Follow these 25 perfect garden tips to sketch out garden landscapes that are sure to flourish with minimal upkeep and without pricey do-overs.
25 Tips for Planning the Perfect Garden
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Planning the Perfect Garden
Die-hard gardeners will tell you that a garden is a work in progress. Even established gardens require a little tweaking from season to season. But if you thoughtfully plan before you plant, your landscape will beautifully endure for years to come without costly and time-consuming alterations or additions.
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Take Advantage of Leafless Panoramas
With most trees and shrubs showing only bare bones, winter is a fine time for spotting ho-hum holes in your landscape. Check for areas that could use a punch of winter interest—consider adding evergreens, berry-bearing shrubs and trees with interesting forms or bark to boost four-season appeal.
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Know Your Site
Spend a day or two checking how many hours of sun your gardens receive each day to ensure you incorporate light-appropriate plants into your design. Keep in mind that full-sun plants require at least 6 hours of sun, partial-shade plants need between 3 and 6 hours and shade-tolerant plants benefit from 2 or 3 hours of direct light or from receiving indirect or filtered light all day.
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Consider the Big Picture
Sketch out an overall picture of your yard, including entertainment areas, your house and other buildings. Enlarge the sketch and mark off existing landscape features like trees, shrubs and gardens. Pencil in proposed plantings to see how they fit within the existing landscape.
You can also incorporate a dog garden into the space for your furry best friend.
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Allow Plenty of Room
Design extra-deep borders large enough to house an array of low, medium and tall plants and that allow you extra space to add more plants as the mood strikes.
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Pace Off Measurements
Before you sketch, estimate the amount of space you wish to dedicate to a planting bed. Use the measurements to draw a blueprint to scale on graph paper. Keeping in mind plants’ mature sizes, pencil in desired plants to get a realistic idea of how many you can fit into the space.
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Color in the Lines
On your plan, use markers, watercolors or colored pencils to color in existing plantings. Then color in your planned additions to make certain that the old and new hues complement each other.
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Make Like a Landscape Pro
Design gardens that carry the eye from earth to sky. Anchor borders and beds with structural plants, such as trees or tall shrubs, and then layer in climbing vines, smaller shrubs, varying-height perennials and sprawling ground covers.
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Settle on a Style
Determine whether you’re going for a clipped formal look, casual cottage appeal, a native prairie or a combination of styles.
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Pick a Palette
Are you partial to pastels? Do red-hot hues get your creative juices flowing? Working within a color scheme will help you set a cohesive scene and prevent you from buying unsuitable plants in weaker moments.
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Lay the Groundwork
When planning your design, include pathways, arbors, ponds, large containers, fountains, statuary and garden benches that draw both foot traffic and attention through the garden.
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Cultivate Perennials for Pennies
Designate a sunny corner for growing perennials from seed. Sow the seeds in early spring, and by mid- to late summer, you’ll have loads of plants to fill out your borders.
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Add Raised Beds for Vegetable, Herb and Cutting Gardens
Growing your own produce and easy-care annual flowers for summer arrangements saves money. Plus, raised beds take less time to weed.
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Create a Budget
Determine how much you want to spend for this year’s plantings, mulch and soil amendments. Learn more in our mulch guide. Plan on putting in paths and buying the larger, structural plants first. When budgets are tight, think about filling in your design over the course of several years.
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Reiterate a Scheme
Plan on replicating plant forms, colors and textures to easily fashion flow, a sense of movement and a harmonious whole garden.
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Forget the Finicky
Opt to include native plants or ones that are hardy and reliable in your planting zone—you won’t have to replace them down the road.
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Look for Deals
Many spring garden catalogs offer inexpensive bare-root forsythia, hydrangea and red-twig dogwood saplings. The stick-like, rooted saplings take a few years to fill out and flower, but their bargain-basement prices allow you to mass their forms inexpensively or to add them throughout the landscape as a repeating element.
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Invest in Gardener’s Gold
Incorporate plants—such as daylily, hosta, bearded iris, bee balm, purple coneflower and yarrow—that you can divide in a few years for more plants.
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Think Foliage, Not Flowers
Sketch in plants with silver, gray, chartreuse, variegated and bright-colored foliage for gardens that remain colorful as flowers fade.
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Consider Every Season
Slot in plants with different bloom times to ensure a succession of blossoms throughout the year.
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Plant a Living Wall
Pencil in trellises, hedges and plant groupings to camouflage unattractive views, define garden rooms and buffer traffic noise.
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Supersize It
You’ll fill a lot of space without spending big bucks if you include large, quick-growing plants, such as Russian sage, fountain grasses, Autumn Joy sedum, hydrangea and shrub roses like Carefree Delight, Knock Out and Magic Carpet.
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Contemplate Companions
Peruse garden books, plant catalogs and search online for garden images that showcase appealing plant combinations that you can duplicate in your design.
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Pair Like-Minded Plants
Group those with similar light, water and soil requirements together—if you plant water-thirsty cultivars with drought-tolerant plants, you’re sure to lose one or both to either too-dry conditions or root rot.
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Enhance the Wow Factor
Add one or two plant groupings or shrubs for curb appeal that are sure to stop passersby in their tracks.
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Vary Forms and Textures
Incorporate plants with ferny fronds, grassy spires, coarse spikes, fuzzy foliage, waxy surfaces and broad leaves in varying mounded, cascading and upright forms.
