A group of garden designers have gotten together on Twitter to form a garden design bloglink. They're celebrating regional diversity, which is kind of funny right now, when we're all experiencing the same deep freeze. But like good gardeners everywhere, the designers are focusing on the best their areas have to offer and the postings have been excellent.
I loved how Genevieve, at North Coast Gardening, dispels the usual excuses for not wanting to plant natives (no flowers, ugly flowers, messy flowers...) and makes the case for using native plants as a jumping off point in your garden design. Like choosing burgundy foliage plants to play off the new burgundy tinged stems of Arctostaphylos uva-ursi.
I thought Susan Cohen, at Miss Rumphius' Rules, did a great job combining regional charm with sustainable style. Susan came up with the idea for this bloglink while talking about designing in her region, the Skylands of New Jersey. Of her 5 Simple Rules, my favorite is "Super Size It". Make your foundation planting area large enough to accommodate the mature size of plants and shrubs, so you're not pruning them into contorted versions of themselves.
Pam Penick's Digging blog talks about her Zone 8b Austin, TX garden and the photos are a sight for a snow frosted gardener's sore eyes. Oh, to be able to grow those agave. She tackles the question, "How do you translate a regional look into a garden setting?" In addition to regional natives, Pam puts a lot of regionality into the hardscaping.
Rebecca Sweet, over at Gossip in the Garden, had an extremely interesting perspective about respecting both culture and climate. Rebecca designs for a lot of folks who've moved to California from other countries. These clients want plants that remind them of home and Rebecca often has to walk the fine line of satisfying the client's wish list while dealing with the practicality of a hot, dry climate. So Rebecca's come up with what she calls "California-Fusion" style and it's something we could tweak for our own areas. (Although, again, her photos are giving me zone envy. That's part of my garden in the photo.)
Each of these blog posts will lead you to all the rest. If you've begun thinking of what you want to plant next year and you don't want it to look like a big box special, they have great tips for how to view your garden through regional eyes.
Photo: © Marie Iannotti
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