Artificial Flowers

Here’s a helpful exercise every homeowner can do. Stand back (across the street maybe) and really look at your property. Go for a walk and approach your property as though you were seeing it for the very first time. This is not an easy thing to do, but look critically at the entrance to your property, the style of your home as well as the trees that live on or near your property. No cheating! This is not the time to covet your neighbor’s clematis or to admire your own border of annuals.

Look at the big picture. Do the trees and shrubs fit the scale of your property? Do they “fit” within the neighborhood? Are the garden beds (not the plants within them) in proportion to the size of your residence and property? If you find something is missing, perhaps this is the year to buy a spectacular specimen (a tree or large shrub) to add balance and scale. Conversely, it may be time to thin out or remove some plants that have greatly outgrown their allotted space.

Do the same to the back of your property. What is the first impression a guest might have? Since most back gardens are enclosed in some way, the scale can be more intimate, but the overall structure should still greet the eye with pleasing proportion (as well as pleasing colors, scents, etc.) Often it is not only plantings that enhance the scale and balance of the garden, but a bolder statement of some kind – a large pot, gazebo, arbor; or pergola to support and complement the plants may be a better choice.

A good rule of thumb: look up and out, rather than down, when you are looking at your garden. This is especially true when you are trying to decide what to add to the garden. What is it that draws the eye? Do you focus on a pleasing feature, or is it perhaps the blank wall of your neighbor’s garage that first catches the eye? This can help you in setting priorities for your plant and shrub purchases.

Remember too, we can’t use plants artfully until we begin to know them, their requirements, and how they want to behave. It’s difficult to envision how a plant is going to look at maturity in your own garden when you are viewing the little darling in a five gallon pot at the nursery. Try to find out what the plant will look like in a garden setting five or more years from now. You may be able to see it in a neighbor’s garden, or on a garden tour, or by seeing a photo in a gardening book.

A good analogy to approaching a planting may be the purchase of furniture for your living room. We usually purchase the major items first – sofas and chairs (trees and shrubs), and then the accessories and the objets d’art (flowers and garden ornaments). We purchase our furniture to meet our own needs and our own personal sense of proportion and scale. We shouldn’t try to mimic the displays in the magazines. The same should apply to our gardens – let’s not try to copy those “picture perfect gardens, but learn from them. See the big picture and assess why you like the look, and then extract the essence.