Articles

What Advice Would You Give a First-Time Garden Designer?

“What advice would you give someone (who has gardening experience) when it comes to redesigning a back yard. My parents recently bought a house that needs a yard makeover. What’s the best advice you can give someone who has only a little bit of experience with garden design and planning?” Question from Cassie of Wilsonville, Oregon

Answer: Before redesigning your parent’s backyard, determine what they want from the space. Do they plan to entertain outdoors, do they want to grow vegetables, will they need a play area for children? Then ask them how much time they want to commit to the garden. Are they interested in low-care landscape plants, or do they want to garden as hobbyists? Their expectations and level of commitment should shape how the gardens and outdoor living areas are designed and what plants are chosen.

Once you know what they want, you can consider the basics about bed placement and design, siting and choosing plants, and creating “outdoor rooms,” or usable outdoor spaces delineated by plantings, hardscape, an/or outdoor structures. When planning new gardens, consider the creation of functional spaces and how plantings can enhance them.

Garden Design Articles

Here are several excellent articles that I think will help you answer some of these questions and review some design basics.  Some are on the website of our sister brand, Fafard.

If you are interested in creating a vegetable garden, I recommend reading Five Steps to Creating a No-Till Vegetable Garden and 10 Essential Tips For New Vegetable Gardeners. (These are just a few of the hundreds of garden articles on our site.)

Siting and Choosing the Right Plants

What you plant will be based on your yard’s soil type and drainage level, light, and your USDA Hardiness Zone, which is 8b (learn more here) or Sunset Zone, which is 6 (learn more here). Sometimes is helps to reach out to your local OSU extension service for planting ideas for your region. We also encourage you to read our many gardening articles by Mike Darcy, who is a revered Portland, Oregon horticulturist. He is an avid gardener, and his plant suggestions are ideal for where you live. (Click here to see Mike’s articles.)

We also have loads of gardening videos that might help, like the two below about basic garden edging and flowering shrubs that bloom all summer long. (Click here to view our youTube channel)

I hope that some of these resources provide you with the inspiration you need for your design project!

Jessie Keith

Black Gold Horticulturist


Marvelous Miniature Flower Arranging

Small is sweet, especially when it comes to flowers and gardens. Miniature and fairy gardens have gained huge popularity, but miniature flower arrangements are just gaining attention. These tiny floral gems give crafty gardeners reason to collect the sweetest miniature vases (second-hand shops are a great source) and create small works of art that look best when presented in sets. Children are also thrilled to devise their own delicate mini flower creations.

Vases

We have gathered cute, tiny vases that are made of crystal, colored glass, and ceramic.

Rule one: your vases must be very little. Vase size, color, and personality can set the stage for your floral creation. Rounded vases are designed for radial views—or table centers. Square or rectangular vessels can hold front-facing floral arrangements to be placed against walls, or not. Brightly or wildly colored vases lend themselves to simpler floral color schemes for contrast, while simple, neutral vases can hold anything.

Basic Design Tenets

This simple arrangement maintains a monochrome color scheme of pink and balances two textures–an airy, mounded base of Joe-pye blooms and spiky celosia.

Formal floral design embodies many design tenets for good arranging. Here I will define six.

  1. Line: This is the arrangement’s path that draws the eye. The overall direction of an arrangement’s focal point—whether primarily vertical, horizontal, symmetrical, asymmetrical or angled—defines the line.
  2. Form: Flower placement defines form with respect to flower height, arrangement width, and depth.
  3. Space: Flower spacing is what enables each flower to be visually appreciated.
  4. Texture: This refers to the coarseness or fineness of arrangement components. A textural theme can be dominant (all fine or bold flowers and foliage) or mixed/balanced.
  5. Flower size: Central, dominating flowers are the biggest and boldest while smaller flowers and foliage accentuate the showpiece blooms like ladies in waiting.
  6. Color (scent can also be considered): For easy arranging, choose flowers with complementary contrasting colors, a beautiful bright or pastel hodgepodge, or flowers of all one type or color.

Or you can throw away the rules. The carefree gardener need not apply themselves to any rules and still create something beautiful. Wild and free arrangements have their own charm. This approach is often a default for kids unless you have a disciplined child wanting to design within set parameters.

Some Tiny Flowers

There are many mini flowers that are probably already in your garden! Here are some good ones.

All good cut flowers last longer in the vase. Choose small specimens with good longevity. Sometimes these can be smaller side blooms on plants with larger blooms (like purple coneflower, black-eyed-Susan, and Joe-pye-weed) white others are tiny from the getgo. All need to be placed in water just after cutting.

Alyssum (Lobularia maritima): These tiny, sweet-smelling blooms are white, pink, or purple.

Spike Celosia (Celosia spicata): These form papery spikes that last a long time. Choose small side blooms.

Gomphrena (Gomphrena globosa): The tiny papery globes come in pretty shades of red, pink, purple, and white.

Small Pinks (Dianthus spp.): The long-stemmed blooms may be white, pink, lavender, red, purple, and burgundy and look like little pincushion flowers.

French and Signet Marigolds (Tagetes patula and Tagetes tenuifolia): Everyone knows and loves these yellow, gold, and/or orange flowers.

Violas and violets (Viola spp.): These flat-faced, fragrant flowers prefer cool weather. Violets are just spring bloomers.

Jeana Tall Phlox (Phlox paniculata ‘Jeana’): This tall phlox has clusters of teeny weeny lavender-pink flowers.

Brown-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba): This airy perennial becomes covered with lots of tiny black-eyed golden blooms in late summer.

Miniature Roses (Rosa spp.): Everyone loves roses and miniature rose flowers are exquisite.

Small Salvias (I like Salvia farinacea and Salvia greggii): Almost all salvias–blue, pink, red, or white–work well.

Creeping Zinnia (Sanvitalia procumbens): The flowers of this creeping annual look like the tiniest black-eyed-Susans. So cute!

Small-flowered Zinnias (Zinna Profusion series and Zinnia angustifolia): Small-flowered zinnias come in many bright shades and last long in the vase.

Complement any of these blooms with attractive foliage from any appealing garden plant. (Click here for a list of additional fast-growing cut flowers for fall.)

All of these flowers grow best in garden beds amendment with Black Gold Garden Compost Blend. The annuals thrive in pots of Black Gold All Purpose Potting Mix.

Designs

This suite of tiny arrangements shows the diversity of pretty bouquets you can bring together in the garden.

Each vase of flowers should embody the maker. Go for the style or design scheme that pleases you the most. Here are a few that I created with my girls.

A collection of different miniature arrangements—coordinated or every which way—can make quite a statement. Line them up along a window ledge or as a collective on a shelf or table.

My girls love to create their own intermittently to decorate the dinner table. This idea could also work at a dinner party. A personalized mini floral creation at each table setting would also look impressive.

The tiniest of the tiny arrangements are the cutest!

Cool Grasses for Container Garden Simplicity

hair grass2
Dynamic pots of Mexican hair grass had a simple yet striking accent to this patio garden.

“In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.”  Longfellow penned this well over a century ago, yet it’s more relevant than ever today.  If the stark white room with its Spartan decor and tactile organic accents seems like heaven to you, then perhaps its time to take it all outside.  Blend the new look of minimal organic contemporary or country with just the right plants to create the ultimate experience – not of color – but of texture.  Eschew big and bold for fine-textured foliage that is not only carefree but incredibly dramatic.  Explore the animated character of the grasses and reeds that come alive in a breeze and speak in the language of spiky shadow when lighted after dark. Continue reading “Cool Grasses for Container Garden Simplicity”