it with silver or white, and the result is rich and calming. Use it as an accent in a sea of green, and the whole display wins. Or create a bed of red variations from russet to maroon to burgundy, and the result is sultry.
Pink: Because pink is so variable, you have lots of possibilities when you use it. It’s a favorite in pastel displays and is especially nice with any shade of blue. It doesn’t, however, look great next to yellow (you can get a clichéd grocery-store bouquet look) or red (both look a bit flat). Silver and green, though, are great companions.
White: Okay, we know, white isn’t literally a color, but white in your landscaping is often welcome in complex or larger landscapes, giving a spirit of simplicity or purity. (An all-white garden bed can be pretty awesome.) It’s especially suited to gardens that are enjoyed in the evening hours, when it glows. Place white at the end of a path or the back of your yard to add depth.
Silver: Like white, silver stands out in the evening hours. But it’s also a wonderful daytime team player, often used as a light-catching foil to other colors, and with good reason, because it both highlights and unifies. We find it has the ability to bind together complex displays. It looks pretty with blue and purple. It does, however, look leaden on rainy days.
Green: Yes, green is a color in a landscaping design. From pale green to lime green to blue-green to rich, forest green, you have so many variations. If you deploy green with imagination and care, the effects can be downright fabulous, which is true everywhere from small potted displays to elaborate shrub borders and foundation plantings. Green is the great garden unifier and often the dominant color, so we urge you to explore and appreciate it.
Getting Some Rhythm
Repeating elements — whether color, leaf shape, plant forms, lines, hedges, or groundcover — create a rhythm in your landscape, a pacing that you can control by your plant choices just like … scrolling through your playlists. If you want slow, smooth-flowing music, choose quiet colors and wide stretches of greenery. To jazz it up, look to bright hues and vertical forms, such as sword-leaved irises, vertical clumps of ornamental grasses, and decorative posts and columns.
The rhythm of your landscape can be as energetic as “Rocky Top” or as elegant as “The Blue Danube.” Any eye-catchers in the garden, if accompanied by neighboring plants of lower voltage, work to create a lively rhythm. Clipped shrubs, grasses, vertical plants, big-leafed plants, and anything bigger, brighter, taller, or otherwise strikingly different than its neighbors are all showoffs that grab attention. Use them to make your garden dance with a lively beat.
Restful rhythm makers include stretches of greenery, such as fern beds, shrub plantings, groundcovers, and cool-colored flowers in shades of blue, purple, or pastels.
Adding Décor to Your Design: How Many Pink Flamingos Are Enough?
Manmade objects carry much more weight in the garden than plants — people’s eyes are instantly drawn to them. That’s why a single urn or birdbath draws the eye like a magnet, even in the midst of the most beautiful garden (see the color insert for examples).
Consider these reminders when adding décor to your landscape:
Exercise some restraint or your landscape will look cluttered. You can still have your gazing globe, your collection of birdhouses, your gnomes, and your angel fountain, but keep them separate visually with intervening shrubbery or bends in the path so they don’t all burst on the scene at once. Your eye should know exactly where to look.
Use décor to highlight their color in your design. Accessories and garden décor usually have color that generally holds up better and for longer than most plants. Review our color ideas in the section, “Playing with Color,” earlier in this chapter and plan accordingly. Peruse social media with just décor in mind to find inspiration. You can find scads of ideas on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and beyond.
Place your décor items and then leave the garden. Go do something else for a while and then return as if you’re seeing it for the first time. If your gaze hops around from one outrageous, err, wonderful piece of yard art to another, you have too much stuff.
Paying Attention to Hardscape
The patio, deck, walkways, fences, trellises, and other hardscape elements of your landscape are just as important as the plants. Whether you’re shopping for store-bought or creating your own, make your hardscape elements as attractive as your planting beds. Part 2 spells out what you need to know to incorporate hardscape into your landscaping plan.
Here we discuss a few general points for you to remember when you’re looking to add hardscape to your plan:
Think how the hardscape looks through the different seasons. If you live in a cooler climate, you’ll be looking at these items unadorned in the off season, when leaves have fallen and plants are dormant. You can soften them in all seasons by planting woody shrubs, vines, ornamental grasses, and trees nearby. A deck or patio without plants may look fine in summer surrounded by lawn grass, but in winter, it can look pretty bleak without a few natural plant forms to anchor it to the earth.If you live in a milder climate, winter is still a more subdued time of year. Inject color where you can, whether with cushions or pillows on your outdoor seating or on your the deck, patio, or front porch with pots of annuals (calendulas, pansies, primroses, and snapdragons are a few bright and cheery options).
Be prepared for sticker shock when you’re shopping for hardscape and the related materials. Bricks, arbors, benches, fences, and all those other extras can be a much bigger investment than the plants. Considering how valuable they are in transforming an average garden into a great one, though, hardscape is well worth the investment. Search out the most beautiful arbor in the world, and you’ll love your garden forever. Skimp on the deck, and you’ll rue your miserly impulse for years.
Make sure you maintain your hardscape. You’ve been thinking about caring for all the plants, but hardscape also requires regular attention. Sweep and yank out encroaching weeds in season. Paint or stain, perhaps annually. Invest in quality materials and build well.
Keeping an Eye on the Details
You may have some favorite plants that you want to include in your new landscape. Acquire an appreciation of the subtler details of those plants before you plant, including the following:
Look at the leaves with an eye toward design attributes. After all, unless you’re growing only annuals, your plants will be mostly leaves much of the time.
Begin to notice the texture of foliage. Examples include broad and strappy, flat and wide, ferny
