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One of the most enjoyable (and in fact stress relieving) aspects of gardening is to continuously experiment with composition of various areas in my garden; borders, beds and walks etc. Failures only mean 'try some other ideas next year'. Successes give a wonderful feel of satisfaction, and cultivate a desire to improve further. The beauty here is success can be entirely judged based on personal taste rather than requiring approval of others (and hence stress free?).
Of course, it is always true that what one gardener considers successful can be considered utter disaster by other gardeners. However, if any gardener is to worry about this, he or she may end up never create a garden that is truly his/her own. Any garden should be considered cool and beautiful as long as its creator likes it, regardless of what others think.
Even after many years of gardening, I am still struggling to get familiar with the ornamental characteristics and habits of the plants that we acquire each year. To learn these through the passage of seasons and over a spectrum of growing conditions will take a while. The journey will likely never end. What you see and read here are merely on-going 'trial and error' in progress. (obviously a long way to go, but it was fun!)
The primary purpose of this page is to help myself review some of the results of my plantings for improvements, and to review potential areas for future development. It may be of interest to other gardeners that would like to learn from my mistakes as well. Like most enthusiastic gardeners, I have my own garden composition 'rule of thumb and guides'.
I have not been serious about colour schemes, and I have to admit I am easily bored by simplilistic colour schemes. Also, it is doubly hard to collect plants and be rigidly constrained by specific 'colour schemes'. That said, like most gardeners, I inevitably tried to avoid colour mixtures that I dislike, and attempted to show contrast here and there where it adds interest to me.
Similarly, textures contrast is still a luxury that I can barely afford, and have to settle with limited texture variations where circumstances allow.
This is a sunny border on level ground, and is in the primary line of sight from my sunroom. It border with and, in fact, overlap a little with the septic bed making the use of woody objects not practical. There is some attempt here for seasonal change in look. There are no dramatic contrast of textures and colours. The main anchoring segments for the bed use a combination of cream variagated iris leaves, dark leaf heucheras, golden leaf berberis, golden and white variagated sedum, silver leaf veronica, and lavender etc. with the dark green boxwoods and various adajent conifers as background. Seasonal interests are provided by shooting star, tulip, anemone, tall bearded iris, indigo, siberian iris, penstemon, daylily, echinacea, hosta, and phlox etc. Some dianthus were used as fillers until this year. After a few years of 'tunning', the composition of this zone is still highly inadequate.
Snapshots in May......
This is a sunny border on level ground, and part of it can be seen from my sunroom, and most of it can be seen from the deck just outside the sunroom. The north side is shaded by a small cherry tree. There is a limited attempt here for seasonal change in look.
I would like to include conifers as integral parts of perennial beds where practicable. In addition to extending the seasonal garden views beyond the typical flowering period, they can add structures and textures, and provide year round background colours and interests, and compliment flowering plants whenever they are in season. However, it is easier said than done. So far, the use of conifers in my perennial beds is still in its early stage of evolution. One factor that is difficult to manage is to avoid heavy shading of important parts of the conifer by tall and bushy perennials in the summer. This tends to deform conifers over time. Another important consideration is to make sufficient allowances for conifer size change over time.
I have started to experiment in developing beds with more dominating conifer presence or 'conifer garden'. The results are preliminary and not worth showing here; perhaps in a couple of years.
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I have a few shady passages/walks in my garden by necessity, but the garden beds around them have not yet been properly developed. (Walks here really mean short passage ways.) Therefore, the pictures shown here need to be viewed with an imagination on how they should look like when appropriately developed. Hopefully, I have something more presentable to show next year....
This is a path leading from the front of the house to the side and the swimming pool. It is flanked by a few tall Pinus Strobus, Cercis Canadensis and a Prunus. The garden underneath is filled with temporary 'vegetation'. It remains shady through the year because of the few tall white pines.
This is a path leading from the back of the house to the side and the swimming pool. It is flanked by a mature prunus and some oriental maples. It is shaded mostly in the summer time by the deciduous trees. There are a few low conifers around the path. The garden underneath is filled temporarily with Solomon's Seal, a few hostas, primulas, and corydalis etc.. It needs a major re-work.
We like to grow our maples in a garden setting rather than as lawn specimens. Therefore, we have attempted to plant companion plants (perennials and conifers) with maples as anchor points of interest. However, I have to admit that my effort was not very serious and most of my maples are presently surrounded by temporary 'vegetation'. Hopefully, I can improve the situation a bit in the next few years.
When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad; and that is my religion.
Abraham Lincoln
