Designing gardens involves two main phases: structural planting and ornamental planting. Structural planting includes the trees, shrubs, and groundcover that provide a function. Ornamental planting is devoted to choosing plants (trees, shrubs, and flowers) to provide interest, beauty, and ongoing creativity.

Structural Planting

To begin designing gardens, first consider the structural planting. The structural planting will provide the consistent framework for your garden while the ornamental planting will provide the daily and seasonal changes.

When considering structural planting, think about what functions you would like your garden to provide. Some common functions of gardens are to provide:

• Shade
• Privacy
• Wind reduction
• Noise reduction
• A play area for the kids and dog
• An area to host outdoor parties
• An area to grow food
• An area for wildlife
• A place to get away from it all

After you determine what you would like your garden to provide, sketch out where you want each area to be.

Then, determine the details, beginning with the trees. Trees will provide such things as shade, privacy, and noise reduction. For more information about structural planting with trees, see Designing Gardens with Trees.

After you plan for trees, then consider shrubs. Shrubs will provide privacy, wind reduction, and boundaries. For more information about structural planting with shrubs, see Designing Gardens with Shrubs.

The structural planting phase also includes groundcover. Groundcover can be something you walk on, or something intended to fill up the space. It can include hardscape (decks and patios) and softscape (lawns and low-growing plants).

If you don’t plan to step on the ground cover, consider using shrubs as ground cover. Using shrubs as ground cover is ideal for areas where you won’t need to walk and areas where you don’t want to spend any time tending to flowers. Shrubs can do a great job at “choking out” weeds and can be an evergreen landscape that requires minimal maintenance.

Ornamental Planting

After you determine the structural planting, then it’s time for the ornamental planting. Ornamental planting includes the focal points (eye-catching plants and garden artwork) and seasonal changes in the garden (foliage and flower colors). When planning the ornamental phase of your garden, consider using a mix of trees, shrubs, flowers, and garden artwork to provide interesting forms, foliage, and colors.

You can design functional and artistic gardens with these basic guidelines. If you would like to explore more aspects of garden design, visit other articles on this website devoted to the ornamental planting phase of designing gardens, such as Design a Meadow Garden, Create a Focal Point, and Vertical Gardening Ideas. Enjoy!

Your first step is to find an area that receives full sun. According to the National Wildlife Federation, butterflies prefer to visit flowers in the sunshine.

One of the nice things about butterflies is that they aren’t shy. They will flutter right around people, so you can pick any location in your yard–even next to a patio, window, or doorway. (Birds can be shy, so they may only visit a bird garden as long as people aren’t nearby–except for hummingbirds who have no problems whizzing by your head.)

The area you choose for your butterfly garden doesn’t have to be large. In fact, you may want to designate several, small sunny areas of your garden as butterfly gardens.

After you have picked a sunny location for a butterfly garden, then select the flowers. In Pollination and Plant Families, Stein Carter writes that butterflies choose flowers by their sight, not smell. Butterflies do not have a good sense of smell, but they do have a good sense of sight.

Butterflies like bright flowers. (Note that butterflies can see red but that bees cannot, so if you’re worried about having too many bees buzzing around a particular area, you can choose mostly red flowers for your butterfly garden.)

The shape and clustering of the flowers make a difference too. Butterflies like to stand while gathering nectar, so they prefer sturdy flowers with large “landing platforms,” as well as clusters of smaller flowers that make it easy to walk from one flower to the next.

Stein Carter writes that butterflies like “many members of the plant family Compositae, where many small flowers are arranged into a flat-topped head, and other plants, such as the milkweeds, where the flowers occur in large clusters.”

Flowers from the Compositae family that attract butterflies:

• Zinnia (Asteraceae Compositae)
• Perennial Sunflower (Asteraceae Compositae)
• Goldenrod (Asteraceae Compositae)
• Gazania (Asteraceae Compositae)
• Aster (Asteraceae Compositae, but not Callistephus chinensis “Chinese Aster”)

Butterflies like other flowers as well. C. Colston Burrell in Perennial Combinations suggests some of the following flower combinations for butterfly gardens:

• White Pearly Everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea); orange Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa); and purple Tennessee Coneflower (Echinacea tennesseensis).
• Yellow Tall Tickseed (Coreopsis tripteris); yellow Cup Plant (Silphium perfoliatum); pink Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata); and white Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum).
• Purple Rose Verbena (Verbena canadensis) and red Fire Pink (Silene virginica).
• Red Knautia (Knautia macedonica) and purple Pincushion Flower (Scabiosa caucasica).

After you have chosen the location and flowers, you have two more items to add to your butterfly garden: rocks and water.

The National Wildlife Federation recommends that you add flat rocks among the flowers because butterflies like to rest in order to warm their wings and to gain a sense of orientation.

And the last step for your butterfly garden design is to add a water element. A water feature for butterflies can be very simple. They like to sit on wet sand or cement and soak in water, so you can place a shallow saucer of water and even add course sand to it if you’d like.

After you plant flowers, add rocks, and include a water feature, it’s time to sit back and welcome butterfly visitors. Depending on your area, butterflies may begin to flutter around in the spring–although you’ll probably see most of your butterflies in late summer and fall when they migrate.

Attracting butterflies to your backyard will add something special to your outdoor space.

by Shannon Mendez

When considering gardening as a hobby it is important to remember that the beauty of this pastime lies not only in the look of the finished garden but in the many pleasurable hours spent in the pursuit of this perfection. Gardening involves all the senses, and a carefully planned and executed garden is certainly something to be proud of.

Many gardeners seem to enjoy the planning of the garden as much as the actual time spent making those plans come to life. Sketching out the proposed look for the new landscape can be a great deal of fun, especially when working with a new patch of land. It can be great fun determining just where the flower beds should go, which trees would be perfect for the landscape, and which shrubs would best accent the color of the home.

In addition to the traditional garden and landscape elements, such as trees, shrubs, bushes, plants and flowers, many artistic gardeners like to spice things up a bit by adding additional elements to the landscape. These additional artistic touches often include things like garden statuary or sculpture, and there are a great many sources for fine reproduction statues, sculptures and other artistic elements that can provide just the right finishing touch to the artistic garden.

Another great artistic touch for the gardener is water, and water elements in the landscape are becoming increasingly popular. From fountains and waterfalls to ponds, water in the landscape can provide a remarkably calm and serene environment. Water elements can even be combined with garden statuary and sculptures to create an even more complete artistic landscape.

For the artistic gardener, the plants themselves are works of art, and nowhere is this more evident that in the topiary garden. The art of sculpting hedges into the shapes of various animals and people is a long tradition, and a well kept and well sculpted topiary garden can be breathtaking.

No matter where your artistic passions run, chances are good that the gardening hobby can provide an important outlet for your creative talents. There are few hobbies as amenable to the artistic mind as gardening, and it is no wonder gardening attracts so many aspiring artists. If you are looking for a hobby that makes use of your mind as well as your hands, gardening may be just what you have been looking for.

Designing with shrubs

When designing gardens, shrubs are part of the structural planting phase. (Before choosing shrubs, make sure you have first considered designing with trees.) Most shrubs provide year-round interest and a green background for flowers.

When choosing shrubs for your garden, choose evergreen shrubs first. If you like shrubs that are deciduous or have variegated foliage, that is fine. Save those plants for when you consider choosing shrubs for a focal point. You’ll want your shrubs to provide year-round interest and provide a nice backdrop and sense of order for the flowers that you’ll plant later in your garden design process.

Screening

If you’d like to provide a boundary, garden wall, or screening for privacy, you can plant tall shrubs. Keep in mind that trees can provide this function as well; it depends on your need and space. If you want to block something at ground level, then shrubs are the best choice.

When you are trying to hide an object or provide walls, choose shrubs with small green leaves so that they do not attract attention. If one shrub is not enough, plant the same type of shrubs next to one another to form a wall.

In backyards that already have fences, you can plant shrubs along the fence (unless the fence is attractive). A wall of shrubs will provide a more lush feeling and a prettier backdrop for flowers than an ugly wood fence—especially if you can see through the fence panels.

Shrubs planted near the foundation of a house will enhance the curb appeal (unless the house has beautiful stonework or some other nice architectural feature). In fact, a shrub with sharp leaves, such as Holly, may even help deter unwanted visitors from accessing windows.

Provide Boundaries

You can plant shrubs to provide boundaries for separate garden “rooms” or areas. You can also plant small shrubs to provide boundaries in flower gardens. For example, if you have a long side yard and want to plant flower gardens, you can use shrubs to separate different garden themes and color combinations.

You can also plant shrubs that are below eye level but above knee level to limit access to certain areas. For example, if you find that guests walk on your lawn to visit your front door, you can plant a wall of low-growing shrubs to help guide visitors where you want them to walk. This type of planting won’t obstruct your view but will provide boundaries. You can also use this method to limit access to water, a steep slope, cars, and other areas where you don’t want to block the view, but you do want to help guide or prevent direct access.

Shrubs planted close together to form a wall is considered a hedge. When choosing shrubs for a hedge, choose plants that have a fine texture so that you can easily trim them with a hedger to keep it in shape (shrubs with large leaves should be pruned at the branches because the large leaves will brown if cut in half with hedgers—too time consuming for a hedge).

If your hedge is tall, be sure that the bottom of the hedge is a bit wider at the bottom than at the top. This is called being “cut with a batter” and allows sunlight to reach the entire hedge.

A great shrub for formal hedges is Yew. Yew has a fine texture, dark leaves, and is non-reflective. It makes a great background for ornamental planting.

A great shrub for low hedges is Boxwood. You can shape and clip Boxwood to suit most any garden.

When designing your garden, be sure to allow space for you to walk around and clip your hedges.

Wind Breaks

If you don’t want the height of a tree, you can use shrubs to help provide shelter from wind.

Focal Points

Consider placing a “special” shrub to serve as a focal point in a garden. You can also place a few of these in several parts of the garden. Using a shrub as opposed to a tree as a focal point will call attention lower to the ground. (Keep in mind that you can also save the focal point to be flowers or garden artwork.)

When using a shrub as a focal point, choose one that has sculptural interest; for example, one with a strong form, distinctive habit, or bold foliage. You can also create your own sculptural interest by clipping a hedge into a topiary shape, such as a globe, spiral, or animal.

Next Steps in Designing Gardens

The next step to consider in your garden design plan is groundcover, which can include cement, pavers, rocks, turf, and more.

by Shannon Mendez