Painting

with Flowers

Designing Sustainable and Beautiful Gardens

These pages are about the part of my design work that deals with plants - please also take a look at my landscaping section ("Shaping the Earth"), which describes my stone work and hardscaping in general.

In this shade garden, I used Tiarella, Heuchera, Thalictrum kiusianum, low spring bulbs, small, compact shrubs and rhododenrons, ferns and native woodland groundcovers.

I design and install a wide range of different gardens and landscapes, from the tiniest miniature garden to the park-like woodland garden.

However, most situations require focus on specific tasks like beautification of an entrance area, or screening of an unsightly view.

In all of these different situations, the right plants have to be chosen for the purpose of the planting, matching the soil and light conditions and other limitations. Choice of 'the right plant for the right place' often means that the plant will be easy to maintain, while a bad match of plant and site conditions usually causes trouble in one way or the other.

In many garden situations, especially in small town gardens, I like to make use of compact and dwarf shrubs and trees, which are generally plants that need a few years to develop to their full potential, but once established, require very little maintenance.

Plant photos and information:

Shrubs flowering in early spring

Shrubs flowering in late spring

Summer-flowering shrubs

My favorite roses    redesign

Compact shrubs for Easy Gardens

Best Perennials for Sun

Best Perennials for Part Shade

Escholzia and Nepeta

Painting with flowers is not like painting with colors on paper! Be prepared that your painting, over the course of the season, and from year to year, takes on it's own life, changes and evolves, blooms and dies, rejuvenates and blossoms again. Designing with plants is creating a scene that is alive!

Ferns

Miniature Gardens

Miniature Plants

Rock Garden Plants     redesign

Peonies          redesign

Exotics and annuals

Butterfly gardens

Butterflies in our nursery

Children gardens plant lists

Bring Children to Green Art

Designing with foliage is just as important as the flower combinations. Foliage textures and colors are still seen when flowers have faded, or before they have come up. Well considered foliage makes the garden!

This example contrasts soft (Artemisia 'Sivermound') with bold texture (Ligularia 'Britt Marie Crawford). It is at the same time a contrast of silver and purple. Such foliage combinations usually need a third partner - plain, fresh green, to somewhat neutralize the strong contrast. In this example, Blue Holly (Ilex x meservae 'Blue Girl') with deep green foliage, and various perennials such as Siberian iris and Daylilies, were used in the surroundings.

Designing with shapes: the shape of a plant, and it's size, have to be in perfect relationship with its environment. Mounded plants look good in a rock garden. Tall and scraggly plants can be tamed by framing them with formal hedges.

To achieve a satisfying design plants should also be repeated . Even in nature, there is repetition. Certain plants dominate a landscape because they find the right growing conditions. If repetition is lacking, the garden will look like a botanical collection at best.

In this woodland garden, Iris cristata, Rhododendron 'Purple Gem' (a low, mounding rhododendron) and ferns (background) are all repeated throughout the entire planting area.

This is a new part of my site where over the years I will describe plants from different parts of the world. My first pages are up:

Mediterranean Plants of Mallorca 2008

Alpine Plants of the Dolomites 2010

Designing with flowers: Colors of flowers can contrast, as in this example with Helenium and Clematis, or they can be combined in monochromatic schemes, or in endless other possible combinations. However, these full gardens that burst with color from spring to fall are always dependent on constant maintenance, transplanting, filling with annuals, deadheading and many other gardening tasks that place them clearly in the category of "High Maintenance Gardens".

That does not at all mean that a low-maintenance garden would look boring when it is not in full bloom - it can still have a lush and colorful appearance and be a masterpiece of gardening!

Painting with

Flowers