Garden design tips and tricks: how to create that all-important 'interest' in your garden

Looking upwards

If you’re landing here for the first time, welcome - it’s great that you’ve found us, at EXACTLY the right time of the gardening year. There’s lots going on here - garden design ideas, easy gardening how-tos, plant recommendations, general garden chat, border planting design tips and tricks and lots more. If you’d like to join in, I’d love it:

I can’t quite believe it, but we’ve had even more sunshine. You might even have had the chance to sit outside

If you have been sitting outside pondering what to plant, the 5-plant recipe series might be for you. Each one looks at a different colour palette for a different season, and as the seasons go on, there’ll definitely be a combination to suit your own colour preferences and garden location. You can find three of these planting palettes here, here and here.

Three of the 5-plant recipes

If you’re currently buying and ordering plants, you might find this useful: What to plant in your garden in April for colour in late summer. And if you’re planning a trip to the garden centre this weekend, before you get to the checkout, take a good look at your trolley. Have you ever got home and placed those eleven different perennials you’ve bought, and wondered why they look so lost? Have you ever wondered why your garden feels bit, well, bitty? I try to solve that problem for you here.

This week, the Small Garden Design Course is back. We’ll be taking a look at a way to bring visual interest to the garden as a whole. You can find previous articles in the Small Garden Design section: do have a go, as you can start it at any time.

Thank you so much to everyone who joined in the Zoom this week - it was lovely to see you there! We had a peek behind the scenes into my garden at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show in May, complete with dramas and a look at the plants that I’m planning to use. And that pavilion - I’ll keep you updated on that. You get to hear it here on Substack first.

What do you think of the Narcissus Notes?

If you’ve been a member of the Gardening Mind for a while, you’ll know that my views on tulips in beds and borders have changed considerably over the years, and that I now keep them in pots because of the risk of disease. In their place, I’ve been exploring narcissi more and more, which have such a range and variety that I’ve grown to love, and in Notes, I’m taking a look at a few varieties in detail, sharing them with you in case you want to move in this direction in the autumn. Let me know what you think. Maybe you don’t look at Notes and you’d like me repeat the info in these weekend posts? PS - squirrels hate daffodils bulbs - just saying…..

This one is Narcissus ‘Geranium’, a spectacular yet often overlooked ‘Tazetta’ variety. Each stem bursts open with from six UP TO FIFTEEN flowers per stem. The scent is just beautiful - intoxicating, dare I say it.

Some book news quickly:

There are three New Romantic Garden events this week, all at wonderful places:

On Saturday 5th April at 11am I’ll be the beautiful Greenfinch gallery in Ticehurst, where I’ll be signing books and giving a glimpse into what lies behind The New Romantic Garden.

I’ll be at the absolutely gorgeous Sevenoaks Bookshop on Tuesday 8th April 7pm, where I’ll be in conversation with Marianne Jones.

Then, on Thursday 10th April, I’ll be back chatting with

Jo Fairley

at The Star in Alfriston at 6pm.

I’ve met so many of you at the events so far and I’m really looking forward to seeing new faces at these - I’d love it if you came and said hello:

And we’re back! I’m hoping that you’ve had time to get your garden layout in a fit state to start creating those spaces. You can start this course at any time, so if you’ve just joined, parts 1-9 are here. Do pop any questions on to the Chat.

Lots of you have asked if you can see ‘before’ images of the gardens in The New Romantic Garden. Here’s a secret: I really wanted to include these images in the book, but the publisher preferred not to, which I totally get as the photos are pretty dire. And no problem, as I can share them with you here in The Gardening Mind, along with the garden’s design stories.

Height in the garden

Today’s before/after illustrates Part 10 of our journey around small garden design, when we look at getting some height into the garden. And by height, I don’t just mean trees.

I’m thinking of those all important level changes which make all the difference to the atmosphere of the space, creating that much-needed come-hithering which we want the garden to do. Whatever its size, we want it to give a hint of what’s going on beyond, without showing the whole garden. This way, you get a glimpse of something, and that ‘something’ then makes you want to explore further.

When I say level changes, I don’t necessarily mean changing the ground levels - this gets complicated, and expensive, and so unless you have the budget and mental capacity to deal with the associated upheaval, stick to the simpler ways we’re looking at today.

Let’s use this garden as an example to show how just one element can totally transform the garden space, both in how you look at it and how you use it. We’re going to look at the design layout for this space, showing how to deal with a simple rectangle of garden.

This is what greeted me when I first visited: three flowerbeds and a shed. Can you see how your gaze immediately zooms to the end of the garden?

There’s absolutely nothing of interest here, and yet there’s so much potential. Yes, there’s planting space, but look how flat the whole space is. It all feels completely soulless. Take a look at your posture as you look at this photo: is your head kind of hanging down?

I’m not surprised. There’s nothing at all that makes you want to look around. You just feel a bit bleughh. In order to really enjoy a garden, for the space to entice us and engage us, we need mystery, we need atmosphere, and we need some change in levels, somehow. We need height.

This ‘after’ photo below shows you what I mean. Can you see? We have height in the plants, and there are trees. But there’s something else which creates all those magical things I’ve listed above: