Design Tricks For Busy Gardeners (Part 1)

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Creator of his garden

In practice, most real gardeners and gardeners are in practice overloaded with gardening problems and worries beyond any measure, because in our harsh climate it is not so easy to get a significant harvest. This is hampered either by too cold summer (which is not uncommon), or drizzle and prolonged rains, as well as an increasing number of pests and diseases. And this is in addition to tireless concern for maintaining the desired level of soil fertility, for the work of caring for plants, for collecting and processing the grown crop. Therefore, those gardeners and summer residents who, like me, pay the most attention to the garden and orchard, are not able to devote much time to the decoration and arrangement of the site. As they say, not before …

However, I still want beauty, so over time I began to look for options on how to create a beautiful corner in the garden, but at the minimum cost of my labor. I tried to make sure that even at the stage of creating landscape compositions I did not overwork too much, and later did not spend too much time on maintaining the floral and decorative luxury I had created in the appropriate form.

In such endeavors, colorful illustrations in numerous magazines and books on landscape design can be helpful. However, few summer residents in reality manage to implement something like this on their own - it is too laborious, and on their shoulders there is still a garden-garden in combination with work, which also has not been canceled. In addition, the creation of beauty often involves the need for considerable financial investments. So I had to go my own way. Of course, I relied on a variety of landscape design techniques, but I used them taking into account my specific circumstances and financial capabilities.

Competent approach to plant selection

It is not a problem to get a variety of perennial floral and ornamental plants, as well as lianas and shrubs in garden centers today. I'm not even talking about annuals - the abundance of seeds makes my head spin. True, one must also take into account the possibility that seeds do not always sprout, and something that is not so colorfully depicted on the bag may grow out of them, but this is a separate topic. However, the acquisition of new specimens of plants should be treated with extreme caution. And here one should be guided not only by how realistically they can grow in the conditions of your particular garden (including taking into account damping, which many flower and ornamental crops are subject to), but also the difficulties in caring for them. That is, you must stop your choice only on those crops, be it shrubs, vines or spectacular flower beds,which will not cause you much trouble in the future, and there are many such plants. When choosing them, it is better, of course, to be guided by certain requirements. All of them must have:

• frost resistance, so as not to bother with difficult shelters for the winter;
• resistance to podoprevanie, so that every spring the problem of restoring plantings does not arise;
• endurance, so that the plants do not particularly suffer from the weather conditions of our unpredictable and, alas, unfavorable spring and summer;
• the need for minimal pruning and shaping of the crown or did not require such an operation at all.

This means that if you are sowing or planting annuals or biennials, then these should be the most unpretentious and fast-growing plants, the seedlings of which can be obtained in a greenhouse or at least grown there by planting it in April from small, occupying a minimum of space in the apartment, bowls. A similar safe variant of plants can be, for example, pansies, nasturtium, alyssum, marigolds, simple petunia (it is better not to look at exotic petunias - you are tormented in full), cineraria, etc. Fiddle with such plants a little, but they look great.

There are many perennials that are even more convenient in terms of saving time and effort. They grow from year to year in the same place and may well be (although this is not necessary) very unpretentious and frost-resistant. Early flowering plants include bergamo, common primroses, blueweed, liverwort, hazel grouse, muscari, stonecrop, lily of the valley, etc. And later, in the summer, peonies, aquilegia (or catchment), astilba, dicentra (popularly known as "broken heart"), various daylilies, irises, rudbeckia, echinacea, decorative perennial onions and other plants bloom. All of them are really unpretentious and will require almost no effort from you, except for sufficient nutrition and watering. And at the same time they can be very successfully combined with decorative deciduous plants and decorative grasses. The highlight of cereals lies in spectacular leaves, and in their beauty and variety they are in no way inferior to beautifully flowering perennials, and these crops look attractive almost all season. Among ornamental deciduous plants, Brunner is particularly unpretentious (it has spectacular variegated forms), heuchera, cuff, tiarella, ornamental types of wormwood, hosta and others, and from ornamental cereals, in the first place, in my opinion, it is worth paying attention to variegated forms sedge, variegated moth, reed grass, various calamus, bulbous ryegrass and fluffy hare tails (the latter are annuals). Among ornamental deciduous plants, Brunner is particularly unpretentious (it has spectacular variegated forms), heuchera, cuff, tiarella, ornamental types of wormwood, hosta and others, and from ornamental cereals, in the first place, in my opinion, it is worth paying attention to variegated forms sedge, variegated moth, reed grass, various calamus, bulbous ryegrass and fluffy hare tails (the latter are annuals). Among ornamental deciduous plants, Brunner is particularly unpretentious (it has spectacular variegated forms), heuchera, cuff, tiarella, ornamental types of wormwood, hosta and others, and from ornamental cereals, in the first place, in my opinion, it is worth paying attention to variegated forms sedge, variegated moth, reed grass, various calamus, bulbous ryegrass and fluffy hare tails (the latter are annuals).

As for such traditional perennials as dahlias, gladioli and tulips, I honestly do not particularly favor them. Too much hassle due to the need to dig up tubers and bulbs annually, as well as the difficulties in storage and over-exposure of these flower crops to disease. Of the plants dug up for the winter, I only give preference to begonias. But, of course, this is a matter of taste.

It is even easier to care for conifers, which are very beautiful from early spring to late autumn (I'm not talking about winter, since there are some nuances here). They require minimal maintenance and work well with a wide variety of ornamental shrubs, as well as annuals and perennials. True, not all conifers are suitable for a harsh climate, however, choosing junipers, thuja and dwarf forms of spruce, you most likely cannot be mistaken, and these plants will delight you for many years.

Among climbing plants, you can also find spectacular and unpretentious species (many of them do not require special care, if only there is something to curl around) - take, for example, maiden grapes, honeysuckle honeysuckle (namely honeysuckle, other climbing honeysuckle are less winter-hardy and cannot grow everywhere) or hops - and no worries. True, speaking of hops, I was a little cunning - in our conditions it is strongly affected by powdery mildew, and the vines have to be sprayed with Topaz, which, however, is not very troublesome, since I usually spray hops together with gooseberries (speech, of course, it is about the second spraying, which is done immediately after flowering).

There are also varieties of clematis, which are also picky and winter well even in the Middle Urals without much shelter (I only cover mine with spruce branches - and there are no problems). In addition, the vines of magnolia vine and actinidia kolomikta look spectacular - these plants also do not require much trouble, it is enough to initially prepare fertile soil for them and further maintain the required level of watering and dressing. True, in our harsh conditions, they can only be planted from the southern side of the house, where protection from the winds is provided, and the sun warms up better.

Layout tricks

Perhaps someone likes strict geometric patterns and even, as if planted in a straight line, borders on the flower beds, but this, alas, is not in our case, when there is very little time and effort for landscape delights. All these perfect shapes require constant and painstaking care, which you will hardly find time for. Therefore, plant the plants not according to the rules, but in arbitrary romantic groups, combining flowering plants together with decorative deciduous and cereals in the composition. Then they will look spectacular in a variety of options. The main thing here is to achieve successful combinations of plants with each other. For example, red-leaved forms can be planted in a company with silvery ones, and yellow-leaved ones look great against the background of plants with green leaves. As for specific options, it all depends on your imagination and personal tastes. Place annuals and biennials with bright informal curtains. For example, you can plant part of a flower bed with them or fill in the gaps between perennials. Make compositions of conifers with perennials with spectacular leaves, for example, with hosta, etc. Add color accents with plants with silvery leaves (ornamental wormwood, cineraria silvery, silvery stonecrops), as well as plants with red-burgundy foliage (for example, Heucher).as well as plants with red-burgundy foliage (for example, Heucher).as well as plants with red-burgundy foliage (for example, Heucher).

Interesting variations are also provided by the arrangement based on the contrast of shapes, when, for example, plants with narrow belt-like leaves (daylilies, irises, ornamental grasses) are planted next to plants with decorative foliage, such as heuchera, tiarella or hosta. In particular, the combination of daylilies with hosts is considered simply ideal in landscape design. Low-growing varieties and types of plants with narrow leaves, for example, small-flowered daylilies, in turn, look great next to stones.

When choosing plants for compositions, do not forget about the need to take into account their individual characteristics. Only plants with similar needs for providing them with moisture and light are planted nearby. Of course, the flowering time of various cultures is also taken into account - the compositions being compiled should ideally look good from spring to autumn, which means that the presence of plants with decorative foliage in plantings, in my opinion, is mandatory. And beautifully flowering plants should be selected so that in none of the periods there is no dissonance from the excessive oversaturation of the composition with bright colors inharmonious with each other. In addition, it is often necessary to take into account the different levels of planting, when tall plants are planted in the background, so that they do not cover the shorter ones.

And, finally, do not try to immediately decorate the entire area with flower beds - this is not easy. It is better to decorate it with small new flower beds as free time appears, and over time you will already have several areas that delight your eyes. And most importantly, create without fear of making mistakes, because the main thing is not the recognition of your design talent by professionals in this field, but that the created compositions are liked by you, because first of all you and your loved ones will be the main connoisseurs of all this beauty.

The end follows

Svetlana Shlyakhtina, Yekaterinburg

Photo by the author