Charlie Albone

Last month we looked at hedging and mass plantings as styles for your garden beds and this month we will go a bit further with, feature plants, mixed garden beds and clump and drift planting.

Feature plants:
Feature plants are the real show stoppers of the garden and individually, or in small numbers, give punchy impact to a garden. A feature plant can draw the eye to an area or lead a person through a garden with ease. These sorts of plants also work well at the entrance of a house. Make sure you do not go over the top with feature plants as they then loose their impact. The best feature plant I have seen to date was in Hampton court gardens and it was a very mature aloe ferox in a pot. Feature plants are set off really well by pots as pots raise the plant that few extra feet that make sure their on the stage they deserve.

Mixed garden beds:
Planting a mixed garden bed can be very daunting a few tips when combining your favorite plants are: make sure the garden bed is nice and wide, start with the low ground covers at the front and rake back in mature size towards the back. This gives the garden bed a depth and makes the bed feel lush and full. It also makes maximum use of all the space. Rows of formal hedging are now a bit dated and uninviting so planting in odd numbers will remove the symmetry and make the planting look more natural. The texture of the leaves makes a huge impact too; finer leaves in the foreground make more of an impact compared to if the were at the back of a bed where they can diminish the feeling of depth. If you want to use a larger sized leaf in the fore ground try lower growing plants like hosta’s as taller large leaf plants in the foreground can hem in and suffocate a space.

Clumps and drifts:
Planting in clumps and drifts is where you clump numbers of the same plant together to form either a clump of plants or a swath of plants in a drift. These work well in larger beds but can be applied to the smaller garden bed to give a natural comfortable feeling. Try to combine textures and foliage colours that add interest and give depth to a garden bed. Low growing purple cordylines look great clumped through drifts of silver artemesia.