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Slow down. Take the time to know your garden. Take the time to track the sun. Live with it long enough to know where you naturally cut across the lawn to get the tools out - where tracks from family activity wear the grass down to nothing. These are the basis for your paths. Trying to make paths in places where they are not necessary and are only there to look at is futile - you won't use them, you'll short-cut across the yard and end up with a muddy mess. Paths are attractive, and a meandering path is fantastic in the garden, but they were always meant to be practical things first.
If you are going to be your own garden designer, take the time to do it right. You'll make some mistakes, but that is part of the fun, and vital to learning.
Get some design books (the library is full of them) and learn to make a plan. It doesn't have to be fancy if it is just for you. The basics of where the house is located on the property and where trees and driveways are is all you need to start with.
Use tracing paper and make overlays of various bed and path lines until you get something that feels right. Be sure to make your beds large enough. Paths too.
And remember, if you're unsure about your plan, many garden designers (myself included) would be glad to go over the plan with you at your house to look for any major mistakes and make suggestions. This will only cost an hour or two of design time and can make all the difference.
Noting Weed Growth
Yes, it's alchemy. I admit it. Witchcraft of the highest order.
I can look at a garden's weeds and tell you not only about the soil, but also about the gardeners themselves.
I could be a side show attraction.
It makes clients nervous - I get to the garden and stare at the weeds. It is not a personal judgement, I swear. If I were making notes of gardeners and their laziness, I'd have to start in my own garden, and I have no intention of doing that, I assure you.
This is purely scientific. Different weeds grow successfully in different types of soil. For instance, if I see wild rushes growing out of the ground, I know without bending down that it is wet at least part of the year, if not submerged in the winter. This is important information, as I try not to go against the nature of the land.
A perfect example:
I worked in a very famous garden (locally) for a short time a few years ago. I was doing regular, wonderful gardening work, all the while wondering who was doing the designing - they needed help. The gardening crew was busy digging more and more drainage for the "orchard" - a sopping wet piece of land that had a natural spring on it. Someone had decided that it would be a good place for fruit trees and daffodils. I'm sure the picture they had in their mind was not the one I had in front of me - the reality of several struggling fruit trees, in terrible state, with rotten daffodil bulbs sunken in the ground all around them. The springs were so bad that the workers were losing their boots in the mud and the fruit trees were slowly sinking.
What a wonderful garden they could have had if they had worked with the natural spring instead of against it!
So, this is my specialty. Problem solving, matching design with location. Always seeking out the easiest way to achieve beauty with what is there now.
And staring at weeds is the best way I know to get a quick survey of what may lie below.
I will admit to a little judgement as well. It is only sensible to realize that if I'm asked to design a garden for someone that has clearly not so much as pulled a weed in 3 months, I'm going to start off with designs on the "easy to take care of, low maintenance " bent.
As you must work with the natural inclination of the land, so you must also work with the natural inclination of the gardener.
Common Pitfalls:
For homeowners that cannot enlist the help of a professional, here is a short list of common pitfalls to avoid.
#1 - Don't buy plants too soon.
Starting any new garden is difficult work - clearing ground, moving existing plants, (assuming there are any). It's easy to get caught up instead in the fun stuff and buy new perennials, shrubs and even trees without a clear thought as to where they will go or what they will look like in several years time.
There's nothing essentially wrong with this, but it is important to recognize that it is impulse buying at it's worst, and there is a right and wrong way to "impulse buy".
#2 - Make sure that you don't buy just one of any plant.
Compulsively buying plants you love and just buying one of them, plunking it in the ground somewhere it will 'look nice' and calling it good is bad.
It leads to one of the worst looks a garden can have - a jumbled mess with no form, no consistency, no marriage of leaves, colors - in short, a jumbled mess. No one plant can look good because so many are there.
Solution: Obviously the perfect solution would be to buy only plants you love enough to find home for at least 3 of. But this is not always possible, and if your compulsion is very strong, you'll end up in an even worse mess with 3 of every plant in the nursery and an empty pocketbook.
Instead, for those plants you simply MUST have, try to have a separate 'collectors area', use plant lables (attractive ones), and surround it with a bit of fence to separate it from the more civilized and organized areas of the garden.
This way, you can watch them grow, think about where they will grow best, and if you still love a certain plant a year or two later, it will be big enough to divide and you'll have 3.
This strategy also works wonders on the partner that just doesn't understand and begins to despair at your seeming lack of control - you can tell them it's, "for the collection garden, dear!"
#3 - It's important for the plants in your garden to look as if they get along with each other.
As if, had it been their choice, those tulips (or what-have-you) would have planted themselves right in that spot. This look is impossible if you plant in little circles with the hope of making 3 small plants look like one big clump.
Soon, you have several clumps of plants all standing next to each other as awkwardly as bored guests at a bad cocktail party.
Solution: Plant in drifts. Think of these drifts of planting as thin clouds, Cirrus clouds drifting in and out of the border. Alternatively, if you're not that far-out of a thinker, an easy shape to keep in mind is a comma. Circular, but with a 'tail' that comes out gracefully and easily insinuating itself not just next to, but actually a little within it's neighbor. It's a little naughty, I know - a little sexy, but remember, this is gardening - it's all about sex anyway.
#4 - Watch out for the ultimate height of shrubs
New gardeners (and old ones too) often underestimate how big something will grow and plant it in the worst spots.
(Foundation plantings under windows are a classic example.)
Solution: Add a couple of feet to the 'average height' of the plant you're buying - especially shrubs. I garden in the Pacific Northwest, and if you're in this neck of the woods, add a few more. Most everything grows really well here, in leaf if not always in flower, and a shrub double the size it "should be" is not uncommon here.
Be especially careful under windows. Choose low growing shrubs such as Viburnum Davidii and add ornamental grasses and Red twig Dogwood as accents under and around them.
#5 - Bee aware - don't plant perennials that the bees swarm on right next to the front door or in childrens play areas.
I know lots of people think this is fun - to watch the bees - but even if it does not bother you, you may have guests that are highly allergic to bees and would greatly appreciate a buffer between the garden and the front door.
Asters are a perfect example - bloom time for them is early Fall, late Summer, just when the bees are starting to get more agitated. They absolutely swarm the plants, which is a beautiful sight... from far enough away.
#6 - Planting for flower color only and not taking foliage (leaf structure, tecture, form and color) into the scheme.
The eye needs a chance to rest. Many beautiful gardens are created without hardly a flower at all, letting the leaf forms take center stage. These green spaces (they may be purple - leaves come in many colors) are restful, serene spots.
I wouldn't suggest everyone give up flowers (banish the thought!) but flower after flower gets to be tiring and doesn't do justice to the flowers themselves.
For shady areas, Hostas can be very soothing and exotic looking while coming in an amazing and ever-changing variety of leaf colors and shapes.
In full sun, I've taken to planting Helichrysum Petiolare (licorice plant) right in the border. It is an annual for us, and is usually used in container plantings. I like 'limelight' in the garden though - a shock of lime green reaching out in all directions. I love it. The more common grey variety goes with just about anything and is soothing. Neither of them flower here in the Pacific Northwest, they are grown just for their exquisite leaves.
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