Creating a successful planting scheme

Creating a Successful Planting Scheme

In this lesson, we'll explore the principles of succession to create a garden that sings all year round, the value of really knowing your plants, and how I made this one of the lowest-maintenance parts of the garden.

Succession

Successional planting involves layers of seasonal interest. When putting a successional planting plan together, include a range of plants that will provide succession throughout the growing seasons (spring to autumn).

• For winter interest, I tend to leave this whole garden to enjoy the skeletal forms from the previous growing season, as these are beautiful in themselves.

Succession is important so that each area has layers of planting in which one thing supersedes the next, there's interest throughout the year, and the plants support each other and protect the soil.

Here's an example of a successional planting that I've got here underneath the deciduous trees. When the trees come into leaf, the areas underneath go into shadow and can afford to be slightly quieter, so these are predominantly spring plants that flower before the trees come into leaf.

1. Early succession is provided by waves of spring plants, such as Cardamine, Pulmonaria and hellebores (Helleborus x hybridus).
2. I've used the wood aster Eurybia divaricata to inject another season of interest into those areas from late summer into early autumn.

• This is brilliant because it doesn't mind the dappled light when the tree is in full leaf, and then has beautiful starry seedheads for winter interest.

This succession is mirrored in the borders out here in the light, with one thing superseding another. Asters, Vernonia and Eupatorium are yet to come through for late summer and autumn interest.

Building succession into a planting allows every square metre to have several seasons of interest and several layers, which are integral to those spaces working hard.

Get to Know Your Plants Through Experimentation

A garden is always in process, and the process of crafting a garden is a learning curve. I'm re-learning things I thought I knew before, because I'm having to respond to this site very specifically.

So I think of this garden as a place that's in constant evolution and a learning tool. I'm always tweaking, improving, and getting to know my plants better.

• I experiment with plants in a stock bed to learn more about them. You can use a little corner, or part of a vegetable patch, to see what a new plant might do before you commit it to the garden.
• Once you know your plants, you can start to use them in a way that is both practical and aesthetic: combining these to make a planting scheme that works in terms of both succession and layering, but is also something beautiful that you're happy to live with.

There's nothing wrong with spending time getting to know your plants so that you're confident when using them in the garden. Remember that a garden is an evolving entity that is always changing, and you'll always need to make adjustments as it shifts the balance you're trying to strike.

Use Your Energy Wisely

Part of my ethos in choosing plants for this garden was to use things that are well behaved. By that, I mean mainly long-lived perennials, with only a small number of freely self-seeding plants, essentially to keep the work down in terms of how much I will need to weed out.

I can more or less leave the garden from this point at the end of July, just making small edits, such as cutting back things that are starting to look scruffy. The garden then goes into autumn and winter with most of the structure still standing. The big energy comes at the end of February, before the bulbs and perennials start coming up. At this point, we do the following, before letting the garden go again:

1. Cut all the perennials back to the base.
2. Divide as necessary and look at where the balance needs to be adjusted.
3. Mulch the garden.
4. Do a minimal amount of staking.

Plant What You Know Grows Well in the Environment

I've always worked with plants in a naturalistic way, using these two fundamental principles:

1. Taking lessons from looking at the way things grow in the wild, with that natural association between plants that like to live in the same situation.

• When you associate plants that like to live together, you form communities that protect the soil, reduce weeding and work together to keep the garden in balance.

1. Choosing the right plants for the right place, and never trying to make plants do what they don't want to. This makes gardening much easier.

These are the principles I always strive for in a design – to choose plants that are compatible with the site and with each other, and that provide succession throughout the year, in which the ground is covered and plants associate well with each other to help support the ecosystem we've created.

You Will Learn Most About a Plant by Looking at It in the Wild

As a teenager, I developed part of our family garden to start combining plants. Our neighbour was a naturalist and used to go off to Europe to look at plants in the wild. When telling me about the plants in her garden, she would always include the story of where they came from and what they had been growing with – something that became increasingly important to me.

In my twenties, I spent a lot of time going out to look at plants in their native habitats. This is something I always do now when I go to a new site – I look at what grows in the locale, how it grows, what it grows with and how things associate with it. That really is the best way of seeing how plants like to grow – once you've seen something in the wild and in a natural association, you never forget that.

These associations are something I try to emulate in the garden. Even if I'm using plants that don't naturally occur together in the wild, I'm striving to form those functional associations as if they were naturally associated. This makes my life easier, is an underpinning foundation of the way I plant in a naturalistic garden, and means I've got a system in place that is functional as well as beautiful.

Plant Directory

• Cardamine
• Pulmonaria
• Helleborus x hybridus
• Vernonia
• Eupatorium

The Boundary Edge

Hedges are a key structural element of any garden. In this chapter, I'll discuss the functionality of a hedge, my considerations when choosing what species to use, and some practical aspects of siting a hedge.

On the garden's boundary with the lane was an old, broken-down mixed native hedge. It's mostly hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), with some hazel (Coryllus avellana) and small-leaved elm (Ulmus minor subsp. minor). This deciduous, mixed British native hedge feels right in this naturalistic setting.

I've spent some time rejuvenating this hedge so that it's a good and dynamic habitat:

• I've added wild privet (Ligustrum vulgare) and scented sweet briar roses (Rosa rubiginosa).
• I've underplanted it with things that enjoy that habitat, such as snowdrops and primroses.

This hedge feels very much part of the landscape and has become a wonderful habitat – birds can forage as we don't cut it until after all the berries have dropped in autumn, and it provides cover in winter. Of course, it also forms a backdrop for the planting as well as separation from the lane.

The Functionality of Hedges

Whether evergreen or deciduous, hedges are very useful structural building blocks in a garden.

In this countryside setting, I've only used natives in my hedge, so that it blends in with the landscape and provides the best habitat for local biodiversity. It forms a nice restful backdrop to the garden.

I've got a very simple mown path running alongside the hedge. I don't tend to use much mown grass, because I prefer to have biodiverse meadow.

• I don't use any chemicals on this grass, so it's full of wild plants. I'm not worried about it being imperfect, as this is what feels right with this naturalistic setting.

On this very sunny site, I've provided some shade by planting trees at the top of the garden, so that the walk along the hedge is in dappled shade.

• One tree I like to use is an ornamental hawthorn called Crataegus coccinea – this has lovely creamy flowers in late spring, followed by large red berries and a tremendous autumn colour. Quite fast-growing, this provides shade and is somewhere birds like to be.

It's important to get these structural elements into a garden early on, and it's really worth taking time to consider where you want them. Investing thought into your structural elements will mean that as they start to mature, they will immediately make an impact on the rest of the garden that follows.

• This hedge for instance is not only a structural spine running through the garden, but is also a useful piece of shelter that provides a microclimate for the rest of the planting.

These structural hedges and trees are long-term investments that are worth getting right in terms of where they are, what they are and why they're there.

Choosing a Hedge

There are many different hedges you can use depending on what mood you want. Yew (Taxus baccata) for instance, which is also a British native, makes a wonderful hedge:

• It's relatively slow-growing, so only needs to be cut once at the end of the summer,
• It's very versatile, and can be cut into many shapes,
• It provides year-round consistency and a beautiful dark green backdrop to planting.

Holly (Ilex aquifolium) can also be used in a similar way.

I tend not to use fast-growing hedges, such as non-native privet or Lonicera nitida, because you have to cut these twice a year. This isn't what I'd aim for in a naturalistic garden – it causes more disturbance to wildlife, and I also prefer to reserve my energy for other things.

So a hedge that grows quite slowly and only needs cutting once a year is the aim. We cut ours at the very end of the season, once the leaves have dropped and the birds have had a chance to take the berries.

Accommodating a Hedge

Hedges can be hungry, which is why I've put a grass path alongside mine. The root system would have a big impact on the planting if I were to plant right up to the hedge.

• Think about the vigour of your hedges, and where you put the planting relative to them.
• For any hedge, you also need to consider how and when you're going to cut it.
• It's worth considering a maintenance strip alongside the hedge to separate it from the planting, which helps with access and also that issue of the hungry root zone.

So when placing your hedges and then the planting, it's always worth thinking about the practicalities of how you're going to manage those hedges.