It’s spring and my garden looks dreadful. Why?
Everything is healthy and blooming. That’s not the problem. The problem is my garden looks dreadful. Conventional wisdom has it that, whatever nature does, the result can’t help but be lovely to the eye, mind and spirit.
Not so with my front yard today. It’s a mess. Where did nature go wrong? Strike that — where did I go wrong?
Sitting here, looking at the photos I just took of my hapless front yard, I’m thinking, I can’t blame nature for this disorganized mess. I made mistakes, two specifically, when I planted this garden last year.
- I stuffed too many different plants into this small space.
- I let too many individual plants bloom in isolation, separated from kindred spirits.
A Common Beginner’s Mistake
Way back in the twentieth century, when I was planting this front yard garden for the first time, a person with some gardening years packed on him took note of my choices as I stood at the nursery check-out counter.
“The trouble with beginning gardeners is they take home too many different plants,” he said. “It’s better to plant more examples of just a few species.”
But, beginner as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to choose “just a few” from the abundance on sale that day. I loaded up my cart with everything that caught my eye.
And now I have to wonder, is that where I went wrong when I chose the plants for my brand new garden? Did I grab up too many different plants?
My Garden Looks Dreadful. Here’s Why
I got out the list I’d given to my gardeners last April and took a look. Guilty as charged.
There were a couple dozen plants on that list: echinacea, lavender, armeria, geranium, agastache, scabiosa, lupine, guara, salvia, iris, and much, much more — too many plants, each with a will of its own, each heading in its own aesthetic direction, not acknowledging its neighbors.
My Plants Don’t Get Along
And now today, the dark, low-slung, moody heuchera ‘Black Pearl’ wants nothing to do with the cheery Iceland poppy ‘Champagne Bubbles Orange’ nodding at the sky just inches from it.
Same goes for the bold maroon snapdragons and the demure lavender cranesbill planted side-by-side along the stairs. Also the bearded iris blades slicing upward next to the gently pink azaleas over by the driveway.
Colors clash. Leaf shapes clash. Moods clash.
Everything in my garden is fighting for attention on its own terms. Nothing wants to cooperate. Nothing wants to give an inch. The iris wants to be an iris. The azalea wants to be an azalea. The poppy won’t let go of its poppy-ness.
A Bad Idea — Plants Sprinkled About, not Clustered
Making matters worse, I planted too many individual plants all by themselves. Plants are sprinkled randomly about, not clustered together with like plants.
There are two Iceland poppies blooming my garden today, for example. One is at the top of the yard, the other near the bottom, each one insisting on being as orange as possible. Isolated as they are from anything equally bold, the two poppies come off, not as exuberant, but shrill.
I left it to the monthly gardeners to plant those poppies, and they sprinkled them here and there about the garden. A bad idea. If the poppies had been planted together in a cluster — in a spot designated just for them — they might have expressed their shiny optimism with confidence. As it is, they are shamed from across the way by the modest cranesbill blossoms, their delicate heads bowed and trembling in the shifting air.
Same goes for the heuchera. If the moody ‘Black Pearl’ had been planted alongside the rusty ‘Georgia Peach’ heuchera, the deep colors of the two could have played off each other nicely.
But What’s to Be Done About It?
What a mess. What do I do now? I’ve been known to rip out perfectly innocent plants — living things doing exactly what they were intended to — just because their muddy maroon petals or their dry, leggy stems offended my eyes.
I’ll try to stay calm. I’ll wait. I’ll see what summer brings. Maybe the heuchera and the poppy will make friends by then.
If not, I might have to choose between them.
More about the planting of this garden at “An Unruly Garden Tamed at Last.” More about my weakness for irises at “Purple Bearded Irises — Close Up and (Very) Personal.”
love your photos, so much color and variety.
i always intend to plant in drifts, and do, but i can’t resist a few odd singletons. some of them find their way into drifts in later years.
Good to know that it’s OK to succumb to a few odd favorites here and there . . . As for those photos, it was a challenge making attractive photos out of unattractive situations. I couldn’t bring myself to put up ugly photos to illustrate my point.
When I took classes at Merritt College’s horticulture department I learned a few good basics. (1). When buying a new plant, buy 3 to 5 of them. Think triangles when planting. Decide ahead, if possible, how many new species to add at once. (I always bought 3; I found 5 was too many.) (2). Plants, like us, and dogs, need some time to settle in to a new home. It’s okay to move plants, or even the entire clump. They might like a new spot better. Be gentle when digging up plants. Be sure to pay attention to the sun. (3). Keep new plants regularly watered. New plants should not dry out. Water. (4). Make sure they have enough room to grow. (5) if your garden appears too sparse in the beginning, plant cosmos as ‘fillers’. They are wonderful anywhere they can have some water. (6). Try natives. They handle a drought well, once established (see 3 above). (7). It is actually okay to remove a plant. Say you are sorry and move on. (8) The most important idea I learned is that gardening is process. We are never ‘done’ gardening. Our gardens grow with us, making the process so much fun. HAVE FUN.
It’s OK to say sorry and move on! I will probably do that with a couple of perfectly honorable plants. Cosmos as filler — maybe that’s what I need until some of the plants fill things out.