At Whyte Gardens, plant selection for the garden we design for you, starts with understanding how you’ll live in and use your garden – not just what looks good.
We have a far more detailed process than simply choosing things that look pretty, have nice flowers or ‘fit with the garden style’.
It all starts when we first meet you.
The seeds planted at the very beginning
The process that leads to your final plant selection actually begins when we first meet you.
From the beginning of your initial consultation with our landscape designer or landscape architect, they are already subconsciously assessing the type of plants they feel you might prefer.
Now in the consultation itself, we will most likely ask you directly what type of plants you were considering.
Sometimes, of course, the plants almost choose themselves. For example if you had already indicated you wanted an Australian native garden, then we wouldn’t be recommending any exotic plants to you.
Or if you indicated you really wanted a succulent garden, then again, we would stick to that variety of plant.
But apart from all those obvious choices, whoever is going to design your garden will be assessing many things that you talk about in your consultation. Such as whether or not you say you love spending time in the garden, are retired, or, conversely, you say you are incredibly busy and want a minimal maintenance garden.
Your designer will be taking mental not of how you plan to use your garden, whether you have pets, what your family plans are, how many kids you have, etc, etc
All of these things will feed into the plants we will suggest for you in your final garden design.
Minimal time, minimal maintenance, minimal plants
If you do tell us, right from the start, that you want a minimal maintenance garden then whatever plants we do recommend for you will take this factor into account.
So we are not going to suggest plants that will take constant fussing, trimming and care. We are likely to recommend plants that require minimal care, are hardy and perhaps only need a little trimming once a year.
If you also tell us that you are very busy and don’t have time for ‘gardening’ we might even go harder and recommend plants that you can basically ignore and they’ll look after themselves.
Also if you go away a lot for example, we are not going to recommend plants that need constant watering.
Essentially there is a lot of thought that goes into choosing the plants that we recommend to you.
If you love colour, we’ll give you colour
Some people really go wild with gardens. They love busy cottage gardens or other types of gardens that are just full of flowering plants that add colour and brightness to their garden.
If this is you and you really want to go to town on flowering plants then we can accommodate you. We’ll discuss your preferences in more detail to get a sense of what style of garden you really like so we can recommend a range of flowering plants that will keep you happy.
Also if you’re the kind of person who loves to take flowers from your garden and display them in your home, then we need to consider plants with flowers that cut well, have good stems and will last in a vase.
If you love the idea of having a garden that is full of colour all year round, then we can recommend a range of plants that flower at different times during the year to ensure you always have something bright and colourful to look at.
We can also complement this with plants that have colour in their leaves too, so you don’t have to rely solely on flowers to keep your garden looking vibrant and alive..
Something special in your garden
When it comes to plants, if you are doing a garden renovation for example or a knockdown rebuild, there might be a particular plant that has some sort of special meaning to you.
You planted it when your first child was born.
It was a gift from someone.
It came with the house.
Whatever the story behind that plant or tree, if it’s important to you, then your designer will make sure that it is does feature in your new garden. They will take extra care to ensure that in some way your garden is designed around it.
Also, with a garden renovation or knockdown rebuild, if you have a particularly significant or large tree in your garden then the council might insist that you keep it, under their local bylaws.
In this case again, your landscape designer or landscape architect will do everything they can to make sure that this particular tree integrates well in your new garden design.
Practical plants put to good use
Apart from the aesthetic nature of plants, which is very important, plants can also play very practical roles.
Screening for example is one common use of plants.
To protect your privacy from nosy neighbours or to screen off and soften the front of your house is a very common use of plants.
In this case we are therefore going to consider whether or not you need instant privacy. If you do, we will most likely recommend that we plant something that is already quite well grown so that you don’t have to wait 2 years to get the screening you want.
Alternatively if you don’t need the privacy right away, we can plant less well developed plant sizes and let them grow into their role.
Plants can also perform other functions. Keep bugs away from your veggie garden or perform other tasks.
But there is also a selection of plants that we can’t plant in certain locations. For example near your pool fence we have to be very careful with what plants we recommend to ensure that they don’t allow a child to climb over the fence and into your pool.
Additionally, if you tell us in your initial briefing that your children or pets have certain allergies for example, we will be mindful of this in our plant selection. We even ensure we don’t recommend plants that have potential to be harmful to certain pets like cats or dogs.
Why we take a long term view of plants for your garden
The garden you see on the day we finish creating it for you, is not going to be the garden you see in 1 year, 2 years or 5 years time. So this is another factor that comes into plant selection.
How our recommended plants will grow over time comes into our planning too.
So your designer is going to think in terms of layers of plants. Because a garden design should not only be something you think about from an above ground view, looking down on it as a plan.
It’s a 3-dimensional thing. So you might want to see some ground cover in the foreground, then some middle-sized plants and then finally at the back some taller plants. Clearly you wouldn’t do it the other way around as you would never even see the ground cover.
What type of layers, which plants to plant, how it is all going to come together is part of what your designer takes into account when designing your garden. You will not see this effect straight away as the plants will need time to grow.
But your designer will have a full vision in their mind of what it will all look like eventually.
Getting the placement right for your plants
Plant placement is also as important as plant selection in a garden.
You have to consider whether you have placed the plant in a location where it will get the correct amount of sunlight, water, shade or whatever it actually needs.
All plants are different and require different amounts of sunlight and water. Some thrive in hot sun, others whither and die. Some love lots of water, others get drowned by it.
Also the type of soil that a plant goes into and how well or poorly it drains is another critical factor. Some plants thrive in sandy soil, others need really rich soil to survive.
Even how a plant is planted can affect it’s life and how well it grows. We know of more than one case where a plant had been in the ground in someone’s garden for more than 7 years, but had never grown taller. On close inspection we discovered it was root bound and had not been planted properly to allow the roots to spread.
So we are always mindful of ensuring the plants we plant in your garden, will do well in the long term.
It’s all a consultation, not a fixed outcome
When we say we are going to make recommendations for the type of plants in your garden, like everything, it is open to discussion.
The garden concept design we present to you, will have some initial recommendations on which plants to plant. But that will be open to discussion with you and is most likely to change as we get further into the planning stages.
Like everything we do, we never try to force our designs on you. It’s a very collaborative process where we take in what you tell us in the initial meeting, then listen again to your feedback on the garden design itself.
The plants we choose together will have such an influence on the garden that becomes yours. We want to get it right.
So that every time you are out in your garden, the choice of plants makes you feel good. And you have the feeling inside that every just feels right.
At Whyte Gardens one of our landscape designers is a horticultural designer too so her knowledge of plants runs deep. She is always advising the other designer and landscape architect on plant selection for the gardens they are designing.
If you’d like to have a free consultation with her to discuss your ideas of plants for your new gardens, please feel free to contact us.
