As I garden longer and longer, I put a lot of emphasis on foliage color and
texture. Flowers are great, but foliage is always there in or out of flower. I
like blue with pink, white or pale yellow. I don't like pink and yellow, yuk.
I'm drawn to variegated foliage in all the species of plants.

My big problem is design. So, I gave in and have a prairie garden. Things up
front are very tall, sometimes shorter deeper into the bed. I'm not fussy about
colors, but I don't like a lot of red. It represents anger and I don't have
much anger these days.

I follow certain things like using plants in odd numbers (3,5,7,9...).

Garden paths seem to be more and more important to me these days, as well. I
have very narrow paths because I'm a plant hound and hate giving up much space
to paths, but for the first time in my gardening life of 30 years (not my age,
just how long I gardened) I now have paths. To me, it gives the garden more
definition. Since my style is prairie and grassland(ish), it needs paths to
indicate it has some formality, though it's not formal.

I have taken to using plant markers so when someone walks in the garden they
don't have to ask me what this or that is. I use zinc markers and engrave the
plant name or write it with an indelible marker.

Shrubbery is also grown to accent their natural shape. I don't find shrubs into
poodle cuts are aesthetically nice to look at. My neighbor wanted me to do it
for them and though I know how, I told him the plant wants to be the shape it
is. In hostile climates (like ours in Texas summer) it's best to leave plants
to grow into their native shape and judiciously prune with sequiturs, bypass
being my favorite.

I can go on and on, but I garden for wildlife. The more life I can bring into
the garden, the more successful I feel. We stumbled on a hog nose snake,
yesterday. I believe they live on toads which is not my favorite thing, but we
just looked at it for a while and let it go back into the den.

Victoria


On Sat, 10 May 2003 21:30:17 GMT, "Adam Schwartz"
wrote:

I'm curious about garden design. Are there any rules you all use to
plan your gardens (specifically pots)? For example:

Group flowers of the same color
Only one or two types of plants per pot
Mix certain colors (i.e. purple and yellow,, blue and red)
Use white sparingly
Group plants by texture
etc.

Thanks for the input,
Adam