A layered planting system

A Layered Planting System

A successful planting is about having the right plants in the right place and ensuring the plants are compatible with each other. Create a solid foundation for your planting but allow it to evolve, and make adjustments over time.

Creating a Layered Planting for Year-Round Interest

To show how a layered planting system can be created, let's look at a small corner of the garden at Hillside that is one of the few microclimates in this otherwise exposed garden. It's in the lee of a building but with sun pouring in, so to create this microclimate, I needed to create shade.

• Shade generally comes with a very different set of planting conditions, which is what I wanted here, and offers a contrasting planting opportunity compared to the rest of the garden.

Creating a Microclimate to Enable a Different Planting Style

The first thing I thought about when designing this area was how to create that shade.

• I planted a Heptocodium miconioides – a beautiful, late-flowering tree that always has a good form, with interesting winter bark and tiny white pinprick flowers in September–October.

A New Season of Interest

The Heptocodium creates a zone beneath it that's completely different to what lies beyond in the sunshine. I wanted plants that would provide interest early in the year, so that there would be something happening here while the rest of the garden is still a winter skeleton. So underneath the Heptocodium I've planted:

• Iris lazica – a shade-tolerant, winter-flowering iris.
• Cardamine – lovely creeping perennials that give bright mauve flowers in February–March.
• Hellebores and snowdrops.

As the Heptocodium comes into leaf and the shade appears, the interest drops away and I lose the views underneath, but then everything in the garden beyond starts to evolve.

Fundamentals of Layered Planting

It's important to think about the different roles plants play within layered planting. In a small garden, this is exactly how you should treat a series of spaces that each have different microclimates.

• As you come out into the sunshine, a selection of compatible perennials work with each other to continue this layering of interest.
• Within this, the plants help one another out by creating their own microclimates.

Plants That Work Together to Help Each Other Out

1. Astilbe rivularis, a beautiful leafy Astilbe with creamy flower spikes about head height, provides a forest of growth to shade the plants underneath it, such as the snowdrops, as they die back.

1. Astilbe still needs quite cool conditions, so in front I've put Miscanthus, which forms a tall mound by late summer. This is happy in sunshine and heat, and provides shade for the Astilbe and hellebores.

1. In front of that, underneath the Miscanthus, I have low-growing cranesbill geraniums (Geranium sanguineum) and Labrador violets (Viola labrodorica) to ensure all the ground is covered.

In this way, I've created a plant community in which all the plants happily coexist, helping each other out and providing interest throughout the year.

These Rules Apply in Different Environments

This layering system works in many different planting situations. Irrespective of whether you're in a hot, dry site or somewhere lush where water isn't limited, you still need to consider how plants will work with each other.

A successful planting is about having the right plant in the right place and ensuring that the plants are compatible with each other.

Allowing a Manageable Amount of Change from Year to Year

Create Some Solid, Static Foundations That Will Remain a Constant from Year to Year

I always build in a degree of change in my planting, but this change needs to be measurable.

• I have plants that provide solid, static foundations around which I can interplant with things that come and go.
• Miscanthus and peonies are good long-lived perennials that stay in clumps where I put them.

Introduce Flux on Top to Provide an Evolution from One Year to the Next

With the use of long-lived perennials comes a lack of change, so I always interplant with annuals and biennials that can provide some flux.

• Honesty (Lunaria annua) will come and go amongst the perennials.
• The Malica grass that sits on the edge of the shade will move around – it's good gentle company for other plants, and appears in slightly different places each year to give a nice surprise.
• Similarly, the Welsh poppy Meconopsis cambricus jumps up the steps and makes the garden feel a little different from one year to the next.

Make Edits in March

I like to see a garden go through all its natural stages, enjoy the winter skeletons, and then have a big clear up at the end of February.

• At that point, I make mental notes about what I need to change and where I might need to adjust the balance. It's important to keep tabs to help inform what you will do in a year's time.
• Each year the balance is different, according to the conditions during the growing season.

In March, before everything kicks off for the main growing season, I start to make edits. For example:

• I thin out the honesty if it has self-seeded too rampantly.
• I can sometimes extend my swathes of bulbs; for example, I may be able to divide the snowdrops.

Expect and Enjoy Changes from Year to Year

Ensure You Have Solid Foundations at the Outset

When designing a planting scheme, it's important to have the right number of components that will all work with each other.

• I'm quite strict when I'm designing – I look at the layering, how much volume I want with trees and shrubs, and where I want shade and open spaces.
• I make sure I'm putting in a system that will continue to work over a period of time.

To make it work, you need to make the right judgements in the first place, but you also need to be open to change. Gardens are always going to surprise you despite your best-calculated decisions, so embrace the evolution of your garden.

• You'll need to go back again over time and make adjustments as the garden evolves.
• This is necessary but also builds excitement – the garden is always moving forwards.

You're learning as you're experimenting, so change isn't a bad thing, but in the first season, try to put things in that will work for the next three or four years.

Plant Directory

Heptocodium miconioides

Iris lazica

Cardamine

Astilbe rivularis

Miscanthus

Geranium sanguineum

Viola labrodorica

Lunaria annua

Malica

Meconopsis cambricus