Plants and planting schemes
Introduction
In my first six-part series on garden planning and design it wasn’t easy condensing such a large subject into six articles - especially having only dedicated one chapter to the subject of plants. Here then is my new series, which is devoted wholly to plants and planting schemes.
Its aim is to draw your attention to some of the schemes designed by garden artists such as Gertrude Jekyll, Christopher Lloyd and Vita Sackville-West among others, combined with my own planting principles, which for the most part have been inspired by these very gardeners.
It is not a series designed to be a quick-fix to the perfect planting scheme. On the contrary, I hope it will give you inspiration and a desire to learn more about plants and their habitats and also encourage you to experiment in your own garden with colour, shape and form.
Know your onions
If you are interested enough to want to embark upon designing your own planting scheme, and get it right, it follows that you may well want to learn more about the plants you intend to use in your garden. In fact, understanding their needs is an important part of the design process and, by this I mean learning about their natural habitats so you can give them as close to similar conditions in your own garden. It also helps to familiarise yourself with their lifecycle so you can organise your scheme to look good all year round.
It is important to go with nature and not against it, and if it means you can’t grow camellias or rhododendrons, then you must accept this fact. It just means that you will have to enjoy them where they do flourish, so timely visits to botanic gardens and arboretums will be the order of the day.
To understand all there is to know about plants takes time, but if you are enthusiastic and you want to learn, it will make your task a lot easier and, hopefully, enjoyable.
Plant portfolio
Accumulated knowledge is not something that can be taught, but if you are keen and you want to broaden your understanding of plants, an interesting way of going about this task is to create your own plant portfolio as a self-study aid. By doing this you will soon begin to learn plants’ botanical names, natural habitats and their needs and, in time, you will almost certainly come to appreciate them not just for their flowers, but also for their foliage, which in many cases is of greater aesthetic importance to a good planting scheme.
To do this will mean taking photographs of plants you already know and, more importantly, of those you do not know - one or two close-ups of its special features i.e. leaf, flower, fruit plus one or two images of the plant as a whole i.e. to show its form. If you have a digital camera so much the better as you can print your pictures on plain paper to keep the costs low. Make a note of the date or at least the month (e.g. early June or late June) that the picture was taken and the location.
Take pictures from your own plot as well as those you see when visiting botanic gardens, where you will find them clearly labelled with up-to-date botanical names. Plant names are constantly changing, so check names in the RHS Plant Finder to ensure you have the most recent. Most gardening books show only one image per plant, giving no indication as to what it will look like in six months’ time, so it’s a good idea to take photos of the same plant at different times of the year, giving you a handy reference as to what it will look like, say, in mid-winter.
Next you need to draw up a grid either by hand or using your PC with headings as in the example below. Then add as much information as you can find on each plant. This may mean using several books in order to gather all necessary information. Adding your own notes is also important because our changing climate now means that where once we thought we couldn’t grow a plant because it was too tender now, as the earth is warming, we can grow more than some books would have us believe.
Example Portfolio Page
Botanical name: Melianthus major
Family name: Melianthaceae
Country of origin: South Africa
Type: Evergreen shrub
Description: Highly decorative olive green, architectural foliage, silver underneath, which smell of peanut butter when touched. Spectacular tawny-crimson flower spikes late spring/early summer. Honey substance on flowers - common name honey bush.
Height and spread: 1.5m in one year - main growing period early to late autumn.
Growing conditions: Any rich, moist, fertile soil. Full sun or light shade away from strong winds, which may rip the large, delicate foliage.
Pruning/maintenance: As plant matures, cut off brown and crispy lower leaves - use secateurs rather than tugging off the leaves as stems are delicate. If stems get leggy, cut offending ones down to ground just above a basal bud any time in summer. Can be kept in bounds by cutting whole plant down to ground annually after flowering – it grows back same season.
Problems: Pests and diseases - trouble-free. Tender so best suited to the favourable south.
Period of interest: Evergreen - foliage good all year round. Flowers late spring-early summer.
You can also add a short list of suitable plants to grow alongside, which will also help broaden your plant knowledge.
If you then choose, say, two plants from each of the following 19 plant categories, you will very soon have extended your plant knowledge considerably. You may currently know a little about many plants but this way you will know everything there is to know about your chosen 38 plants.
Plant Categories
- Alpines and rockery plants
- Annuals, biennials and bedding plants
- Aquatic and bog plants
- Bamboos and grasses
- Bulbs, corms, rhizomes and tubers
- Climbers
- Conifers
- Deciduous shrubs
- Evergreen shrubs
- Ground cover plants
- Hardy ferns
- Hedging and screening plants
- Native plants (trees, shrubs and perennials)
- Ornamental trees
- Perennials: early flowering - up to early June
- Perennials: late flowering - from late June
- Roses: climbing and shrub
- Roses: ground cover, hybrid tea, floribunda
- Wall shrubs
If this all sounds too much and you don’t want to go to the trouble of creating your own plant portfolio, then you should at the very least know the name of each plant you want to include in your scheme and its preferred growing conditions. By learning their names and needs you can then ask yourself “do I have the right conditions for these plants to thrive in my garden?”
Recommended reading
RHS Plant Finder compiled by the RHS and published by Dorling Kindersley
Although this book 'exists to put enthusiastic gardeners in touch with suppliers of plants', it is also the most readily available source of all up-to-date plant names. It also gives the family name.
The Online version is even more up-to-date.
Plant: The Ultimate Visual Reference to Plants and Flowers of the World by Janet Marinelli published by Dorling Kindersley in association with Kew Gardens.
Unlike other encyclopedia, Plant details each plant’s provenance, helping you create a better garden with plants appropriate to your environment.
The RHS Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers
A very useful reference for all types of plants.
Two other books I find very useful, both written by Brian Davis, are The Gardener’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Trees & Shrubs and The Gardener’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Climbers & Wall Shrubs, published by Viking (part of the Penguin group). They are both available, but only in limited supply, which probably means they are both out of print. Try also looking in second-hand book shops but don’t worry if you can’t find them as there are plenty of other books on the same subject.