Given that flowers are a relatively short-lived occurrence in the yearly life of a plant, it pays to concentrate on getting the best combinations of plant shapes and foliage for your garden.
Shape and texture play a vital role in successful planting schemes, helping to guarantee the long-term interest of your borders. Not only does each plant have an overall shape, which can be distinctive, but individual leaves also differ greatly in size, shape and texture.
Putting together plants of contrasting shape will contribute enormously to the year-round good looks of your garden. Although a rounded habit is most common among plants, there are upright, weeping, wide-spreading and other different outlines. Strong outlines and bold foliage make 'architectural' plants that can provide a striking backdrop for flowers in any season, or, when carefully sited, establish a dramatic focal point.
architectural plants.
Since architectural plants naturally draw attention to themselves, you will need to exercise care when placing them. It is preferable to position them near to the house or just a little way down the garden, where they will catch the eye before anything else. If you use such strong shapes in the distance, they will immediately draw the attention and make the intervening space appear smaller than it really is. Be wary of having too many bold plants in the garden as it could easily end up looking distracting and over-dramatic, changing shape.
There are plants, not naturally architectural in habit, that can have form thrust upon them by being trimmed to a certain shape. This usually involves training, in particular the art of topiary, by which small-leaved plants such as box (Buxus sempervirens) are clipped into crisply defined shapes like spirals. Or it may simply involve pruning to give an amenable plant a little more shape and character than it would have if left to its own devices. For example, you can clip tall plants such as holly (Ilex), golden privet (Ligustrum ovalifolium 'Aureum') and Italian buckthorn (Rhamnus alaternus 'Argenteovariegata') into broad cones or pyramids, medium ones like Lonicera nitida 'Baggesen's Gold' into upright domes, and small shrubs like lavender and santolina into neat mounds.
Focus on Foliage
Take a close look at a random selection of leaves to see what variety there is in their size and shape alone, from the fine filigree leaves of artemisias and the slender ornamental grasses to the palmate, glossy, plate-sized leaves of Fatsia japonica. Moisture-loving plants for the edges of ponds and boggy soil have some of the largest leaves of all, such as the huge, dramatic Gunnera manicata and Rheum palmatum. Smaller but still of distinctive shape are hostas and ligularias.
Texture adds yet another facet to a j planting. Soft-textured foliage is irresistible to the touch, as in the woolly leaves of lamb's ears (Stachys byzantina) or the shaggy mop shape of the little conifer Chamaecyparis pisifera 'Filifera Aurea'. If you place these close to paths and patios they are readily accessible for stroking as you pass, special effects Create lively effects by partnering delicate-looking leaves or flowers with large or coarsely textured foliage. For example, a hazy cloud of Gypsophila paniculate or thalictrum makes a dynamic contrast with the corrugated leaves of Viburnum rhytidophyllum or V. davidii. Conversely, place plants with big blooms like peonies and echinacea next to feathery-leaved purple fennel (Foeniculum vulgare 'Purpureum') and conifers with needle-like leaves. Growing large-flowered hybrid clematis with their plate-sized blooms, through different shrubs makes an eye-catching contrast of shape as well as color.
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