firm proponent of Eco-friendly gardening, I sometimes worry about the reactive, legislation-happy regulations that are often slapped down as band-aids with being thought through. There is still talk of banning ponds in many cities across the country so they won’t waste water.
In defense of ponds, it’s important to first think about what good they do. It’s also vital to re-define ‘waste’.
Ponds are effective stress-reducers. Watching fish encourages the brain to slip into theta waves that can be both healing, refreshing and restful. Gazing into a pond can be like a meditation or a mini-vacation.
Ponds water wildlife. Many natural watering holes and streams are destroyed with human construction and they need these resources to survive. I just noticed how many honey bees settle on the tiny floating plants on my pond for a drink. There are some there drinking away no matter what time of day I stop to look. Here we are worrying about the decimation of our precious honeybee pollinators. We can help them by offering water features like ponds.
Ponds can be an important part of sustainable landscaping. When built as water catches, drainage, or parts of rainwater storage, they can become decorative, serious advantages to water recycling and efficient usage.
Ponds add the calming sound of splashing water that can be therapeutic in our unnaturally frantic daily schedules. They also put us in touch with nature and the basics, reminding us that life is a fascinating, connected network in which each of us is an important link.
Ponds partake in the chain of life. They promote water life like fish, dragonflies, damsel flies and water bugs. They also attract insects that feed birds and spiders. We may not think much about it, but without this fragile chain of life, all life on this planet — including human beings — will perish.
These are just some of the justifications for building ponds in the landscape – apart from the obvious addition of beauty to the landscape. There are ways to build ponds responsibly. There is no need for gushing waterfalls that splash away water and offer fast evaporation. A moderate or small spill of water can aerate a pond, add sound and beauty yet be water-conscious. Planting a pond wisely can also help save water while creating a lovely little micro-climate. And raising goldfish, koi or other fish or using biological controls can stop the worry of breeding mosquitoes.
It isn’t hard to defend the building of ponds in a successful landscape. It just takes a little forethought and planning to do it right. With proper care in spring and fall, the pond can become an asset to the garden and can help the ecology of your area — without ‘wasting’ any water.
Designing the English Cottage Garden
The English or cottage garden is a style that conjures up a flower-filled landscape bursting with color. Although this theme is most easily achieved in areas where rains are common and dappled shade offers comfort for typical cottage garden plants, you can create the same effects using plants that are ecologically friendly to your native environment.
One of the best ways to design an English cottage garden is to frame your garden with hardscapes and décor that will punch up the theme. Use a white picket fence or a white wooden arbor to outline your garden. Wrought iron can also blend in well with an English cottage garden. Paths and walls of used brick can help create the cozy look of comfortable age. And outfitting the garden with cottage styled benches or a romantic swing can make your garden all the more inviting,
The typical English cottage garden sports hollyhocks, sweetpeas, delphiniums, peonies, hollyhocks, roses and more. If these plants will do well in your environment, fill your garden with them. There are many other plants that will look great with this theme.
There are varieties of roses that do well in almost all garden areas. You can scramble them up trellises or over arches or even design in a rose garden devoted exclusively to these flowers.
If your area is not ideal for growing the classic English cottage garden plants, look for plants that grow well in your area but have similar habits of growth. For example, instead of delphiniums and foxgloves, try growing mullein or columbines. Look for varieties of columbine or other large families that might offer individual plants that grow in variable conditions. Use annuals and bulbs that are likely to do fine in many more areas. Stock will add perfume while pansies and snapdragons will fit in perfectly and annuals can be used in the growing season of most any climate. Bulbs like ranunculus, tulips, daffodils, freesia and more always look right at home in a cottage garden.
Create gardens that are not formal and symmetrical. Plant flowers and shrubs to create a full look. A little random wildness will look just fine in a cottage garden. Too much planning and control will destroy the relaxed look of a successful English cottage garden. Then add ornamentation like a bird bath or a set of garden chimes as a finishing touch.
Patio floor ideas
The patio is arguably the most useful feature in the landscape. Patio floors support friends, family, guests, play, furniture, pets and can be the basis for building an outdoor room, a work or hobby area or place for outdoor dining. Flooring needs to look good, support traffic and fit in well with how the area will be used.
Start with deciding how your patio space will be used.
Then think about your budget. Be realistic. If you can afford to build the ideal surface right away, select your materials carefully. If you want a temporary patio that you can expand later you can build a strong foundation and set in a surface of temporary, less expensive material that can be replaced later. Or you might want a simple, low-cost patio floor that is utilitarian, like decomposed granite or three quarter inch gravel (both come in colors other than brown and gray if you want to add more interest).
There are two basic forms of patio flooring. One is a solid, permanent structure like poured concrete that will last for years. You can create decorative surfaces designed with textures, colors, embedded materials like stones or tumbled glass, or have them colored or stained. There are also many wood choices for patio floor decks. Wood will need regular maintenance to keep it strong outdoors.
The other form of flooring is made of non-permanent materials; permeable paving. Permeable paving is a conglomerate of materials laid atop a fast draining base like sand or gravel. Water can penetrate between the surface materials and cracks can be set close together or filled with low-growing plants, gravel or other fill. Surface materials can be natural stone and rock (like flagstone), cast cement pavers or sculpted blocks, bricks, or even loose gravel, stone chips, wood, recycled shredded tires, decomposed granite or any other supportive material. You can create designs and patterns with the layout of your stone, gravel or wood.
The selection of flooring should be in keeping with how the patio will be used. For example, the flooring for a barbecue patio area should be something that can be easily cleaned and will be able to handle grease and spatters. Or a surface that will support furniture might be constructed so there are no gaps to catch chair or table legs.
Once you know what kind of flooring material you want to use, make sure you sketch out the design for your patio. The shape, style, color and design should blend with the overall design of your garden and your home – or any other structure near the patio. Plan how the patio will become part of the landscape. You can echo the design, patio shape or use similar materials to build retaining walls, pathways that lead to and from the patio, water featuresor planter areas.
Once you have your patio planned out and your flooring selected you can add your patio cover and get to work creating what will probably be one of the most well-used areas of your landscape. Then your new patio will become an extension of your home’s living space.
Add Color with Annual Flowers
This year the big fashion in landscape design is color, color and more color. Maybe everyone’s tired of the dull dreariness of the recession. Maybe there is just a really good selection of colorful hybrid flowers appearing from the breeders. It doesn’t matter. What matters is how you can add color to make your garden pop.
Annual flowers grow from seed, bloom and set new seed all in one season before dying. Perennial flowers grow, bloom, set seed, and rest before coming back for successive years. Because annual flowers do not have to save energy to grow year after year, you will usually get more flowering from annuals than perennials. Unlike perennials, annuals will have to be replaced on a regular basis once they finish flowering. But that means you can keep changing out your spent flowers with exciting new annual plants.
This makes annual flowers perfect for addling big splashes of color to your garden. Ways of getting the most out of your annuals is to create whole annual gardens in areas where you want to draw lots of attention like entryways or small planters. Another excellent use for colorful annuals is to fill in between young perennials that need to be widely spaced to allow for future growth. Annuals can brighten up those empty spots until the perennial is big enough to fill the space and offer blooms of its own.
You can get wonderful effects with annual color by planting a garden of all one color, use reds, whites, and blues for national holidays, paint your garden with all pastel colors or stick to a family of warm colors (reds, oranges, and yellows) or cool colors (blues, purples, and pinks). Designing with annual flowers is like painting your garden with color accents!
Check out all the amazing shapes, forms, sizes, and colors available in annual flowers. There are new culltivars being offered each year and you can find everything from velvety black pansies to tall, willowy bi-colored cosmos, to extra-frilly marigolds. You can find annual color to brighten shady areas like impatiens or Torenia (Wishbone flower). Plant colorful annuals to bask in hot summer sunshine like cheerful snapdragons or stately sunflowers. The good thing about annuals is that you can grow plants that may not like some of your seasonal weather. Since they will only be around for one single season, you don’t have to worry about their being able to survive all year round like with perennials.
Some annuals add color with brilliant foliage like the outrageously patterned coleus, or the electric chartreuse of the sweet potato vine. Most of the colored foliage plants tend to burn in hot, bright sun so giving them a little shade where sunshine can burn.
Other annual plants will spill over walls, hillsides, or fill in gaps. These plants are useful for hanging pots, too. Try Alyssum or Million Bells. Million Bells (Calibrachoa) are related to petunias and are often called miniature Petunias. They have been bred to produce a wide range of sparkling colors from brilliant hues to deep tones to soft pastels.
Climbing annuals are a handy way to quickly create screens. Twine sweet peas or climbing nasturtiums up unsightly fences to turn eye-sores into celebrations of spring. Wallpaper a boring chain link or chicken wire fence with taller climbers like the hyacinth bean or the Scarlet Runner Bean that produces decorative red blooms and edible beans.
If there are just too many choices for you to decide upon, set aside a garden area where you can plant a mixed garden of annual flowers to create a riot of color just for fun. You can buy individual seed packets, small pots or flats to plant your own or use native wildflower seed mixes. Another idea to fill a small area is to use different colored low annual plants to create designs, patterns or even pictures.
Annual gardens do require some care. If you want them to bloom their longest, they should be regularly deadheaded (the spent flower heads snipped off before the plant loses the last of its energy forming seeds). You can hire services to continually replace your annual displays at the end of each season, do it yourself, or use annuals as fillers until their perennial garden mates spread out to fill the area. Annuals can play many roles in the garden. Use them where they will best fit into your garden and lifestyle.
Garden experts claim this is the year annuals will explode in popularity. You can create a fashionable garden easily no matter where you live. Just select the annual flowers that will do best where you want them planted, give them sufficient water, deadhead faded blooms, and design them where they will give you the biggest bang for your buck.
The Basics for Building Fountains or Waterfalls
You can build your own fountain or waterfall out of almost anything that will allow water to be piped through and spill down a surface. That means you can create your own fountain or waterfall for any area once you understand the basics of how it works. Here is a quick layout of what you need and how you can put together almost any style water feature that will splash down recycled water.
Set up a basin and your fountain subject(s) –rocks here
First you will need a basin that will collect water and hold your submersible pump. And you will need to choose the object that will be your actual fountain: rocks, sculpture, pot, recycled object or whatever you want to have the water spill out of.
Overall set up and water flow
You will be running the cord of your submersible pump out of the basin and into a safe electrical supply.
The tube from your pump (water will be pushed up the tube: pumps do not suck water but they actually push it!) will be fed up the object of your fountain and fixed into place so the tube protrudes where the water will spill out. You may want to thread the tube through the interior of your fountain (like in a bubbling pot) and fill it with sand, stones or tumbled glass, or you may want to hide the tubing behind your object, like cementing it to the back of natural rocks. How you conduct water up your chosen fountain will be part of the creative process.
Attach your conducting water pipe to feed the waterfall
Play with the way the water spills out of the fountain to create interesting splash effects.
Water should find its way back down into the tub without leaking outside the collection basin. Basins can be covered with screening and permeable material rather than remaining open water. This will give a pondless waterfall effect.
Cover the basin with a removable grid for a pondless waterfall
For a pondless waterfall you will want to create a grid cover that lets water flow through but covers the surface to discourage evaporation, mosquito breeding and trash from entering. Make sure the cover is removable for access to the pump when necessary. You can hide the cover with plants in pots, gravel or rock or another decorative, permeable covering.
However you decide to design and recycle the water, your fountain or waterfall should be economic, neat and clean, allowing water to be recycled without waste.
Building a Greenhouse
Greenhouses are prized by enthusiastic gardeners. Whether you live in a warm or cold climate, greenhouses have a lot to offer. You might think that living in the warmer climate of Los Angeles makes having a greenhouse unnecessary. But even the most mild parts of Los Angeles county can find advantages in owning a green house if you want to collect some of the more exotic type plants or get involved with propagation. And for the more interior areas, a greenhouse can afford serious protection from extreme temperatures of both hot and cold.
Another great way to use a greenhouse is to extend vegetable and fruit growing seasons. You can also use them for growing cut flowers to bring in the house. In a greenhouse you can keep the plants from all that outdoor damage from sunburn, wind, bugs etc. Plus, again, you can cultivate exotic plants that might not do so well outdoors, especially during extreme weather.
You can build your own greenhouse. Always site your greenhouse where it will get plenty of sun. You may have to add shading options if the sun is too strong, but it is harder to compensate for too little light than too much. Also consider other weather issues like the high winds we can experience particularly in the autumn. If you live in a windy area and are not constructing a durable greenhouse make sure your structure is well sheltered or solidly anchored.
Size will be your next consideration. The space you have available and your budget will probably define just what size greenhouse will work best for you. Once you know where you want to build, the size and shape of your greenhouse and the materials you will be using to build it, you can start construction. You can buy kits from the simple to the complicated or find plans for building from scratch in books or on the internet.
Check out the simple directions for building a very basic greenhouse on the Las Pilitas website (links listed below). This structure is made of UV stabilized polyethylene or white woven polyethylene which covers schedule 40 PVC ribs with 2 x 4 wood for foundation and doors. The design is for a semi-circular tunnel-type greenhouse that should withstand plenty of abuse. It is easy to build and a very inexpensive way to have a greenhouse.
There are plenty of easy-to-assemble metal framed, polyethylene covered greenhouses that come in kits. They come with full instructions and should handle a decade of normal Southern California weather including high winds, hot sun and even a bit of rare snow. Not the prettiest structures, they are a very economic way to have a durable and long-lasting structure. Most are a little more sophisticated and firmly attached to the ground than the Las Pilitas design.
Kits can become more expensive and elaborate with more efficient and attractive materials. Glass or thermal panes of various materials can create efficient and handsome greenhouses. There are some excellent greenhouse kit companies like Charley’s Greenhouses and Grower’s supply (listed below). They have a wide range of products and prices as well as good service. Greenhouse kits can range from the hundreds through the thousands of dollars depending on what you want.
Of course, if you really want something special, then build it yourself or have a good contractor do the job. There are simple or impressive plans you can follow. Look on the Internet and check out greenhouse books for ideas.
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