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.
Design ideas need not be complex although gardens expressing thoughts on philosophy, scientific principles and religion are all valid possibilities. Sometimes just the need to provide a setting for a treasured pot or sculpture will be enough, or perhaps the need to draw attention to a distant view.
Colours, textures, patterns, smells are all powerful stimuli that trigger associations and can create a sense of place and a mood when incorporated into a design.
Mind gardens will be an occasional series of posts that will try and show how perennial meadow planting schemes can be used in a range of different designs for small to medium sized gardens. The simple garden plans will show how different garden features, including mixed perennial border plantings, can be arranged in order to express a given design idea.
In each case the emphasis will be upon the different perennial plants needed to create the various planting schemes in the gardens.. The actual arrangement of borders, paths, patios together with the siting of trees and shrubs are flexible and would be different for any given real situation, but it is the principals of how best to use perennials in such designs that I aim to cover here.
A Setting For A Large Ceramic Vessel
The placement of art objects such as sculptures and large pots in garden landscapes needs careful consideration. Scale is a crucial factor not only of the piece itself, but also of the planting surrounding it. Once, I commissioned a large pot for which I asked the potter to give it extra height in order that it could easily stand out within a planting scheme and not be engulfed by it.
Stoneware, 90 cm. tall, Jennifer Jones ceramics
My pot will be the focus of this garden design; a rectangular space some 30 meters by 20m, typical of many domestic gardens throughout Europe.. The pot is just over waist heigh and the planting surrounding it should hover around half this. For this important feature I have a simple perennial meadow in mind – Scheme One, in which ornamental grasses dominate; the pot will sit in a wide sweep of these grasses and draw all the attention.
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.
This plan can be drawn equally well with either straight edged borders or curved and that should be dictated by the setting and your own personal preference. The key design point here is that the large pot stands prominently forward in the border on the left with the grass meadow flowing away behind it into the far reaches of the garden.
Scheme One – grass dominated – surrounding large pot
Theme plants – per square meter ( x 1 )
4 x 1 Sporobolus heterolepis
2 x 1 Stachys monierie ‘Hummelo’
2 x 1 Geranium ‘Dilys’
Complementary plants
2 x 1 Gaura lindheimeri
1 x 2 Sedum ‘Red Cauli’
In late summer when the tussled mounds of Sporobolus grass send up their fine, airy flower spikes the contrast with the hard ceramic vessel will be magical. The small, low-growing geranium will fill in the scheme at ground level and the Stachys sends up neat purple, sausage shaped flowerheads that age to dark brown and will punctuate the scheme long into the winter. Gaura is a short-lived perennial that flowers abundantly all summer. It will fill in this scheme in the early years and may self seed. Such a complementary plant is useful here as the Sporobolus grasses are particularly slow to establish and fill out.
Scheme Two – undulating flower meadow
Theme plants – per square meter ( x 1 )
3 x 1 Salvia nemorosa ‘Oostfriesland’
1 x 1 Scutellaria incana
1 x 1 Schizachyrium scoparium ‘The Blues’
2 x 1 Geranium ‘Dilys’
1 x 1 Sedum ‘Red Cauli’
Complementary plants
2 x 3 Stipa orientale
The blue/grey foliage of the Schizachyrium grasses and the late summer flowering Scutellaria will combine with the purple flower spikes of Salvia nemorosa in early summer which later in the season will stand out as brown seedheads against the rounded mounds of colourful Sedums.
A few extra plants of Stipa orientale here will throw up silvery flower spikes throughout the summer to mimic the wispy, pale coloured flowers of the Gaura on the other side of the garden. Additionally, the Geranium ‘Dilys’ and the Sedum ‘Red Cauli’ introduce additional linking elements between these two schemes.
These schemes relate closely with similar schemes detailed in my Perennial Meadows eBooks, in particular the titles Open and Prairie. There you will find more detail about the plants used with images whilst also learning how they relate to the other plants being used in those schemes to create viable plant communities.
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 
My last post showed the garden three weeks ago just after I had knocked down all the perennials with the question “would you want your garden looking like that?”.
Well, as promised, the perennials have reappeared rapidly to cover the ground level debris and the shrubs are bursting into flower.
This is how it was just three weeks ago.
The dead remains of last year’s perennial growth will rot down in the course of the year, gradually nourishing the plants in a natural process.
Shrubs and tulips take a leading role at this time of the year.
The time I save in not carrying everything I remove to a compost heap, that I later must bring back to spread onto the ground is enormous. It might not look very tidy for a few weeks in early spring, but for me it represents the beginning of the new year’s gardening season.
Cycling across town to these gardens I pass a public space in which a good example of mixed perennial meadow planting has been created. In season it is dramatic and highly effective and in winter the plant’s silhouettes are attractive. However, the city council has yet to find time to tidy it up and what currently is to see there is very ugly. Although perennial meadows can be effective in public spaces and offer significant savings in maintenance cost, their maintenance needs to be timely and rigorous.
As it currently appears this bold planting is a poor advertisement for what is a very good model for public green space planting. In a few weeks time it will again be something the passing public will appreciate, but it should have been tidied using my snap and drop technique many weeks ago.
Spring is late in Amsterdam this year. Only three weeks ago we were skating on the canals in the centre of the city. Once the bulbs come into bloom and the shrubs blossom the scruffy ground cover will soon be forgotten.
Winter has really arrived here in Amsterdam. It is cool and wet and I am glad that I have finished my replanting projects. Last week I weeded here and there, tidied away broken or flopped stems, and topped up the wood chip paths.
The garden is quite tidy now if you can appreciate the look of dying perennials and their silhouettes, but in truth, without light they look drab and dreary.
