Creating a beautiful garden bed may seem challenging but with help from Gertens it’s fun and easy. Use your own creativity and remember to enjoy the process, which often is a continuous creation.
COLOR:
- Brighter and lighter colors tend to 'pop' or draw attention from surrounding plants.
- ‘Warm’ colors such as yellow, orange and red tend to appear closer or bigger. Placing these colors in a distant viewing spot is a good way to highlight a space in your landscape.
- ‘Cool’ colors such as blue, green, and purple tend to appear further away, and are great to use in smaller spaces to create the illusion of depth.
Gertens has downloadable landscape plans available that can inspire you with color and all 5 rules for your entryway, backyard, corner garden and more.
TEXTURE:
- Finer textured plants like Spirea, Barberry or Boxwood usually have smaller leaves and/or stems and look softer. They make great highlight plants in the foreground of a landscape.
- Coarser textured plants like Rhododendron, Hydrangea, and Ninebark have larger leaves or flowers and are great as background plants.
- Mixing the textures can create a good focal point or highlight.
QUANTITY:
- Planting in masses and groups of odd numbers looks more natural and creates a flow for the eye to follow.
- Create a focal point with a single specimen plant to make the eye stop.
FORM and LINES:
- Mounded forms such as Crimson Pygmy Barberry.
- Vertical shapes such as De Groot’s Spire Arborvitae.
- 'Y' shaped and weeping such as Renaissance Spirea
- Horizontal such as Calgary Carpet Juniper.
- Soft forms break apart hard, rigid, straight edges of hardscapes and buildings.
Using plants with different forms can help create depth and interest in your landscape.
REPETITION:
To keep some uniformity and balance in your landscape it is good to repeat plantings in multiple areas.
- Plants with similar forms, colors, and textures can also be repeated for the same affect.
- To keep a landscape from becoming too busy, avoid planting too many (more than 8) different plants (colors, textures, forms) in any one viewing spot.
Stop by or give our Landscape Projects Desk a call at 651-239-1315
The experts at Gertens are always available to answer your questions!