Both Spring and Autumn, for me, are important times in the garden. As the season changes, it provides an opportunity to look at the garden with fresh eyes, take an inventory and access what is working well and looking beautiful and what is not working.
If you take a look at your garden, you might feel that your garden is looking jumbled and messy, or boring, the chances are then that you have planted too many plants with either small or medium sized foliage. The remedy then is to add some plants with large foliage. Or you might discover that you are drawn to plants with large leaves and once again too many large leaved plants will result in the overall feel of the garden looking hard, masculine and boring. The remedy then is to add some plants with small or medium sized foliage. In garden design this combining of plants with different sized leaves is called working with the visual texture of the plant.
Take a look how you can work with the visual texture of your plants!
Fine textured plants (plants with small leaves) include ferns, Gaura lindheimeri, Euphorbia diamond frost, erigeron, ornamental grasses and of course many others. Place these plants in areas where they can soften sharp edges and architectural features, in areas close to the patio, pathways or steps. They also help to soften and contrast coarse textured plants and this contrast creates interest in the planting scheme.
Medium textured plants usually have medium sized leaves, the majority of shrubs we see in a garden fall into this category, shrubs like the Ribbon Bush, Cape Honeysuckle, Plumbago, Salvias, and many, many others. Use these plants to create the background planting and form the walls of your garden room, or where you want to create a restful feeling in the garden or to offset and support other plant forms used in the design.
Coarse textured plants have large leaves. These plants are attention grabbers, competing for attention and as a general rule are the first plants you notice when you enter your local nursery or a garden. Plants that fall into this category include cannas, Delicious Monsters and Philodendrons, Dragon Tree, Stelitzia, Sanseveria, Hydrangeas, Acanthus Mollis, Arium Lilies and of course many others. Coarse textured plants impart strength and stability to a design, and because they hold your attention, they also allow the eye to pause and rest within the planting scheme. Use these plants in your planting scheme where you want to grab the viewer’s attention, creating a focal point within the planting scheme or where you want to add a sense of drama or create great sculptural effects in the garden. In fact if your garden lacks the wow factor, it is probably in need of some coarse textured plants.
Have you been combining different plant textures in your garden? Let me known what you have discovered in your own garden.