Case Study Garden Designs

The topic of garden design and overemphasis on use of
color came up on the gardenweb forum on landscape
design, and I thought it might be of interest to the
medit-plants group as well.  One forum contributor(IB)
was remarking how color often misleads novice garden
designers, to the detriment of design considerations
such as form, texture, proportions, etc., and can
become the Achille's Heel of Novice Garden Design.  I
took a somewhat contrary position that color isn't
necessarily a bad starting point, particularly for
those of us in a mediterranean climate.  As it has
been somewhat quiet as of late, it this a topic that
others would wish to discuss at medit-plants?

Here in California we often have the luxury, (or
dilemma, depending on your point of view), of
designing an entire garden around year round color
from foliage as well as flowers. Somwhat contrary to
IB's starting point, I often find myself thinking
about what colors I want to emphasize, and at what
seasons I want them to combine with others. This
usually becomes an exercise in making sure there are
agreeable combinations at each season, (A particularly
jarring combination for me is  crimson azaleas and
purple rhodendrons one usually sees in the
southeastern or northwestern USA). The bonus here in
our climate is that some of the most colorful plants
also can have great form/texture of line qualities.
 
The following is as an example of designing a small
neighbor's garden around the color blue as the major
component, where I also wanted to combine rich green
foliage textures for contrast, and spring time
yellow/red/orange flower contrasts to warm things up,
and perhaps blues and purples for summer to cool
things back down. The approach might went like this,
based on some particular accent plants that I knew I
wanted to use, such as the Agave attentuata:
 
The Mexican Agave attenuata 'Nova' as a sculptural
accent succulent with great form and even more vivid
blue foliage could be combined with a larger area of
low ground cover such as the South African Senecio
mandraliscae-blue Chalk Sticks, with great finger like
textural qualitites and year round blue color, like an
undersea carpet.  Unfortunately in our climate, the
Foxtail Agave never blooms its 10 foot tall arching
foxtail flower spike, and so must be enjoyed for the
foliage only.
 
The balancing green foliage could come from another
succulent that is more hedge like, the Mexican Sedum
dendroideum with succulent apple green foliage and
daffodil yellow flowers in late winter, and can act as
a taller backdrop to lower groundcovers, and retains
the bright apple green foliage all year round. I might
think that I would also like to have this yellow
contrast at a taller height, and plant a Jerusalum 
Thorn/Parkinsonia aculeata from South America, which
also has bright yellow flowers from late spring into
summer, and combines a filmy pale green foliage and
green trunk as a small tree to cast light summer shade
and act as a year round lightly shading arching accent
tree. Further green accents might come from some South
African Aloe saponaria/Soap Aloes planted to mimic the
form of the Agave at a smaller scale, with the
additional bonus of early spring spikes of coral
red/salmon or yellow flowers, take your pick. I might
also introduce some ephemeral notes of seasonal bulbs
by using some yellow Freesias(S. African) within the
ground cover of Senecio, to repeat the Aloes and Sedum
blooming at the same time, as well as being highly
fragrant.
 
To balance all this yellow, I might also elect to
choose another low growing succulent ground cover such
as Plectranthus neochilus from South Africa, which has
a lime green sprawling succulent and pungent foliage
with dense masses of blue purple flowers in tight
helmut-head like spikes. This one can be counted on to
bloom off an on all spring and summer, as well as fall
into winter if it stays relatively mild and gets full
sun. A further accent to this introduced note of blues
would be to combine a slightly taller growing
Plectranthus, with larger more scalloped pale mint
green fragrant foliage such as P. zuluensis, also  S.
African. This plant will serve more as a medium soft
shrub with larger pale lavender spikes of flowers that
relate to the smaller groundcover Plectranthus, and
also will bloom all year round. 

Another purple accent for late winter might come from
using the upright fine textured Mint Bush from
Australia, Prostanthera rotundifolia, which is a mass
of lilac bloom for 6 weeks starting in February on a
narrowly upright herbaceous shrub. The flower color
also falls between the deeper purple of the low ground
cover Plectranthus and the pale lavender of the
shrubbier P. zuluensis, and the foliage has a year
round minty smell as well, great if planted so one
brushes past it daily, much as the South African
Breath of Heaven, Colonema pulchrum.
 
For the final notes of introduced color, I might
consider what I want to play off the blue and green
foliage in summer and late fall. Another succulent
with a more sprawling habit and blue green leaves is
Calandrinia grandiflora from Chile. This can be
counted on to provide hot fuschia poppy like flowers
on 3 foot tall stems all summer into fall, with the
added benefit of providing motion by waving in the
wind, and can be blindingly brilliant in its
profusion, much as the Lampranthus iceplants. Line
character is introduced in this plant, as well as
relating to the linear quality of the foliage on of
the Parkinsonia. A further summer/fall accent blooming
plant might use  the Argentinian Verbena bonariensis
as a tall linear accent for a backdrop. Again, this
tall perennial has both brilliant purple flowers which
also glow at dusk, as well as tall stems which give
similar line quality as the Calandrinia stems.
 
The final design would have started out based on what
colors I wanted to see at which times of year, that
were well adapted to using in a mild, full sun small
front garden with heavy clay loam soils on a busy
street, for an owner who is not a gardener, and very
casual about remembering to water in summer. The
design also emphasizes low maintenance which can be
limited to 3/4 times a year once things have filled
in, (and weeds have no where to catch hold), as
nothing needs regular cutting back or deadheading to
keep blooming. This is always paramount in using
flower color in the garden for long seasonal effects,
who wants to be a slave to deadheading?
 
The design would then go through the process of
balancing the various proportions of the different
elements, playing with positions as contrasted against
the house as seen from the street, (this garden is so
small, (15 feet deep by 30 feet wide, that it is
intended as a viewing garden rather than one to be
walked through), while locating the major accent and
screening elements where needed visually. So as
Ironbelly says, form, texture, contrast, rhythym do
come into play, but as a secondary concept to the
original idea of what colors I wanted to use. This
process would also have tended to work around some
particular plants I wanted to use as well, rather than
leaving that for last. As taught in landscape design
courses, this is the reverse of what is suggested, but
I suspect that many designers who love plants also
design this way.
 
Hopefully this rather wordy design exercise helps
illustrate how one might start designing a garden
using any initial garden qualitly as the starting
point. In my own case, I do generally start with color
as the major component, perhaps equally balanced with
degree of maintenance and drought tolerance necessary.
I find it also helps to know your plants if you are
going to design this way, and tend to do this in my
head rather than using a computer to sort through
lists by flower color/size/texture, etc. I find
reference books extremely helpful that provide such
lists of plants and their characteristics helpful when
drawing a blank, but a walk in the local botanic
garden or a visit to a good nursery can be just as
helpful.
 
So I would have to say that emphasizing color first
isn't necessarily an Achilles Heel in design.
Unfortunatley, as often seen with the red petunias
combined with yellow marigolds of typical summer
bedding schemes, or the mixed colors of English
Primrose in a winter/spring California garden, it can
be so, as it often has no larger relationship to
anything else in the garden.
 
I'd be interested to hear other case studies for how
people design their gardens...



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