Garden Design Basics -  Put Some Color In Your Life

When you start to design and plan a garden, there are some basics to consider. Will the garden be mostly in sun or shade? Is the soil light in texture and dark in color, or does it appear to be little softer then cement? What climate or planting zone are you in? What's your average rainfall? Do you want to go native, or are you willing to throw in a few more exotic perennials? Do you want a monochromatic garden (shades of only one color: blue, pinks, yellows) or do you want a multi-colored garden? Are you in the country where you have to consider predatory mammals, like deer? There are a lot of questions listed above, but there are also a lot of good garden centers, willing to help find the right plants.

Things that you want to consider when selecting plants for a garden are height, bloom time (you don't want your garden to all bloom the same week, but spread out over a few months), flower and leaf color and texture. I live in New York State, in the suburbs of New York City. The USDA (United States Dept. of Agriculture) tells me that I am somewhere between Zones 6 & 7. You can Google the USDA zone maps for your area.

Here the early spring bulbs, planted the fall before or left to naturalize from previous seasons include daffodils, hyacinths and tulips
Tulips at the NY Botanical Garden.. Annuals (plants which only last one season and don't come back) traditionally are not planted before Mother's Day, which is considered the cutoff for "Danger of Frost" which would damage or kill the annuals. Early annuals though include pansies and violas. Combined with the spectacular beauty of our spring flowering shrubs, such as azaleas you have an unmatchable display of color.

If you have a lot of shade, you might consider hostas and ferns. While hostas do flower, their flowers are not particularly attractive and they are are really grown for their leaves, which are prevalent all season long. They come in so many sizes, textures and color of leaf, that they create a perpetual woodland feel and you can create an amazing amount of variety when you mix them with daylilies and ferns, along with annuals such as impatience, which do well in shade.

The middle of the garden can include plants such as monarda, iris& roses
Roses can be found in countless colors and forms.. Roses are reputed to be more finicky in their care over the long term, but they come in shrub forms, climbing forms, bush form and can be found in pretty much every color of the rainbow, so they can add so much to a garden and are well worth the effort. Many flowers come in a variety of colors. Astilbe are light and feathery, and the best part is that you don't even need a plot of land to have a garden. Almost any container can be used. Perennials can be put in pots, more commonly geranium, petunias, impatience, ivy, and many draping and spreading annuals form the basis of a hanging or stationary flower pot.

For the taller plants, usually found at the back of the garden, I have often used foxglove, delphinium, lythrum, hollyhocks
Hollyhock shown with poppies and foxgloves. and globe thistle. The globe thistle comes in a beautiful lavender blue, is a sphere shaped flower with lovely rough gray leaves. The New York Botanical Garden's spectacular recreation of Charles Darwin's cottage garden used a combination of hollyhocks, delphinium, foxglove, bachelor buttons
Bachelor buttons & poppies.,

Gardens can also be designed to serve specific purposes. Here are some special kind of gardens you can create.

Fragrance Gardens - designed with plants that have strong scents. It's not only the blooming flowers,  like hyacinths, lily of the valley, or stock, which perfume an entire area in the spring. You can grow mint and crush it's leaves between your fingers for that spicy, minty, smell. A shrub such as lilac is another heavenly scent that can also be cut (another kind of garden - the cutting garden) and brought in your house. Lavender has long been used to make sachets for drawers and the scent is released by the passing breezes. Even grasses that release a pleasant scent when stepped on, such as thyme, can be part of the fragrance garden.

Butterfly Gardens - designed to attract butterflies by using plants which are fragrant and rich in the nectar that butterflies drink. Among other things, butterflies like marigolds, nasturtium, queen anne's lace, the tall, strong hollyhock, butterfly bush, coneflowers, the amazing smelling, velvety deep purple heliotrope and indian paintbrush.

White Gardens - White gardens, which are monochromatically white, are almost fluorescent in moonlight. All of those flowers which come in bright, intense colors, also, by their textures, smells and shapes, differentiate themselves among whites. The tall elegant delphinium, or Japanese iris, the mid garden scented phlox, short petunias or candytuft, the light airy baby's breath, the early spring daffodils, mixed with the green, gold and white of hosta leaves, or ferns create a breathtaking simplicity, yet combine to glow subtly in the colors of the setting sun. Don't forget the climbing clematis or roses, which can cover a wall, trellis or lamppost with a variety of flowers from white through the rainbow. A variation on the white garden might be the Gray Garden, not all gray plants, but a garden of more subtle blues and greens, the soft gray/green leaves of artemisia or globe thistle, rocks and evergreen ground covers. and softly waving grasses.

Children's Gardens - Children's gardens can be places of amazing wonder as they participate in the transformation of bare earth into edible things like pumpkins or gourds, tomatoes,  blueberries, strawberries, corn or fruit trees. Or they create a garden of flowers to cut and bring into the house as proof of their efforts. The mighty sunflower, growing to heights over 6 feet in a season and providing seeds for birds all fall and winter, are awe inspiring to children and adults alike. The Chinese lantern, with hollow red/orange fruits, which can be dried and preserved or sometimes dries to an incredibly fragile network, light as air. And one of my favorite the poignant, yet hardy, bleeding heart, whose pink or white hearted shaped flowers with their tiny teardrop dance on the wind in early spring.

Zen Gardens - it may be sparse on plants and contain only sand and rocks, artfully arranged, a bench, and a simple enclosure to make it a place of contemplation and meditation.

And lastly for this article, the Hummingbird garden. Hummingbirds crave sweet nectar and love the color red, so plants like trumpet vines, lupines, lilies, phlox and petunias can all be used to attract the tiny, every moving bird.

To fill in a new garden, it is often advised to plant at least 3 of each type, giving them room to grow throughout the season. The nice thing about gardens is that if you regard a few basic principles, mainly sorting by size so that the plants to the rear are not overshadowed by the plants in front, it's hard to go wrong. You have to be conscious about watering, not too much, but definitely not too little, deadheading or snipping off the remaining part of a flower head after it has bloomed is helpful in promoting new blooms, and if you pick colors that you like, you'll like your garden. Be thoughtful, though, sometimes you'll see a plant in a nursery or garden center that you don't love, but it's size or bloom time fits what you need. Try it! It's amazing how something in the right spot, looks right, even if it's not perfect on it's own. Plants do fun things. Alchemilla mollis or Lady's Mantle is a low plant with yellow flowers, nice, but not in any way spectacular in and of itself, but it's leaves are cup shaped with almost serrated edges and they collect water in the most beautiful way, both in the center and along the edges. Some plants provide flowers, some leaves, some color, some texture. Yarrow has a flatter top with tiny flowers, daylilies are extremely hardy and can be divided frequently, providing more plants as the years go by. Enjoy!

About the Author:

Susan Rosenstadt-Bresler is an architect, with a Master in Business Administration from Harvard Business School and an architectural degree from Cornell University.  Gardening and photography are among her most valued hobbies. Her software and website can be found at 3D Home Decorator and her renderings and architectural visualizations can be seen at Architectural Visualizations