Love gardening? You probably have a garden full of treasures, all screaming to be noticed and appreciated. Which is fine until you realise that every time you walk outside you feel like there’s way too much going on. It’s visually exhausting; there’s nothing to focus on; there’s no hierarchy like we see in Nature. Making this landscape mess was too easy. Happily, it’s just as simple to fix the garden clutter by digging and planting your way out of it, and here are some tips for decluttering your garden:

1. a standout plant: picture a garden bed full of bits and pieces that you love because they are bright, pretty, fancily foliaged, perfumed – whatever. What they may not have is the magical ability to blend harmoniously in with their neighbors. No problem, just nudge them apart and make some room to plant a new focal plant. Pick something that is visually strong – tall enough, bold enough, strappy enough – to stand out over all the rest. Hop online and look at images of things like the Swan Necked Agave, Canna Tropicanna® and New Zealand Flax. Just one is enough to restore style to an oversized mixed planter. You may need a few clumps across a larger garden planting. Give your ‘focals’ a month or so to settle in and then the magic will happen where a higgledy-piggledy plant collection turns into a horticultural landscape that feels right. And voilà, you have fixed your garden clutter!

2. a bit of digging: the other way to achieve this effect is to walk out into the buzz of your visually noisy garden with a spade in your hand. Your task is to group together those plants that are alike. If you have Agapanthus, move them all together. Same with the Shatas, Sedum, Phlox, Lavenders and Coneflowers. This somewhat crude system of tidying up is very effective and, if it’s done in late autumn or early spring, doubles as a rejuvenation exercise – a bit of garden housekeeping that we should all be doing but rarely get around to.