Landscaping
Wild romance. Fall-planted alliums pop up in spring like giant purple pompoms in this rambling garden in Sussex, England. Easy-care alliums add height and movement to a garden, swaying and bobbing with the slightest breeze. Keeping beds more natural and allowing perennials to billow over pathways, rather than be confined by clipped hedges, creates a garden that feels more relaxed and carefree.
5 Ways to Incorporate More Texture Into Your Garden 1. Pick out plants with a wide range of leaf types and forms. The keys to making texture stand out are variety and proximity. If you’re planning a new garden bed, choose plants with different leaf forms, from fine-textured grasses to large-leafed varieties. If you’re adding plants to an existing garden, look for the texture you’re missing. 2. Place plants with different textures in close proximity. The closer two plants are with different textures, the more our eyes recognize — and appreciate — the juxtaposition. 3. Skip cutting back ornamental grasses. It’s tempting to get out the clippers once grasses start to turn dormant, but even as colors fade, their textures can add to the overall bed design. 4. Allow perennials to go to seed. Likewise, wait to cut back flowering perennials like astilbe, coneflower, beebalm, Japanese anemone and others until the plants really start to molder away. In fall and often well into winter, the seed heads provide a food source for birds and an interesting accent to gardens. 5. Choose hardscape materials carefully. Crunchy pea gravel, rough boulders, smooth poured concrete and polished river r...
A Meadow Garden in the Dutch CountrysideThis naturalistic meadow garden located in Friesland, a province in the northwest of the Netherlands, is a tapestry of color and texture throughout the seasons. In spring and summer, perennial flowers and bright foliage stand out in ribbons of color through the ornamental grasses. In fall and winter, the texture of grasses, seed heads and stems form a more subtle display.
Conversely, go for all flowers and plant a bed with a single type of an exuberant summer bloomer for a swath of color. It will be a bit more work to maintain than a bed of mixed foliage, but it will look like a celebration of summer. Sunflowers — easy to grow and as cheery as they come — are always a good bet.
Jazz up your planting beds. Plants with interesting foliage often need less tending than those planted primarily for their flowers — you’ll be able to skip deadheading, at least. To make a primarily foliage-based bed just as stunning as one with flowers, choose foliage plants with high color and texture contrast, and plant them close together. For example, this bed in Vancouver, British Columbia, relies on the contrast of the lacy, dark purple leaves of bugbane (Actaea simplex ‘Brunette’) with lime-colored spurge (Euphorbia jacquemontii) and upright, silver-leaved Japanese iris for both color and textural interest.
Switch up your morning routine. Even if you have only five minutes, bring your cup of coffee and slice of toast outside to enjoy in the backyard. Perhaps you want to take this time to practice mindfulness, or you may just want to sit back, relax and watch the birds flit among the garden beds. If you’re off to work, you may notice that you feel more calm and centered by starting your day in nature.
Spruce up shaded areas. Shaded areas can easily turn into forgotten corners of the garden. Instead, turn a dark area into a woodland destination that can be just as interesting and colorful as brighter areas. For plant palette inspiration, check out this dreamy dappled-shade garden in Northern California. Pastel orange tulips, pale yellow clivias and white pansies line the pathway amidst a woodland planting of flowering hellebores, blue forget-me-nots, lush ferns and pink azaleas.
Add pollinator-friendly plants. While you’re planting perennial beds, consider including a few plants specifically chosen to support birds, bees, butterflies and other pollinators. Ideally, include a variety of nectar- and pollen-rich blooms in many colors (red, pink, bright violet, blue, yellow and orange) to support the widest range of pollinating birds and insects. Consider the peak bloom time of plants to ensure there’s a steady stream of sustenance. For example, when the spring-blooming pollinator-friendly alliums in this Vancouver garden die down, the lavender planted beneath it will come into its own.
Enhance shadows in the landscape. Dark foliage planted at the edges of a landscape makes the backdrop recede into shadow. Fences, walls and unwanted views seem to disappear. In this San Francisco garden, the purple, shadowy foliage colors at the landscape edges screen adjacent buildings and blur the garden’s boundaries.
Plant a dark leafy screen. Most hedge plants are medium green — think Podocarpus, Ligustrum and Pittosporum. Mix it up with an unexpected screen of purple Florida hopbush (Dodonaea viscosa ‘Purpurea’, zones 8 to 11). The bronze, waxy foliage creates a striking backdrop for bedding plants, and coordinates well with warm mahogany tones in buildings.
Bring contrast to garden beds. Use dark-leaved plants as a rich counterpoint to bright green and pale silver foliage placed nearby. Here, bronze New Zealand flax (Phormium sp., zones 8 to 10) and purple-leaved plums contrast with billowing, light green maiden grass (Miscanthus sinensis, zones 5 to 9) and silvery coast rosemary (Westringia fruticosa, zones 9 to 10).
Problem areas in our gardens often aren’t problems at all. Instead, they’re opportunities to try new things, learn new strategies and, maybe, provide more diverse mini ecosystems for birds, butterflies and more to use in every season. Plants won’t solve all issues, but they can go a long way toward ensuring a healthier, smarter landscape.
Weeds Whatever your definition of a weed is, whether it’s an invasive exotic or an aggressive native you don’t want, we’re always going to fight with plants we don’t want in our landscapes. We can mitigate their spread, however, similarly to how we work to stop erosion: diverse plant structures above and below the soil line. By including thick ground covers and taller plants, we can shade the soil and make access to sunlight harder. More plants also means more roots, and if there’s no place for a weed seed to root down and get nutrients or water due to competition, well, there won’t be a weed. There are all sorts of plants we can use in a variety of situations to help beat back aggressive ones we don’t want, or that are threatening the ecological balance. The ones to use vary by region and situation.
A colorful Northwest succulent. Pretty acid-yellow flowers appear on short stems in midspring, providing nectar for insects. The foliage is arranged in tidy little rosettes of plump, powdery-white leaves that turn ruddy pink or red in summer and green in winter. Suited to well-drained, sandy soils, broadleaf stonecrop requires no supplemental summer water once established.
Pacific Coast Iris (Iris spp.) Native to the west coast of North America from the Pacific Northwest down to Southern California Delicate-looking blossoms in candy-box colors on tough, drought-tolerant plants. Pacific coast irises (also known as PCIs) are an adaptable group of clumping iris. They can range from 6 to 18 inches in height with colors in all shades of white, pink, purple, maroon, blue, peach and yellow, many with striking markings on the petals. Sometimes they interbreed in the wild; sometimes they are bred intentionally, but they are invariably exquisite garden plants, tolerating drought and thriving in partial to full sun, with excellent drainage. Another bonus for the summer-dry west coast: No summer water is required once it’s established.
Wall pattern. Any twining vine can wrap itself around metal cables arranged in a pattern to produce an attractive look. Here, confederate jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) twines itself around metal cables on a Melbourne home’s wall to create a crisscrossing diamond pattern. To achieve this effect, the cable size has to be small enough in relation to the size of the twining stems. The vines have to be initially guided directly onto these cables so they grow correctly. Once established in the pattern, the twining vine stems will continue to wrap around the cables. Prune regularly to keep the vine dense with foliage and the pattern visible.
Curtain of leaves. Vines can produce trailing stems when given enough room to grow downward and trail over a support. In this Melbourne, Australia, garden, a gentle cascade of Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) hangs from a trellis structure. Imagine how great it looks when put in motion by a gentle breeze. Vines with fine foliage and tendrils work best for this airy effect. Clematis species with smaller flowers, such as whiteleaf leather flower (Clematis glaucophylla), or eastern U.S. native trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens), are good specimens. A word about WISTERIA: if you plant it near/on your house, IT WILL EVENTUALLY DESTROY THE HOUSE. It will spread up under the siding, into the tiniest cracks in the window trim, and into the foundation. It cannot be eradicated. Plant it at least 100' from the house.
“Incandescent is a thing of past now,” says McCullough, who exclusively installs LED lighting in all his projects. Top reasons for updating lighting in all regions are to illuminate decor and plants, create comfort and prevent slips and falls along pathways, steps, decks and patios.
People are prioritizing low-maintenance, flowering, native and drought-resistant plants & those that attract butterflies, bees or hummingbirds.He’s noticed that native plants have been more readily available on the market, with more suppliers growing them than ever before. “They are relatively easy to get and introduce now,” he says.
To mitigate drainage, Schwartz prefers rain gardens, like the one shown here, which help hold groundwater and are good for deep-rooted plants too. “It’s like a natural underground cistern,” she says.
“There’s a lot of low-water-use grass and sods that look like lawn and don’t need to be mowed or maintained hardly at all,” she says. “I think this drought has created a big movement
Use sound-absorbing materials. Every surface in your outdoor space, especially if it is small, is going to either amplify or absorb sound. Your outdoor furniture should have a soft elements, like outdoor-rated, weather-resistant cushions & textiles. The ground is a big amplifier especially if it is made of concrete, metal or stone paving. Use as much ground cover as possible, planted or in wide containers.
Bring new, pleasant sounds to your garden. One way to drown out unpleasant noise is to actively create pleasing sounds. Water is a simple way to do that. Water can create many different sound effects, including bubbling, fizzing, pouring, flowing, dunking and spraying.
Plant steep slopes. Plant slopes with herbaceous and woody plants to slow down quickly running water. This does several good things: It reduces the likelihood of erosion, stabilizes the slope and slows water down significantly more than a slope planted with a mowed lawn.
Move water with a Swale on a sloped site. Are cost-effective way to manage stormwater in your landscape, as opposed to installing pipes and subdrainage. A swale that's curvy and bumpy will provide maximum benefit for slowing down water. The curves create a meandering path for the flow of water, and rocks and plants break up the surface to aerate the water as it moves.
Helps slow water runoff.
Blue Elf Aloe - Full or reflective sun, drought-tolerant. Check watering requirements.
Cold-hardy Succulents Texas Sotol (Dasylirion texanum)
Cold-hardy Succulents Red Yucca
Garden Gate
Travertine stays cool even with hot weather..
Travertine lasts a lifetime because it's so durable.
Wild White Indigo, White False Indigo - excellent for bumble bees.
There are all kinds of GUM PLANTS which are really good for butterflies, bees, birds. Usually drought tolerant. Check with person at the garden store.
Berms also work well in traditional and cottage-style borders, where creating a layered look of foliage and flowers is desired. This side garden by Moynihan & Associates features alliums, geraniums and ornamental grasses.
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