Here’s a brutal truth. Many home gardens look a bit ho hum. And it’s got nothing to do with the amount of love their owners give them. Nope. Most of the time it’s because they lack one vital thing – a garden framework.

But surely planting armloads of plants and tending them with care is enough? Maybe take an honest look at the results of your efforts. Plant by plant, you’ve probably achieved success. But looking at the garden as a whole you may have to admit it’s not what you’ve hoped for. Truly special gardens have lovely plants growing in a framework: the skeleton of the garden, the structure from which everything hangs. It defines garden spaces. It gives a garden character and feeling. It gives a garden depth. Put this all together with plants and you end up with outdoor spaces that make you feel something whether you’re standing in them or just looking out at them through the window.

So how do you make a garden framework? Easy…

What have you got already? Take stock of the things already in your garden that define and frame spaces. Fences and walls. Trees and hedges. The walls of your house, garage or shed. Existing paths, steps, and gateways. Do a fast sketch plan of what you have, then circle in the spaces that sit within this framework. Ask yourself the simple question: what does each of these spaces do? Do you sit here with friends and family? Do you look out from the house across this shady bed? Do visitors reach the front door by walking through this space?

Follow your framework. In other words, let those spaces dictate what you do next. If your home’s arrival zone is confusing to first-time visitors, do something to help make things simpler. Direct traffic along the path to the front door with a low hedge or massed planting of something easy to grow and good looking year round – like those Pacific™ coprosmas. If the planting in the shady bed is bitsy, dark and creepy, improve it by simplifying it. Use only three plants to fill the bed en masse, and be sure one of them has pale variegated foliage to lighten up the effect. And if your outdoor area feels tacked on, use the existing framework of your house walls to create an outdoor room. Containers filled with living flowers – Storm™ agapanthus are brilliant – set in a line between the paving and the garden will act as another living wall of your new outdoor room.

Don’t fight nature. When you look at those areas that sit within your framework, they’ll probably each have a different microclimate. Stand in each space and you’ll instantly know what’s going on. Where the wind’s whipping in from. How strong the sun shines down and for how long each day. Where the rain hardly dampens the soil because the eaves shelter it. Knowing your mini weather pockets helps when you plant because you can fill them with things that you know will thrive there. Not only is that an easier way to garden, but the garden feels more real. Flower Carpet® roses, lavenders and Tropicanna® cannas in the full sun. Astilbe, impatiens and hostas for shade. Aeoniums, coprosmas and grasses for where the salty wind does blow… you get the idea. Suddenly a walk around the garden becomes a journey from place to place. You have added depth and feeling to the beauty of the plants.