What was yours? best advice for garden design this year?
In the mid-sized garden, I talk to many wonderfully diverse garden experts.
Most of them are professionally engaged in gardening, so their advice is practical, realistic and effective.
So I thought I’d take a look back at the past year to pick the best garden design tips for different garden situations.
How to group potted plants for a border effect.
Dan Cooper of Dan Cooper Garden online store has about 100 pots in a space that measures xx y. There are about 100 pots in that space, but only about 40 different types of plants.
His most important tip is to plant one variety of plant per pot. He also says it’s important not to have each pot completely different. ‘There are two to four pots of each planting.’
So, for example, there are four pots full of ‘Chansonette’ tulips, which are repeated at intervals around the space. Repetition helps the screen look cohesive and is easier on the eye.
Container Gardens by Dan Cooper and Shaun Mooney. You can hire a garden designer to get the best advice on pot garden design as well as gardens.
Garden designer Shaun Mooney has also created a complete potted garden in his rented home. He had no access to soil at all, so he had planters made, finding a manufacturer on eBay. They are taller than the pots in front of them and create a ‘back row’ of borders.
Then you can make a middle and front row of ‘borders’ with pots. Shaun’s tip for saving money is to use cheaper mass-produced pots where they can’t be seen. Then he collects several special, more expensive pots and places them where they can be seen.
If you’re having trouble creating the container garden of your dreams, Shaun suggests hiring a garden designer for a consultation. Many people think that garden designers are only for big projects, but you can pay for just a few hours of the best garden advice. And they can also give you advice on plant care, if you ask for it.
If you want to improve your pots, check out Dan Cooper’s container planting tips here.
And here are more tips from Shaun Mooney on creating a potted garden when you rent.
The best advice for garden design – limit the types of plants
Garden designer Michael McCoy is known for his contemporary border plantings.
He says you should limit the number of plant varieties in a border. And the shape and texture of the plants are more important than the color of the flowers.
Combine three different plant shapes. You need vertical or vase-shaped plants, horizontal plants and rounded shapes.
Don’t worry about the border suddenly being full of flowers. Michael says you only need three plants in flower at any one time to make a border look beautiful, provided you have fullness and contrast in the planting. ‘In fact, you can have just one flower in bloom, and if it repeats itself around the border, it can give the impression that the border is actually dancing.’
If you’re interested in finding the best garden tips on planting, don’t miss Michael’s tips on contemporary naturalistic planting here.
Texture and form are more important than color in Michael McCoy’s naturalistic boundaries
Make room for a pond, no matter how small!
Home gardeners control a huge amount of open space in most cities and towns, so we have a big impact on wildlife and diversity.
In 2022, both the Royal Horticultural Society and the Society of Garden Designers have committed to making gardens more sustainable, biodiverse and wildlife-friendly.
And at the top of the list of top garden tips is ‘make room for a pond.’ Water is essential for life. And it is an important part of the ‘wildlife corridor’. Wild life can only survive if it is able to feed, shelter and reproduce over a fairly large area. You might have a park at one end of town and a forest at the other, but if it’s hard for creatures to get from one to the other, then they’re trapped in a relatively small area. Ponds and pollinator-friendly planting in the gardens between them can make all the difference.
Ponds of all sizes in show gardens on BBC Gardeners World Live.
So every show garden in BBC Gardeners World Live had a pond. You can use any container as a mini pond, but make sure that small creatures can get in and out safely.
It is also important to ensure that babies and small children cannot access the pond as they can drown in a few inches of water. At BBC Gardeners World Live, there were several ponds in raised beds.
There was also a group of old sinks in Frances’ Garden by Frances Tophill. You can use any containers, but the advantage of grouping is that you can grow different types of pond in each. For example, one container may be quite shallow for border plants and another deeper.
Keep in mind that mini-ponds dry up quickly in a drought, so you’ll need to top them up.
And don’t be afraid of a bigger pond in a small garden
Garden owner Anne Vincent diverted her rainwater to create a large wildlife pond in her narrow city garden. The pond is the main feature of the garden and occupies approximately one third of the space.
It’s a stunning garden, and by redirecting her gutters into the garden, she’s also helped reduce runoff from her gutters into the city’s sewer system. Check out a small wildlife garden for cities here.
The garden of the Anne Vincent Wildlife Refuge is about 70 feet long and about 20 feet wide.
Is a rock garden the answer to hot, dry summers?
Rock gardens were very fashionable in the first half of the 20th century, but have since fallen out of favor. However, they are an ideal home for drought tolerant, hardy plants and also a good option if you have a slope in your garden.
Like many people, we had an unusually warm, dry summer this year. But rock gardens, such as the rockery garden at Doddington Place Gardens in Kent, needed no watering and continued to look good in harsh conditions.
The best garden design advice has always been about planting the right plants for your climate, but with such changing weather, we need more hardy plants than drought-tolerant ones. And the rock garden is very resistant.
If you’re thinking about a rock garden, start with rocks. Amicia Oldfield of Doddington Place Gardens says rock gardens look much better if you choose local stone, as it often reflects the architecture.
Garden designer Posy Gentles points out that if people clear stones from their gardens then they will have to pay to take them away. So they can be available for free or very cheap on Facebook Marketplace, Freegle/Freecycle or eBay.
The best advice for garden design is to match your plants to the climate and soil – a rock garden is one of the hardiest plantings.
There are more tips for the rock garden.
Top tip for garden design – connect your house with your garden
Talented writer and stylist Francine Raymond is always a source of the best tips and ideas for garden design.
Although she buys at auctions, chains and charity shops, she brings it all together with color. Her main advice is to connect your house and garden through color.
Francine has a yellow and gray and blue theme that runs through her house and her garden. Consider front doors, back doors, window frames, sheds, benches, flower pots and more for your color theme.
See how to connect your indoor and outdoor space, which also features a contemporary connection between home and garden by garden designer Lisa Feurtados.
Francine Raymond connects her house with her garden through the use of color. This is probably the best garden design advice I’ve ever heard!
Or connect your house to your garden shed!
When people come to Stephen Ryan’s plant nursery, Dicksonia Rare Plants near Melbourne, they often look for a fast-growing climber to hide an ugly shed. Stephen says his answer is that there is no need for an ugly shed.’
There are so many ways to make a shed look better in the garden, and some are cheap and easy to do.
You can paint the shed in any color. You can use the color, materials or architecture of your house as inspiration for the shed.
And you can experiment with the shed, as it is a relatively small-scale project. Stephen had an ugly shed with a flat roof in his garden, left by the previous owner. When he wanted to add a story to his flat-roofed house, he and his partner first tried out their ideas on a shed, using it as a template for the house.
They experimented with the color of the shed before painting the house. And they added a slanted roof and trim to it, to see if they liked the way it looked.
These are both sheds – Stephen Ryan used wood panelling, paint and finishes to make them look special.
Stephen Ryan’s best garden advice can be found on the Horti-Culturalists YouTube channel.
For more shed renovation ideas, check out this post. And look here for ideas on what color to paint your shed.
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