Like matching typefaces, layering clothes or accessorizing a room, the trick to a successful garden design is layering textures. As soon as you have mastered the craft of caring for plants, you are able to work toward a cohesive and aesthetically intriguing backyard design. Color, pruning, contour, size and the texture of your plants all contribute to a garden’s style. Discover how to play around with various textures to make a lush outdoor space with interest and thickness.
Amy Renea
What Exactly Does Texture Look Like?
If feel is layered correctly, it makes you want to run your hands on the tapestry to feel the different layers. Don’t you wish to reach out and touch that lovely bed of blues and purples?
Glenna Partridge Garden Design
The combo of hostas, ferns and grasses in this photo provides layers of feel which create visual interest, even though there are no blossoms.
Amy Renea
Blend Plants
Start out using a single wide-leaf plant and one small-leaf plant and find out how they look together. Spend an hour or so in your local nursery combining a variety of plants and determine what looks complementary.
The big, bold and shiny leaves of hostas create them an ideal candidate for novices. They blend well with many other plants but look compelling alongside smaller-leaf plants with sharp tips.
Amy Renea
Combining a plant with flowering spikes with another plant with foliage spikes creates an intriguing play on form and texture. When both plants are out of blossom, the textures are divergent. But when they are both in blossom, the identical forms are differentiated by the vibrant purple colors.
This is exactly what makes gardening such an extreme form of design. It is ever changing — plants morph from one season to another, and it’s a constant battle to simply keep them alive. Can you imagine if your area rugs needed a certain amount of water and food to keep up appearances?
Prune for Texture
cozy gardens rely upon structure to provide intriguing design, but feel is important also. Notice the way the smooth, shorn hedges contrast with the flowering bushes and trees. Imagine the difference between both if you were to run your hand over them. An individual would feel light and free, the other solid and straight.
Terra Ferma Landscapes
In a more modern setting, shorn evergreens and flowering trees attain the same effect.
Land Architects, Inc..
Stick With A Single Undertone
When combining textures, it is ideal to begin with plants which have the very same undertones. Combining blue and yellow undertones is tricky business, so stick with one or the other. This combination offers textural differences using a yellow undertone.
Creative Garden Spaces
If you would like to go for blues, brunnera (centre), blue hostas and blue fescue are great choices.
Amy Renea
It is also possible to go with a true green palette. This plant pairing is the same exact shade of green. From bloom, the only contrast between the two is the feel. The large leaves cascade down like a waterfall, contrasting with all the vertical ferny foliage in the background. Try planting geranium and chamomile to get this appearance at home.
Amy Renea
Here is just another example of combining textures with no colour contrast. Notice the way the evergreen seems to almost blanket the sedum using its branches, making a visually intriguing effect.
Glenna Partridge Garden Design
This article just barely cracks the surface of combining textures in the backyard. Experimenting is the best adventure for beginning gardeners, so get out there and try your hand at design with frilly foliage, slick leaves and other unexpected combinations.
More:
Texture in Landscape Design
Unsung Garden Hero: Fantastic Foliage