Choosing Plants

(step six)

Yippee!  It’s time to choose your plants!

Choosing plants depends upon 3 factors:

• What will grow well in your spot
• What works with the plan and style you created
• What you can find and/or afford

For most of us who are attracted to gardening in the first place, the process of discovering which plants to buy and where we will plant them is the best part of the garden-building process.  Poring over plant websites and garden books and shopping for lovely things occupies a lot of my personal time and I imagine it’s the same for many others, including you.

When you started your garden dreaming back in Step 1 you probably already started a list of specific flowers, shrubs, and trees you wanted.  The trick is to know if those plants you fell in love with will work in your garden in the place you want them.

For example, if you adore tropical hibiscus bushes but live in zone 6, you’re going to have to adjust your desires because tropical hibiscus will not live past summer in your zone.  Or you may love hostas, but if your garden space is nothing but full sun all day long you’ll need to find another plant that works in the sun because hostas need shade. In these cases you’ll want to find a different plant that gives the same “vibe” as the one you can’t use.

**In order to save you lots of research time, I’m creating a Master Plant List (COMING SOON!) which groups plants by sun/shade, climate, and soil moisture.  This list will be downloadable – you can find the link on my Products & Resources page.  I created this list out of my own desire to have just such a list when I was starting my own garden, so I hope you’ll find it helpful.**

If you have plenty of time, though, and the desire, pretty much every bit of information you could need to select the right plants is available on the internet or in comprehensive garden books.  I have a list of resources I personally use on my Products & Resources page.

What to Plant?

You’ve already selected some plants in the dreaming and planning steps, but now you will do some rearranging of your blueprint based on real life factors.

• Exposure: select plants that like the amount of sun you have in each spot
• Soil attributes: select plants that like the amount of water and soil type you have
• Aesthetics: select plants that look good together, provide variety, and demonstrate good balance

Balance is an important facet of the visual appeal of a garden. Balance is achieved through a few different factors, the main ones being size, form, texture, and color.

• Size: the mature size of a plant, both height and width
• Form: vertical, spreading, fountain, grassy, mounding, vining, conical, etc.
• Texture: large or small leaves, loose or dense, feathery, glossy, rough, leggy, etc.
• Color: the color of the flowers as well as leaves, seeds, fruit, and stems

The way to achieve balance is to include variety by planting all of the following:

• Trees (shade, height, privacy, vertical interest, light variation – trees are the backbone of any garden space)
• Shrubs (depth, shape, privacy, color, texture – provide garden “walls” and fill out space)
• Perennials (shape, color, texture – come back year after year)
• Annuals (long lasting color, also shape and texture – changeable year to year, often easy to start from seed)

Try not to have too many of one type of plant, but rather choose plants that complement their neighbors.  For example, next to a large ornamental grass, plant a mounding shrub with flowers.  Or plant a green glossy evergreen next to fine-textured perennials with lots of flowers.  If you have a row of tall, conical trees, plant a variety of mounding, grassy, and horizontally oriented perennials and shrubs in order to balance the vertical nature of the trees.

Please see the Garden Design Basics page for more information on balance and plant choice.

Choosing Flowers for Season-Long color:

If you’re like most gardeners, you’ll want to be able to look out onto your garden or stroll through it and have beautiful colors (and fragrances) for as long as possible.

With good planning, you can ensure that you have flowers blooming every day of your growing season, from early spring through late fall.  The way to do this is by learning the bloom season for every plant that you use, whether it’s a tree, shrub, perennial, or annual, and planting a selection throughout your garden taking these bloom times into account.

To some degree, you won’t know your plants’ bloom times until after they’re in your garden, regardless of how well you research and plan, because plants respond to their environment.  In that case, you can fill in the gaps later with annuals or new perennials, or whatever works in your space.

I find that a keeping a bloom log from year to year helps me see any gaps I have in my bloom scheme.  You can make one yourself or use the one I’ve created available on my Products page.

How to Plant

Please see How To Plant in the Tend Your Garden  section of our website.

What if it just doesn’t work?

It is highly likely that you’ll get things planted and later decide that the way it looks in real life doesn’t live up to what you pictured in your head.  This is completely normal and common.  Oftentimes you just can’t know how it will look until after it’s been planted and had time to grow together, no matter how well you plan.  And sometimes plants just fail to thrive, despite our best efforts.  In either case you dig things up and move them and plant other things instead.

A big part of gardening is being flexible and enjoying the process, so don’t stress about it!

At this point you are essentially done! Congratulations!  You’ve dreamed, planned, and planted your dream garden…All that’s left now is to tend it and enjoy it.

Enjoy the fruits of your labor, garden friend, and welcome to the joy of gardening!

Now that you have your garden, I invite you to read about Planting for More Than Yourself and Gardening for Joy™.

Congratulations!  You did it!