Basic Plant Layout For a Perennial Flower Garden
by John Yazo
When creating your perennial flower garden, the arrangement of the plants appearance will depend as much upon the shapes of your plants and how they are arranged, as to their colors and size.
You will want to start with placing the tallest plants in the back of the border, center of an island bed, then work downward with the shortest plants ending around the outside edges of an island bed or the front edge of a border. Keep in mind that the labeling that comes with the plants usually list the average mature height for a plant in full bloom. Another thing that you need to remember is that many flowering plants hold their blooms well above there foliage. This means that when the flowering plant isn't in bloom, it can be much shorter than the full matured height.
The labeling of plant heights is also done on an average. When a plant is grown in a poor or dry soil condition, the plant may grow a lot smaller than the same plant grown in nutrient rich, moist soil. Moving your plants around once you see how they grow may be an option to get them to grow to there specified matured size. Don't feel like you are doing something wrong, even experienced gardeners rearrange their plants on a regular basis.
The width, also know as the plants spread, is just as important when doing your garden layout. The specified width is also an average and will vary depending on soil conditions, geographical locations and plant age. Be careful not to plant a slow-grower very close to rapid spreading plant. This will allow the faster grower to over take the garden before the slower growing plant ever has a chance to get established and not even make it through it's first growing season.
Spacing is very important, when plant a perennial garden, most gardeners want to create a garden that has full effect as soon as possible. The challenge is not to create a crowded, unhealthy garden two or three years from the day you start. Plant thickly, but don't over do it. When planting a group of the same kind of plants, you can put them closer together to create a massed look more quickly.
A simple trick to remember is to plant short-lived plants between slower-growing, long-lived plants. A good example is peonies, this plant has a matured spread of about three feet, it may take seven years for them to reach this matured size. By interplanting with a plant like the Shasta daisies,which is a fast-growing, short-lived plant, will provide a full garden, with plenty of flowers while the peonies get fully established.
Another technique is planting groups of four or more of the same variety of plants together, know as drifts, to give a pleasing visual effect of repeating color and texture.
Collector gardens are another type of garden commonly planted. These are gardens that have a large variety of different plants, usually one or two all kind of different plants and not planted in any specific order. They are a more natural style garden and give more of a wildflower type garden look.
There are many different ways that you can create your own personal perennial garden and enjoy the beauty of nature in your own yard.
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