Designer Landscapes at Home - A Story Starter from Tesselaar Plants
To start with, accept that less is, in fact, more. It’s a lot like when you’ve dressed for a night out, and looking in the mirror you know there’s too much going on. You have the sense to take off the scarf, or the earrings or the necklace or the hat – whatever it takes to simplify the look. It’s the same with a garden filled with plants. There is no place here for greed: accept that some things may have to go.
So stand in front of the area you’re planning to give a design face-lift and count the number of different types of plants currently growing there. When you reach ‘three’ stop. Seriously. Good garden designers limit the number of plants they combine. Brilliant ones can work with more than five, but that’s not relevant here. If you want to create a really great looking landscape, select your three favorites - or up to five if you must. Pull out and relocate (or give away) everything else, then fill the gaps with more of the chosen three plants. What you have created is a garden filled with a limited palate of plants and if they are mixed around, you could call it cottage style, meadow-like or just a loose arrangement.
And finally, if you want something shockingly restrained and impressive, reduce your garden to green plantings. Keep the conifer hedging, the clipped ivy, the trees and the lawns and limit your color or flowering moments to localized points of emphasis: planters filled with flowering annuals by the front door; a border of spring-flowering bulbs to edge the drive; a wedge of roses alongside the steps or pool.
Banishing color from this garden (above) has made a feature of the white birch trunks. The clipped mass of the four evergreen pillars (right) are softened by a glorious mass of Flower Carpet Coral roses.
Break It Down . . .
. . . the fewer the plants the better
. . . mix them together for a soft effect
. . . plant them in blocks for more punch
. . . or work with green only for a complete makeover
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For hi-res downloadable images from this Story Starter, please contact Judie Brower at .