gardening ideas Archives

3 flowers for your spring garden

Hooray! We’ve turned the cold-weather corner! We’re standing in the spring sunshine! Can you feel your heart skip a beat – in a good way? Yup – it’s that time of year when the garden magic happens, and here are 3 flowers for your spring garden…

1. The magician’s bouquet: first, walk into your nearest garden centre where you’ll spot some seriously good-looking Hydrangeas called Tuxedo®. There they’ll be, sitting in their pots picture-perfect, ready to be gift wrapped and carried out the door like a bunch of florist’s flowers. You could give them to someone, but this time, treat yourself instead. Take your Tuxedo hydrangea home and pop that glorious living bouquet smack in the middle of the coffee table, or on your desk, or beside the front door and enjoy it. Then, to make the garden magic happen, a few weeks on, take Tuxedo hydrangea outside and plant it into a large container or out into the garden itself. Then stand back because it will quickly grow into a glorious, black foliaged three-foot-high bush which will give you flowers for many years to come. Your potted bouquet just transformed itself into a proper permanent garden shrub. Garden magic.

2. A shade shifter: there’s a rose called Flower Carpet® Amber. It’s pretty special even before we start talking about its magic secret, because it grows fast, stays green (USDA zones 5-10) and flowers from spring through to autumn. But what makes Amber really special is the way it looks like it’s more than one rose. To explain, just say you went out and planted Amber. After it had spent some time settling in and establishing itself, it would come into flower. And being a Flower Carpet rose, it would be covered in flowers. First the buds would swell – hundreds of them – and they’d be a lovely deep orange. These would open progressively into sherbet-shades of orange-yellow blooms. And then these flowers would settle into shades of soft pink and peach. So at any one time, the one rose bush looks like there are at least two very colour-complimentary roses growing together, one orange and one pink. Garden magic.

3. Bare earth to wow: this is the classic spring surprise moment. It’s a wonderful thing to do with children who will probably love gardens from that point on (if they don’t already). Get some bulbs – daffodils, narcissus, freesias, tulips, whatever – and gather together a container and some potting mix. Shake in the potting mix to about half way up the side of the container, and pat it down. Then have your young assistants place the bulbs the right way up across the entire surface of the ‘soil’ (use the internet to help you work this out, or if in doubt, lay the bulbs on their sides). Cover everything gently with more potting mix and again, pat it down. Then keep your pot damp (but not soggy – watch out for overenthusiastic young waterers) and have everyone keep a look out for those first, miraculous spikes of green. It only gets better as colour and fragrance follow. Garden magic.

Garden magic — If you plant your bulbs tightly together you’ll not only get a great display like these tulips, but the flowers and foliage will help to support each other.

3 essentials for garden design

There’s a simple secret behind the great gardens – they hook us in via our senses. If you think your garden is a bit ho hum, here are 3 essentials for garden design that will transform your garden into a joyful space full of fragrance, movement and colour.

1. Perfume: Even blindfolded, you should be able to tell that you’re in a garden. You should be able to enjoy the plants growing around you via deep, delicious breaths. Take a few good lungs-full and if you can’t detect a perfumed breeze, better head off to the garden centre. To make your life easier, spend ten minutes doing some internet research to put a list together of perfumed plants like lilac, roses or viburnum. Can’t be bothered doing the research? Then just ask for the queen of all fragrant plants, Daphne Perfume Princess™. Daphne is a small evergreen shrub that covers itself in waxy super-fragrant flowers in late winter and early spring. Daphne Perfume Princess is the extraordinarily well-bred version of a daphne, one that every garden should include because she’s luscious, lovely and easy to grow. Oh, and you’ll be completely astonished at the heady perfume she’ll toss out onto the breezes.

Nothing makes as big an impact as walking through a fragrant garden and a plant like Daphne Perfume Princess™ will completely transform a walk down even the most ordinary garden path.

2. Movement: Each time you look out the window at your garden, does everything look like a pic rather than a video? Nothing’s moving? Even when there’s been a wind warning? There are a lot of gardens like this simply because static landscapes are usually low maintenance if also pretty dull. So if you have a space filled with topiary, yuccas and succulents, here’s how to make that cardboard cut-out landscape dance. Plant strappy plants. Grasses, cordylines, agapanthus. Whatever looks good to you is fine as long as it’s flexible enough to wave around in the breeze. Dot them through your landscape and when you next look out the window, you’ll be looking at a garden that’s come to life.

3.Colour: So many gardens are filled with a predictable set of green plants as part of a plan to be safe and inoffensive. Which is fine until you start to feel starved of colour. This is the easiest garden fix of all. Drive to the garden centre and fill your car with whatever takes your fancy. Seedlings will give you instant colour even if they only last a season: pansies, poppies, sunflowers, marigolds and sweet peas. Flowering shrubs will hang in there for the longer term: roses, camellias, bottlebrushes, hibiscus. Or use foliage colour rather than flowers: coleus, bromeliads, cannas (Tropicanna® cannas are the best). Plant your new bright plant friends in wherever there’s room and the original green framework will help bring the look (and the various colours) together.

Canna Tropicanna®, with its bright, multi-coloured foliage, is sure to add colour to your garden.

Design a fragrant garden

Gardens that look beautiful are certainly lovely to enjoy, but sweetly scented gardens take our enjoyment to a whole new level. Whether your outdoor space is simply a small deck, or a full sized garden and yard, here are some simple tips to design a fragrant garden.

1: Think big.

Flowering trees, simply because of their size, can add fragrance to an area 20 feet or more in diameter. Some great examples include lilacs, mock orange trees (perfect in climates where it’s too cold to grow citrus trees), Japanese fringe trees, Baby Grand™ Magnolia and Korean spice viburnum. For areas with limited space, you can’t go wrong with Fairy Magnolia^® magnolias. These bushy shrubs cover themselves with a blanket of fragrant flowers each spring but grow to only 9-12 feet high and 5-7 feet wide. Bonus: after they’ve completed their bloom cycle, they leave behind glossy green foliage and make a perfect specimen tree or full hedge if planted in multiples.

If you have the space and proper support for them, flowering vines are also a tremendous way to add fragrance. Imagine blooming ‘Scentsation’ Honeysuckle or old-fashioned sweet peas spilling over a fence or garden gate, or a gorgeous wisteria spilling over richly scented peonies.

2: Select plants with varying bloom times.

To enjoy lovely scents all season long, make certain to include a variety of blooming plants in your yard, garden, or even in pots on your deck. Perfume Princess™ Daphne is the earliest and longest flowering daphne, blooming from mid winter to late spring. Plant it near a doorway or under a window to delight in its delicious scent, both indoors and out.

Spring-flowering bulbs like hyacinths and paperwhites all bring back memories of our grandmother’s garden. Other early-blooming shrubs and perennials such as witch hazel, andromeda (Pieris japonica) and dwarf fothergilla and peonies all open the season with lovely scents, and then carry on throughout the summer and into the fall with attractive foliage.

Moving into the warmer summer months, you can always count on gardenias, summersweet , and lightly scented Flower Carpet^® Amber (seen above) to not only add fragrance, but also attract pollinators. A real butterfly magnet, Volcano^® phlox (seen below) bloom into early fall if deadheaded at least once in the season. They send off a light fragrance, both in the garden and as a cut flower.

For fragrant annuals, you can’t go wrong with clove-scented stock, with their gorgeous pink, purple red or white blooms. They’re wonderful in the garden and make great cut flowers too. Another later blooming option is aromatic Bluebeard spirea (caryopteris). Sending off tiny blue flowers from late summer into fall, this low maintenance shrub is also deer resistant and attracts butterflies!

3: Don’t forget the little guys

Even a few tiny lily of the valley stalks placed in a vase with violets can add fragrance to an entire room. Lavender blooms may be tiny, but with its soothing scent, this plant often appears on the “best-smelling flowers” list. And as a bonus, the more you cut, the more lavender blooms. Sweet alyssum (seen below, surrounding Strawberries & Cream hydrangeas), is grown easily and inexpensively by seed and emits a honey-sweet scent that beckons to pollinators. This tiny-blossomed annual looks delicate but it stands up to early frosts, self-seeds and works nicely as filler between other annuals or perennials and in container plantings.

4: Delight in Round-the-Clock Fragrance

If you enjoy spending time outdoors in the evening, don’t forget to plant fragrant night bloomers. Although easy-to grow annual flowering tobacco (nicotiana) blossoms are open much of the day, they wait until the sun goes down to release their incredible fragrance. (Hint: for the strongest fragrance, look for the old fashioned varieties like nicotiana alata or sylvestris). Night blooming Jasmine shrubs sweeten the air with their tiny white flowers that open in the evening and close in the morning. And, although it’s poisonous, it’s hard to resist Angel Trumpet’s alluring night fragrance. This stunning plant is ideal grown in a container and placed out of harm’s way on a deck or patio.

And finally, while enhancing your garden to delight the senses, remember to place your fragrant plants in areas where you’ll enjoy them most!

5 tips for picking the best plants

Have you ever bought something only to realise later at home that it’s a bit ordinary? It happens to us all the time simply because retailers do a great job making everything look fantastic and ‘must-have’. The same rule applies to plants: it’s too easy to grab a pretty little thing from the garden centre that ends up being disappointing. To prevent this ever happening again, arm yourself with these 5 tips for picking the best plants…

1. Look at the flowers: which you probably are anyway as most plants will be on sale at a time when they are in flower and looking their best. Ask yourself, is the flower interesting? Are there a lot of them on the plant and are there lots of unopened buds (aka future flowers)? Is there something special and different about the flower? Like lace cap Hydrangea Strawberries & Cream®; the mega-flowered Daphne Perfume Princess™; or the spotted throat of Alstroemeria Rock & Roll®. If you manage to tick just two of these boxes, you’ve found something that will hold its own once it arrives back at your place.

2. Look at the leaves: there aren’t many plants that flower all the time so it makes sense to check out the foliage. Again, ask yourself, what’s interesting about the leaves? Their color, shape, texture? If the plant has a good shape as well then it will keep you smiling year round. A list worth checking out: Hydrangea Tuxedo® for its purple black leaves; the glossy sunbursts of colour from the Pacific™ coprosmas; Tropicanna® canna’s rainbow of stripes.

Tuxedo® hydrangeas have brilliant purple-black foliage to fall back on when the buds or flowers aren’t in the spotlight.

3. Gift worthy-ness: take a hard look at the plant you’re considering and ask yourself, would I give this as a present to someone? If the answer is yes, then you’re probably making a good selection. Gift-worthy plants look good right now. They can be treated as living flowers to dress up the house.

4. A longer game plan: there is real satisfaction in bringing home a lovely plant, enjoying it in and around the home for a while and then being able to plant it outside in a container or into the garden where it matures into something even bigger and better. To spot those plants which will give you this option just take a closer look at the plant labels and punch any plant’s name into Google to find out everything you need to know about it.

5. Toughies are best: this is obvious, but why would anyone want to bring home a tricky to grow, fussy plant? Nope. Limit yourself to plants that are proven performers, healthy individuals that have a reputation for being bullet-proof to care for. Again, a quick squizz at the tag, a bit of online research, and you’ll know if you’ve spotted a toughie. Or check out any of the plants already mentioned above because they are all super easy to grow and are, quite simply, great plants.

Designing your garden with striped foliage

On the catwalk, designer Kenneth Ize uses the power of stripes and colour…

At last! Stripes are in – and that’s everywhere you look, from the catwalk to wallpaper, to the garden centre. Which is brilliant news, because stripes are fun. Stripes are easy to work with and get right. And stripes look terrific. So let’s cut to the chase and talk about how to go about designing your garden with striped foliage.

Technically, plants with foliage that’s striped are known as variegated plants. It’s useful to know this because it makes it easier to chase things down online. And if you ever see a plain-leafed plant you like at your nursery, you can ask the staff if it comes in a variegated form. (For example, there are nice every-day green leafed cannas and then there’s the astonishing in-your-face-rainbow-bright-striped Canna Tropicanna®). There are even special interest groups for variegated plants if you want to delve deeper into the world of striped multi-toned foliage.

designing your garden with striped foliage — Canna Tropicanna® in all its stripy, back-lit glory.

When you do start looking at fancy foliage plants (and you will), it won’t be long before you come across a warning: something along the lines of, “a little goes a long way”. This is a conservative take on things, a belief that foliage that contains more than one colour should be used as a freakish highlight amongst a more traditional landscape planting. If you agree, then follow this advice. Or you could be bold and gather together as many variegated plants as you like and plant them all together – in the garden or in a mega-sized container.

Honestly, having just one heroic stripy plant is also an ok move, just make sure that its supporting plants don’t steal the limelight. To make everything look terrific, the trick is to pick out the toning colours or shades and find plants in these shades to surround your hero.

And now, two practical housekeeping tips:

Often stripes and other variegation is brightest when the light levels are ideal for the plant. So do your homework, find out what light levels your plant really enjoys, then grow that plant in its happy spot.
Also, variegation is not often passed on from parent plant to child via seed, so if you’re keen to propagate more of your lovely stripy plants for yourself or friends, take cuttings.

Bold plants to use in your garden

Are you ready for what’s coming next in garden trends? The Big. The Bold. Textured via Leaf. It started indoors – remember when all those New York lofts filled with monsteras and elephant ears? Now it has spilled outdoors into the landscape where it’s looking even better. Here are some suggestions of the big and bold plants to use in your garden…

Q: What’s big and bold? A: Any plant that has the sort of foliage that makes you stop and take another look. For most plants, we’re usually interested in the flowers they produce: it’s the rose we remember not its leaves. The Big and Bold plant trend celebrates plants with tall stature, large leaves, and foliage with stand-out texture and/or colour.

big and bold plants — Classic mega-textured foliage plants like Philodendrons (left) and Monsteras (right) are great additions when giving your garden the bold makeover.

Q: Which plants to use? A: There are no firm rules here apart from two: 1. make sure the plants you select really stand out, and 2. that they are happy to grow where you plan to put them. (A bit of swift checking around online will confirm this.) Monsteras and Philodendrons are broad-leaved and super bold. Cordylines like Burgundy Spire™ and Festival™ Burgundy (also known as Red Fountain in the Southern Hemisphere) are brilliant ways to contribute punchy, strappy colour. Fatsia and bird’s nest ferns add different leaf shapes into the green mix. And there are always the Tropicanna® cannas to punch even more colour into the mix.

Q: How to go about it? A: If you’re planting from scratch, congratulations because you can go two ways. 1. Pick your favourite plant and fill your garden bed solely with that, like a staggered three-row deep planting of Cordyline Burgundy Spire filling a long bed beside the drive. 2. Or go crazy and grab a few of everything and mix it all up. This is especially good for a garden space on view from the living room as it will feel like being in an oversized terrarium. Of course if you already have a garden that you want to rev up with bold additions, that’s easy. Just add things in here and there, mixing it all up and keeping the bigger plants to the back. Aim for at least a third of the garden to be new additions or you’ll miss the mark.

Q: Any other tips? A: Not really, apart from two obvious ones. When you’re deciding which plants to use, check out their character references. In other words, are they easy to grow and will they look after themselves? And the other obvious tip is surprisingly often overlooked: if you spot a dead leaf, remove it just like you’d cut off a spent flower. Five minutes with the secateurs will work wonders refreshing your bold-foliaged garden outlook.

4 ways to start gardening

Something like this gorgeous Ruby Volcano™ Phlox growing at your front door makes everyone feel welcome.

Around the world, many people are staying very close to home. Which means they’re making their own fun right where they live. And a lot of that has been garden-related: from planting vegetable gardens to tending tiny bonsai trees. If you haven’t yet jumped on the green wave, here are 4 ways to start gardening…

Painting the front door in a bright, fun colour is one of the 4 ways to start gardening – surrounded by some great, flowering pot plants of course!

1: Friendly front doors: OK, so our front doors aren’t welcoming many guests inside these days. Instead the social interaction is taking place a few steps back from the doorstep. You hear someone at the door, fling it open and there, standing a healthy distance away is a friend, a neighbour, a delivery person. We give them a big smile and enjoy the social moment. Our front entrances are more important than ever so it makes sense to refresh them, to make these spaces happy and welcoming. It’s easy. Order some glossy bright paint, whip out a brush, and paint the door. Then drag two matching pots into place on either side and fill them with something bright, flowering and easy to grow – Flower Carpet® roses or Volcano™ Phlox are great. Toss out the tired old doormat and buy a fresh new one. Before we know it, these new mats will again feel the tread of many visitors’ feet.

2: Ways to have window boxes: Not many houses have window boxes ready to fill with glorious gardens in miniature. But since we’re probably spending more time looking out of our windows, it makes for a fun gardening project to rustle up a few temporary window boxes. If your window is on the ground floor, you can set a few bricks on either side positioned to hold up a board shelf. Onto this you can pop some pots or even foam crates that food deliveries arrive in. Make sure there are holes for drainage, then fill with potting mix and plant with flowering annuals, herbs or even vegetables like carrots, radishes, lettuce and cherry tomatoes. Stick a note on the fridge to remind you to water things regularly, which you can do just by leaning out the open window. And if your window is on an upper floor, just flip things so your homemade shelf is just inside the window. You may even be able to move your furniture a bit so one end of the dining table is wedged against the sill and all your lovely pots can sit down at that end. Indoor pots will also need watering, so protect your table with saucers.

3: Small gardens for young people: if you’re at home with children to entertain, a great way to start gardening is by making a garden in miniature. This is a brilliant idea whether you have an acre for a backyard or live in an apartment. You’ll need to source a big, shallow tray (check out cheap plastic storage containers), potting mix, and fine gravel (try aquarium supplies). You’ll also need some mail order succulents. Get your small gardeners to draw plans of their mini garden complete with any shells, special rocks or figurines they may have. Meanwhile you can put drainage holes in the container with a nail heated over the stove-top held in a pair of pliers. Then it’s all about putting in the potting mix, planting the succulents, covering the soil with gravel and adding in the rest of the garden features.

4: Rearranging the furniture: who doesn’t love moving the furniture around a room? It’s one of the best ways to recapture that just-moved-in feeling. It also lets you enjoy a familiar space in a fresh way. So if you have an outdoor garden space, and it has furniture, have a think how you could shuffle things around. Set things up for break away moments rather than large gatherings that are on hold for the moment. Tuck a couple of chairs into a shady corner with a place to put some glasses and a plate nearby. Position a solitary lounger out in the morning sunny sweet spot. Hang a hammock where someone can hide away from the household and get stuck into a book. And arrange chairs around a fire pit for an evening family moment where the starry sky reminds us that the world is still turning.

DIfferent ways to garden and the benefits

These are unsettling, confronting, coronavirus times. Apart from the uncertainty and anxiety, it’s a time when some of us are being run off our feet. Others are doing their bit by staying close to home doing less than usual. And this can mess with our heads. Which is why it makes sense to remember a small, green fact: that we all feel calm after spending a little time around greenery. Tending plants. Sitting under trees. Growing herbs. Whatever. The point is, gardening reminds us to look forward to something positive. It also makes us think about something other than our daily worries. And gardening makes us stand up, walk away from our screens and be active at a time when mental and physical fitness is important. So take a look at the following, to see the different ways to garden and the benefits. Here you’ll find ways to give yourself small moments of joy, whether your garden is the kitchen window ledge or a large house block with a lawn.

1: The window ledge: is such a small bit of space physically but it can be huge emotionally. The window’s view may be out over a parking lot, but if you set a row of small pots along it, whatever you plant in them will quickly frame the view and make it feel astonishingly different. Even if you’re new at gardening, these pots will do fine because the plants growing in them will get the light they need. Having said that, pots at the kitchen window always do best probably because they are near the sink which makes it super easy to water them, then let them drain on the draining board. Try growing funky succulents if you think you may be a bit forgetful when it comes to the watering. Otherwise pretty much anything is possible as long as it’s smallish. Flowering seedlings are really lovely: pansies, primroses, marigolds. Or grow something with culinary merit like parsley, coriander, chives, curry plant and dill.

benefits of gardening — Two pots of promise on the kitchen window ledge; sweet basil (left) and mint just beginning to sprout.

2: A garden in a pot: isn’t as limiting as it sounds. In fact it’s often a lot more successful than four or five smaller pots. The trick is to get one large pot, fill it with potting mix then plant it with an collection of plants that you like the look of. If your garden space is a balcony, this is a great approach because it produces a big hit of green yet takes up less space than a cluster of smaller pots. And if you need inspiration, plant a Flower Carpet® rose slightly off centre in your pot then fill the remaining area with flowering spring bulbs. When these die back you can refresh the pot by planting summer flowering annuals like petunias which will trail over the pot’s rim, or cheery geraniums. Or, if you’re limited on space, create an edible ornamental container, tucking a few culinary herbs next to your Carpet Rose.

3: Tackling a project: is probably a great way to be active and productive when you’re staying close to home. And if your home garden is large, maybe this is the moment: to rejuvenate the lawn; to clear the dead wood out of a tree; pave a path or grub out and completely replant a garden bed. If you don’t have a project waiting, here’s a good one that will lift the look of your home – do a nice planting of carpet roses on both sides of your driveway. Empty the beds, dig over the soil, then plant something like Flower Carpet® roses at close enough distances so that they’ll grow to form a cloud of blooms that fills the beds. Arriving home from the supermarket will be a moment of joy.

4: Guerilla gardening: is a bit of a cheeky move, but surely permissible in these unusual times. It begins with a packet of flower seeds such as zinnias, Jewel Mix nasturtiums or calendula tucked into your pocket. You then take your usual brisk walk in the park, pausing (when there are fewer people around) to sprinkle the seeds onto the soil and scratch them in. From then on, each time you pass during the coming weeks you keep a look out for signs of sprouting, steady growth and then a splash of colour when your secret garden begins to flower. If this makes you smile, you can be sure others walking by will also have spotted your garden and also be enjoying it.

How to garden through extreme weather

A frozen Niagara Falls in the early 1900s: it would have been a tough winter in the garden, real extreme weather gardening required!

What follows is NOT a doomsday-weather, climate-change rant. Here instead are some tips on how to garden through extreme weather. And it’s somehow reassuring to understand that there’s nothing radical here. It’s all common sense, tricks used by gardeners for as long as anyone can remember. Take a look and you’ll see it’s not a big deal to help your garden weather the tougher times…

tip one: works a dream but you will look slightly crazy doing it. To protect plants from being scorched by a heatwave do what you’d do for yourself. Sort out some shade. Throw old bed sheets over your vegetable or flower garden beds. This temporary barrier between your plants and the sun & wind will reduce temperatures, UV radiation and water loss through evaporation. Your plants will survive and bounce back faster when things calm down. Repeat as necessary.

It’s easy to prevent scorching (above) and keep your roses looking as good as this (below, Flower Carpet® Pink Splash)

tip two: you can use a similar approach to help your garden cope with extreme cold. Savage cold snaps usually happen either side of winter when plants have naturally slowed down. It’s the time they’ve usually had a cut back, which is handy because it’s then easier to heap wads of straw around and over things to insulate the plant and the ground. If you’ve got access to old carpet or newspapers, they can work too. Frost and freezing is reduced along with any serious damage. All should be good come spring.

tip three: we all know which plants are the tough performers. We also know which ones are more delicate. Under a scenario where extreme weather is likely to be more frequent, it’s time to do a bit of culling and grow more reliable plants like those Flower Carpet® roses that soldier on in heat and cold. Where dry stretches are likely, think about replacing struggling boxwood edging with Pacific™ coprosmas. Plants that demand sprays (fungicides or insecticides) should probably be let go too.

tip four: Build some clever hard-landscaping: a screen or fence to deflect desiccating winds; a shady pergola where the sun beats down hardest; a rain-garden to trap and use falling water; a permeable gravel path to capture run off; a water feature to store water; a shed to overwinter sensitive plants.

New Garden Trends

Walking around the latest garden trade shows in Europe, it doesn’t take long to spot that something BIG is going on in the way of new garden trends. The format isn’t new, but how it’s being interpreted is completely pushing the boundaries…

We’re still seeing hedging plants – because they are still the best way to create screened garden spaces. Edging plants are also still part of the picture as well – plants that sit at the front of garden beds. And there’s also the bit in between which is filled with other plants. So far – so ordinary. But here’s where the rule book has been shut, and fearless experimentation has taken over.

To start with, the hedges are no longer demure green, subtle backdrops for the garden. No way. Think instead of plants which function as a screen but also have a lot more going on in the way of foliage colour or flowers. Red leafed Photinia. Flower spangled Fairy Magnolias®. Funky foliaged spinning gums and the strikingly bold foliage of Fatsia or Castor Oil plant. In other words, a background hedge that is bold and attention grabbing.

garden trends — A hedge of beautiful Fairy Magnolia® Cream magnolias.

Then the same sort of deal is happening at the front where the edging plants grow. Rainbow bright Pacific™ Coprosmas. Gorgeous new Hebe Surf™ series. Flower Carpet® roses. Again the new garden trend is for remarkable plants. So we’ve now got a lot going on in both the background and the foreground. But wait, there’s more to come.

The garden bed in between gets the same treatment, but here there’s complete freedom to pick whatever. Grasses planted with Heuchera. Brightly coloured annuals. Variegated ivy, ferns and barrel cactus. It’s almost as if someone’s decided they like this plant, and this, and also this and then popped them all in together without waiting to be told that’s not how it’s done. The results are bold, surprisingly good and inspiring…

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