Prim & Proper or Wild & Free

PRIM AND PROPER OR WILD AND FREE

WHAT’S YOUR GARDEN STYLE?

Every homeowner has the opportunity to invent their personal gardening style commensurate with their budget, taste, the space they have to work with and the nature of the site.

If you are a keen gardener, you will be in there getting your hands dirty. If not, you may be paying someone else to shape your garden landscape for you. Let’s generalise about two people with very different approaches to their garden.

One likes their plants and pathways to be structured and ordered. The other prefers plants tumbling all over each other with no apparent planning.

Note the word ‘apparent’, because this second garden may be every bit as planned as the first. Our first gardener in this story fits the ‘prim and proper’ category. The garden may be formal, laid out in a symmetrical or geometrical pattern. Everything is planned in straight lines. Trimmed hedges and edges, and topiary are typical features. Borders create a visual path to a feature or view. Rows of neatly clipped Buxus borders with some Robinia topiary and maybe a screening Camellia hedge are effective in following the European template for creating a formal style garden, but suitable Australian species can be substituted as an integral part of the design. Our second gardener leans more to the informal garden characterized by curves, non-symmetry and plants allowed to grow into their natural shapes. In truth, such a garden is harder to design than a formal one because they are ruled by irregularity. Here planning is disguised by planting, and the garden should look as though it has grown up naturally. There may be a riot of colour, soft edges and tall shrubs and taller trees to add to the vertical dimension.

Our second gardener may in fact throw caution to the wind and go completely wild.

Did you know that there was a movement in the last decade of the nineteenth century to establish gardens that were against all formalism and broke traditional rules of landscape styles? It led to the wild garden concept. Nature is imitated. Bulbs are scatter-planted in grass. Trees, shrubs, grasses, creepers and other plants convey a sense of bushland or forest flora.

Both of our gardeners will create something very special. On one hand it might be a well-maintained design with shaped hedges and a manicured lawn; on the other a joyful kaleidoscope of freeform planting.

Whether it is a formal, informal or completely wild style, the garden should have colour, texture, harmony and balance. Happy gardening! Enjoy!

IF YOU WANT YOUR GARDEN TO BE ‘NATURAL’ THROUGH TO ‘CHAOTIC’, CONSIDER THESE TIPS Create a visual imbalance and a more whimsical experience with bright flowering plants juxtaposed with plain coloured grasses for example. Forget garden edges. Create paths out of natural materials and allow them to lead you through natural spaces between the plants. Have taller plants and trees interspersed with bushes, grasses and groundcovers; deciduous with evergreens; and annuals among perennials to recreate a natural mix of plant species. Use curves, which are found in natural landscapes more so than straight lines. Plant native grasses en masse. Select plant varieties that will attract birds, insects and other native fauna. Randomly place weathered logs, stumps or oversized rocks around the garden instead of garden ornaments and statues. These also provide shelter from frogs and other small wildlife.