In comparison to a carefully planted and staked traditional herbaceous or perennial border the naturalistic style can look loose and untidy. Your personality will dictate which you prefer – order or chaos.
Formal planting with plants arranged at regular intervals and often placed to mirror one another bring instant logic to their surroundings. This must be the easiest style of garden design to get right, but of course, the minute one of the carefully place plants dies your scheme is ruined and all attention focuses on the gap.
Personally, I like some elements of formality in a garden’s design to contrast with the informality that I seek to create, but for me a totally formal design quickly looses its fascination no matter how impressive.
Through the associations that naturalistic planting invokes it has the ability to engage and enthrall us. It can trigger memories of longed for landscapes that offer escape and relaxation. American gardeners can use prairie plants to recall nostalgic thoughts about the once extensive tall grass prairies of their homeland. For me such plantings recall the countryside I am isolated from having chosen to live in the heart of a city. And perennials above all other plants demonstrate the dynamic nature of living things and clearly signal the changing seasons and fluctuations in weather.
The biggest problem with naturalistic planting for those of us how want to pursue it is using it within the confines of our domestic gardens. The ideas underpinning this contemporary design trend were first developed in Germany for use in public green spaces. Later adaptions both in Europe and America lead to dramatic schemes for public parks, large private estates and high profile garden exhibitions. These highly publicized projects accompanied by exciting photographs fueled interest and encouraged gardeners to have a go for themselves. Regrettably, few of the projects that followed lived up to peoples expectations and the reasons are really quite simple to identify.
Naturalistic planting needs space to make a bold statement. The plants used are repeated across the planting area to emulate natural plant communities. where the same plants reappear randomly to fill the horizon. In a small private garden there is simple too little room for this to work. Further, most landmark schemes were situated in open sunny locations which gave the plants the best opportunity to grow sturdily. Private gardens in comparison offer shelter, shade and nutrient rich soils – all of which lead to tall, lanky growth resulting in plants collapsing or needing to be staked.
My own ideas for the perennial meadows I now design evolved over may years of struggling within the confines of a small, humble garden. The need for repetition of key plants has to lead to compromises and must result in the use of a restricted pallet of plants. I have learned to create schemes using a small range of key plants, but at the same time leaving room for some extra diversity and freedom. I have also found that by arranging perennial meadows as neat and ordered units within a total garden design that I can introduce some order and formality that is often necessary for gardens that are closely associated with buildings in urban environments.
The wide extravagant naturalistic planting schemes you have read about many not be for you, but I hope that the perennial meadow approach will allow more of us to enjoy the benefits of this exiting new trend in planting design.
This is a small perennial meadow in my own garden, covering only a few square meters in area but providing colour and interest all year round.
Gardens can evolve over time to reflect the interests and character of their makers and eventually a unique atmosphere will develop. Alternatively, they can be designed either by their owners or a professional designer with the aim of creating a specific mood or visual impact. In this series of posts – Mind Gardens – I will try to show how different ideas and dreams can be realised in the gardens we design and plant.
Scheme 1 – taken from my Prairie Meadows eBook
Scheme 2 – taken from my Prairie Meadows eBook
Scheme 3 – conceived for this project.
For a garden to be more than just a comfortable place to sit in to drink a cup of coffee there needs to be some sort of idea underpinning its design. Ideas together with constraints guide the design process and can lead to outdoor spaces that have focus, draw attention to something or evoke an emotional reaction through associations.
Across a path, on the other side of the garden, I have designed a long and deep flower border. I could just repeat the same grass-based scheme here for a controlled minimalist look, but instead I envisage a low-growing, colourful flower border that will offer more interest over a longer season to the garden owners – Scheme Two. Note: These are often the sort of choices to consider when designing for either a public as opposed to a private garden setting.
Theme plants – per square meter ( x 1 )
Theme plants – per square meter ( x 1 )
Laren, the Netherlands, September 2018 design Piet Oudolf
Asters, grasses and autumn tints are the main ingredients that brought my garden to its final crescendo this year.
Beauty is to be found in the chaos of nature and this year, in the struggle for life amidst the perennials and shrubs in my gardens. A drier than average spring followed by a totally dry summer in which a hundred days passed without any significant rainfall in a country famous for its canals; I was forced to turn on the sprinklers.
Shrubs held onto their leaves for as long as they could, but eventually many just dropped them and I am sure will recover next year. Some perennials like ligularias, Darmera and certain ferns simply disappeared and again I am sure they will all reappear this autumn or next spring.
What was interesting was how some plants simply dried up and remained effective after a short flowering period. In late autumn we would be talking about their winter silhouettes, but in July you needed to adjust your expectations to fully appreciate what was happening. In the case of this public planting in the commercial district of Amsterdam I found the result still effective and attractive.
More gardeners are starting to install irrigation systems, but if the trend in climate change is going to continue we would be better changing the pallet of plants we grow. I visited a high profile public park planting here this August which was of course fitted with an expensive watering system, but the lush green that dominated this oasis seemed strangely at odds with the wider landscape which was buff-brown; more typical of the Mediterranean region than temperate Holland.
We were allowed to water our gardens this summer as the one thing the Dutch are good at is water management, but in truth it felt wrong. Nevertheless it meant that I was able to keep the garden ticking over with some parts relished the extra heat, sunshine and, for them adequate, water.
Rain has finally fallen and within a week our parched, buff-brown land is green again. Asters, grasses and Rudbeckias are all thriving in the garden and surprisingly many shrubs are bearing heavy crops of berries.
It is in late spring, just after the tulips have ended, that I become delighted by the many flowering shrubs and distinctive foliage colours that seem to dominate the garden.
Of course there are various perennials flowering including Euphorbia, Geum, Geranium and bulbous plants such as Camassia and ornamental onions, but foliage colours and the flowering mounds of Viburnum and Deutzia shrubs attract all the attention.
My philosophy over shrubs concludes that shrubs are best used in gardens to create highlights and structure amidst a wider field of flowering perennials and ornamental grasses.
Even in my own garden where I trial many different plants, including lots of shrubs, the idea is evident, but ideally the relationship between shrubs and perennials should be far more pronounced. Many Deutzias grow too large for smaller gardens but I have found Deutzia rosea ‘Campanulata’ with D. x elegantisima ‘Rosealind’ (behind) remain sufficiently compact for my needs. The upright shrub on the right is Frangula alnus ‘High Line’. Its distinctive upright form suggest it would work in a variety of schemes, but I find it rather boring and not very elegant, for such an upright design feature I can think of many slim growing conifers that would look so much better, and would be evergreen.
Purple leaved foliage has featured in my gardens far a long time as it offers a strong, season-long contrast with the green foliage and flowers that generally dominate. Prickly Berberis, evergreen Pittosporum and Cercis with its flush of pink flowers on bare stems at the very start of the season have all proven indispensable.
In my vision of the 
