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Plant Combinations that Inspire

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Bearded iris with blue fescue

Outside my window a Townsend warbler feasts on suet. It?s a rainy day and my obsession with low water use plants is momentarily taking a break. Each day the soft colors of my fall garden are becoming brighter and more vivid. Backlit leaves take on a whole new look. There are so many ways of combining plants in the garden. I?m taking notes so I remember my favorites to include in my own garden and future designs. Fall is a good time for planting or planning.

Many of my grasses and plants are deciduous and are in the process of going dormant. Even when I mix in broadleaf evergreen plants these groupings lose their impact this time of year. I have only been gardening at this house for a little over a year so the new plants are still young. I?ve had to replant many shrubs and perennials as I was a little cavalier with my gopher basket use. But I persevere as I love color in the garden, especially foliage color.

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Festival grass with leucadendron

It?s the combinations that look great year-round that hold a garden together. I?ve got two leucadendron that are real troupers when it comes to drought, mucho summer sun, zero winter sun, sandy soil and deer browsing.

The ?Safari Sunset? shows off those vivid burgundy bracts nearly year round with the best show starting during the summer and extending through the next spring. Leucadendron require good drainage and prefer acidic conditions. It?s easy to love this plant to death with too much water. I mulch mine heavily with bark chips. I?m thinking of adding the South African, long-blooming bulbine ?Hallmark Orange? at its feet. The combination of the two guarantee color year round.

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Blue and yellow plant combination Cream Delight phormium, Blue fescue grass, semperviven succulent

Blue and yellow are another combination that always look good together. You can pick from yellow and gold foliage plants such as phormium ?Yellow Wave?, abelia ?Kaleidoscope?, coleonema ?Sunset Gold? or sedum ?GoldMoss? and pair it with a dwarf blue spruce, blue fescue or blue oat grass, hens and chickens, a blue euphorbia such as ?Glacier Blue? or ?Blue Haze? or the blue-gray succulent senecio mandraliscae.

In these days of converting lawns to low water use landscapes, choosing the right plants is even more important. Use to be a row of foundation shrubs between the lawn and the front windows were the norm. This was not a very inspiring look at best. Think of the possibilities to create a whole new look for your front or back yard.

I like all the colors so it?s hard to whittle down a plant palette to just a few for the whole garden. Breaking up your areas into different ?garden? rooms allows you to pair colors like silver, purple and black in one section using a bronze phormium, a burgundy loropetalum and silver thyme.

In another section of the garden that can be seen from a window might you might want to attract hummingbirds.

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Red / Gold plant combination Red phormium, Abelia ‘Kaleidescope, rosemary, phytostegia

Blooming late in the season the super tough Pineapple sage with eye-popping red flowers combines well with the dark green of an upright rosemary and an Amazing Red phormium for an architectural dramatic touch.

In a garden that inspires you the plants should be ones that you love looking at and taking care of. Some of us like the look of dark green plants while others like grasses that move in the wind. Others are not fans of succulents. Whether you grow plants to feed the birds and attract wildlife or want a little bit of everything there?s a combination of plants that?s perfect for you and your garden.

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What Landscape Designers Grow in their own Gardens

alstroemeria_Inca-Ice.1600It probably won?t come as a big surprise to you that I have a lot of friends that are also landscape designers. We get together to talk plants, garden design challenges and plant problems while enjoying good food along with a little wine thrown in for good measure. Recently I had the opportunity to visit one of these friends and although I was only there briefly to pick up something I couldn?t help but ask about several of the beautiful plantain her own garden. Some of her favorites include those with interesting foliage and texture and that flower over a long season. Maybe some of these plant ideas will work in your own garden.

Being winter and all I was immediately drawn to the hundreds of soft apricot and creamy yellow flowers covering a 3 foot wide Peruvian Lily. This selection of alstroemeria, called Inca Ice, is much shorter and compact that the taller ones that can be somewhat floppy in the garden. Alstroemeria were named by Carl Linnaeus, often called the Father of Taxonomy, for his friend and student Klaus von Alstroemer. Native to South America, the summer growing types come from eastern Brazil while the winter growing plants are from central Chile.

Peruvian Lily spread slowly outward from rhizomes and grow in full to part sun. They are hardy to 15-20 degrees and can tolerate dry conditions although they look best with irrigation. The Inca series grows 2-3 ft tall and can be covered with flowers from spring to late fall or winter if the weather is mild. The flower stems are long enough for cutting. This variety also comes in light orchid, pale yellow and white with red and green markings. What?s not to love about this plant?

Tucked next to the blooming Inca Ice Peruvian Lily, a clump of bright, Festival_grass-leucodendron.1600burgundy red Festival grass complemented the soft yellow of a Leucodendron discolor and a variegated Flamingo Glow Beschorneria. I was not familiar with this variegated agave relative with its soft-tipped chartreuse striped leaves. I found out this beautiful plant is drought tolerant, hardy to 15 degrees and will bloom with 5 foot pink stalks with reddish pink bracts.

Other plants that boast more foliage color than flowers brought this winter garden to life. Several varieties of helleborus just starting to show pink, white and rose color were surrounded by the brilliant chartreuse-yellow foliage of sedum Angelina ground cover. A variegated Japanese Lily-of-the-Valley shrub grew nearby getting ready to bloom soon.

Beautiful bright pink, cream and green variegated Jester Leucodendron bordered the driveway. I?ve seen this plant also called Safari Sunshine in nurseries. With its smaller size of 4-5 feet this evergreen shrub has showy, rich red bracts that sit atop the branches now in late winter and lasting into spring. Drought tolerant like Safari Sunset and deer resistant, too, leaucodendron are hardier than other protea.

Every interesting garden has good bones. It has focal points, texture, repetition and unity among other elements. My friends garden is no exception. A lovely caramel colored New Zealand Wind Grass dominated another area allowing my eye to rest for a while. I wish they would quit renaming this plant that used to be stipa arundinacea but is now anemanthele lessoniana. The name doesn?t exactly roll off the tongue but the effect is beautiful in the garden. I?ve always called it Pheasant Tail grass but I could find no reference as to why this common name is used. Life used to be simple before DNA sequencing!

So if you?re in the mood to add a couple of interesting plants to your garden, take a tip from what a landscape designer grows in her own garden.

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The Mountain Gardener’s Favorite Plant Combinations

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combination_loropetalum-pieris-dianellaI love my smart phone. I can?t imagine a day without it. A friend of mine told me that I would discover uses that I could only have imagined when I first got it. One of the simple things I use it for is taking pictures. Since I always have it in my back pocket I can whip it out in gardens, nurseries, in the wild or in any landscape that catches my attention.

It wasn?t until I started photographing gardens that I realized the importance of combining plants. So now when I design a grouping of plants that look good together I?m thinking of strong foliage plants, colorful flower spikes alongside soft mounds of foliage and delicate flowers alongside bolder blooms.

With the first day of fall next week I?m thinking of ways that will have any garden bursting with interest for the next few months. These are strategies for combining plants that are adaptable to all types of garden conditions whether you live in the sun or the shade and will also look good in other seasons of the year.

A vignette is a small group of plants that make a pleasing scene because of theirplant_combo2-phormium_CreamDelight-blueFescue-sempervivum complementary and contrasting features. I have several lists of good plant combinations that I regularly refer to when designing a garden. I usually start with a strong foliage plant then add other plants that have interesting texture, form or color.

When you look at a garden that you admire it?s usually the dramatic form of one of the plants that draws you in. When you use a plant with a bold, architectural form it makes a statement. The spiky foliage of Cream Delight phormium alongside a Burgundy loropetalum would make a good combination. Or how about creating a vignette of Festival Burgundy cordyline with Annabelle hydrangea and Cream de Mint pittosporum?

During the next few months plants begin to show soft, fall colors. Combine the fading foliage of these plants with plants that complement each other. The reddish fall color or Oakleaf hydrangea along with the pinkish-tan color of their fading flowers looks wonderful when combined with Japanese Forest Grass as it turns pink before winter. Another complementary fall combination is Royal Purple Smoke Tree surrounded by a bed of Autumn Joy sedum.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAStrong colors sometimes contrast instead of blend when plants change colors in the fall. I like to tone down a combination with silver foliage. An example of this would be a plant grouping of Evening Glow phormium, sedum Autumn Joy and Glacier Blue or Tasmanian Tiger euphorbia.

Another way to create a great plant combination is by blending textures. Coral Bark Japanese maple and Plum Passion nandina work well together. Cistus Sunset with Spanish lavender and rosemary is another good combination. I also like a large mass of Blue Oat Grass and Salmon salvia greggii planted together. Santa Barbara daisy goes well with Red Fountain Grass.

My list of potential plant combinations is pretty long as I?ve made notes over the years. Each garden has its own personality and growing conditions. A hot, dry garden might depend on a ground cover ceanothus along with lavender while a shadier garden might use natives like heuchera maxima, iris douglasiana, yerba buena and salvia spathacea. Whatever plants you choose, let them work together to make exciting vignettes in your garden.