Creating a garden without a plan is like constructing a house without blueprints. You may get lucky and wind up with something attractive and functional, but it's more likely you will scratch your head in hindsight, wondering why a door opens into a cabinet - or - in the case of a garden, why one plant overtakes a bed or fails to thrive, the colors don't blend, etc.
I have been ruminating about our yard for a year now. And after sketching in my mind, I decided to put some ideas on paper. So I drew the following:
There is a beautiful retaining wall in our back yard, which has a lot of potential. There are plants on the middle and top tiers, but just grass at the base of the wall (which is not interesting and difficult to groom).
I know I want to keep the Japanese maple and butterfly bush, and I want to plant a golden rain/chain tree in place of a gnarly rose bush. The rest is a blank slate.
So I made multiple copies of the above sketch to use as a template for coming up with several design scenarios.
As I sketched (both in my head and on paper), I kept the following in mind:
- Texture
- Color Palette
- Growth (influence of time on growth, spread, height)
- Hardiness Zone (for introducing new plants)
- Maintenance Considerations
- Seasons (visual appeal for all seasons)
- Sustainability (I wanted to use as much of what I already have as possible)
I spent Memorial Day Weekend implementing one of the plans, which I will reveal in a future post.