Perfect blends

Perfect blends

Carol Klein shows how to combine plants so you can get her romantic cottage style in your garden

 

Gardening is all about relationships – between the garden and its surroundings, between hard and soft landscaping, and between plant and plant. Putting plants together writes garden sentences, and these sentences tell stories. Plants are fascinating as individuals but, in our gardens, they live their lives in society.
In nature, too, they exist alongside other plants, their partnerships the result of complex evolution, decreed by conditions of climate, soil and situation – Mother Earth makes all the decisions. In our gardens, we get to choose. Deciding which plants to put together is personal.

Effective combinations are restricted only by the simple rule that the plants we put together enjoy similar conditions and that they can live in each other’s company. Whatever the size of our gardens, the plants in our beds or borders are never in splendid isolation.
In the garden here at Glebe Cottage, such success is often the result of nature’s hand, but sometimes a planned combination works out. Putting plants together is one of the most creatively satisfying aspects of gardening but one that causes most consternation. It should be approached with a sense of adventure and a willingness to experiment. There are no hard and fast rules – only a few considerations to bear in mind.
One of the first things gardeners think about when combining plants is colour.
And it’s not just about whether the plant is blue or yellow: think about what form the colour takes – are there big blobs of colour, as in a peony? Or the small spots of colour we see w it h a herbaceous potentilla or a geum. A grass such as Imperata cylindrica ‘Rubra’ may have the same colour as an astrantia, yet it creates a totally different pattern and texture.
Colour   and the pattern it creates – need to be thought of together. Do we want to use colour to create harmony or to create something startling? Even when that decision is made, there are degrees in its implementation. The red f lowers of Dahlia ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ side by side with vivid f lowers of red and orange would make a hot, dramatic statement, but put the same dahlia next to a tall euphorbia, with heads of acid green, and the effect would be psychedelic.

Get to know your plants

The most important factor is the fourth dimension – time. Creating gardens or plant combinations is different to writing a poem or painting a picture. Our images are ever-changing. When we are planning
who to plant next to whom, we’re not creating a photographic image, a moment in time, but a living, growing reality that will change throughout each week, month and season. Getting to know our

Get the Glebe look with Carol’s combos

1 Dahlia and canna
a simple contrast of colour and form makes a dramatic statement.
Dahlia ‘David Howard’, with its almost spherical, apricot flowers, complements the bold, paddle shaped leaves of the Canna ‘Wyoming’. Later, it too will produce similarly coloured flowers, but of a totally different form. The combo’s excitement is further accentuated by the lime-green blades of Bowles’s golden grass. Dahlia ‘David Howard’ Flowers Jul-Oct Height x Spread 75cm x 75cm Canna ‘Wyoming’
F Jun-Sep H x S 1.6m x 90cm

2 Mullein and anchusa

Blue and yellow make a classic combination. The yellow mullein (verbascum) is a short-lived perennial, as is the accompanying anchusa. Of a similar height but contrasting formation the two mingle perfectly – the mullein’s ‘bee’ centre and the anchusa stems both being maroon.

Verbascum ‘Cotswold Queen’

F Jul-Aug H x S 1.2m x 30cm

Anchusa ‘Loddon Royalist’

 F Jun-Jul H x S 1m x 60cm

3 Smoke bush, montbretia and fennel

This combo looks good over several months as the plants develop. Early in the season, as the leaves of the smoke bush (cotinus) emerge, the bronze fennel makes low frothy tuffets and the montbretia (crocosmia) leaves create clumps plants, their main seasons of interest and the phases of their lives puts us in the best position to know how to combine them. No label will ever enable you to fully get to know a plant’s personality – you may get information about height and spread, a symbol denoting sun/shade and even an estimate of flowering period, but until you observe the plant intimately by growing it you cannot know it, nor appreciate its potential in combination with other plants.

Our plants will always have a relationship with each other. Rather than it being a competition with each plant saying, “Look at me, look at me!”, we want to create a picture where every element enhances the next. As well as being a cerebral process it is a physical one. It is a question of trying plants side by side to see if they work. A plant may already be beautiful but its neighbours can make it shine. Plants with plain large leaves, such as host as and brunneras, may make  a pleasant combination, but adding a filigree fern would emphasise the substance of the hosta, while the hosta would make the fern look even lacier. Linear leaves against clumps of round leaves create a different rhythm. A variety of shapes can also help disguise other plants’ weaknesses. Use shorter, dense clumping plants like cranesbills and  Lamium  orvala to mask the
knobbly knees of selenium's and asters.

Size is important, so too is scale. Even in a well-thought out scheme, when colour has been carefully considered, where heights and volumes are well-balanced, if the flowers and leaves are the same size, the result can be monotonous. As well as thinking about contrast in form, texture, colour and size, it is vital to put like-minded plants together. When plants are growing cheek by jowl, it is important not to include of translucent, vernal green. Later as the cotinus leaves redden, the fennel will produce seedheads.

Right now, the branching stems of fennel with their plateaux of yellow flowers benefit from the bronze cotinus as a backdrop.

Crocosmia
F Aug-Sep H x S 70cm x 1m

Cotinus
F Jul-Aug H x S 6m x 5m

Foeniculum ‘Purpureum’
F Jul-Aug H x S 1.8m x 45cm

4 Astilbe, aster and monkshood

In the shade of the dark-leaved bird cherry, Prunus padus ‘Colorata’, blue and white flowers exhibit a luminous quality. The frothy white fronds of Astilbe ‘Professor van der Wielen’ keep company with aster (Symphyotrichum ‘Little Carlow’) and spires of self-sown white monk’s hood (Aconitum ‘Ivorine’) add extra interest.
Astilbe ‘Professor van der Wielen’
F Jul-Aug H x S 90cm x 75cm
Symphyotrichum ‘Little Carlow’
F Aug-Oct H x S 90cm x 45cm

Aconitum ‘Ivorine’
F May-Jul H x S 80cm x 40cm

5 Astrantia, geranium and bears breeches

Astrantia, a soft grey Geranium pratense seedling and an invading bear's breech (acanthus), reflect each other’s colours while displaying different forms. Later, a white phlox will dominate the foreground; while later still, as autumn approaches, a pale pink aster will steal the scene. Astrantia ‘Glebe Cottage Crimson’
F Jun-Aug H x S 60cm x 30cm
Geranium pratense
F May-Jun H x S 90cm x 60cm
Acanthus spinosus
F Jun-Aug H x S 1.5m x 1m

6 Daylily and bronze fennel

A textural contrast between the solid blocks of colour created by the daylily and the bronze fennel’s fine net make a simple but effective combination. This daylily has rust coloured flowers lit with orange.

Later we’ll combine with Calendula ‘Indian Prince’; the same orange/ rust colour mix, but in reverse. Hemerocallis ‘Stafford’ F Jul H x S 80cm x 40cm
Foeniculum ‘Purpureum’
F Jul-Aug H x S 1.8m x 45cm

bullies that will rapidly expand beyond an allotted space and swamp their neighbours. Finally, to give your plant combinations added impact, narrow down your plant palette. Use more plants but fewer varieties.

Some of the most effective combinations feature as few as three plants, but are more effective because of their simplicity. Often the first step is choosing a main plant that you know grows well in your garden and performs for a long time, and then planning combinations around it (we have stalwarts here that form the basis of many a plant association). These key plants will vary according to the type of soil you have, whether your garden is sunny or shady, dry or damp. A few of our favourites in our heavy, fertile soil are astrantias – particularly Astrantia ‘Roma’, Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’, the Japanese grass Hakonechloa macra and Rudbeckia fulgida deamii. They are all true stalwarts but, more to the point, excellent neighbours.
Exploit the qualities that plants naturally possess. Above all, put plants together who will all get on well and love the place they are growing. Have fun putting them together! One of the most joyous aspects of gardening is seeing a plant association that works. Successes such as these will transform your garden.

7 Daylily and Bowles’s golden sedge

 Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus, the earliest of the daylilies to flower here at Glebe, takes up the yellow theme in our brick garden.
Geranium pratense has flowered and soon asters, rudbeckia and helenium will add their weight.

For the moment, green and yellow rule.
Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus
F Jun-Jul H x S 1m x 40cm
Carex elata ‘Aurea’
F Jun-Jul H x S 70cm x 45cm

8 Fleabane and thrift

It’s not easy planning combinations on the end of a dry stone wall but Mexican fleabane (erigeron) seeds itself into every crack surrounding the sea thrift (armeria).

The fact that its flowers change subtly from white to pink ads interest. The combination of soft ephemeral flowers and solid grey stone is as important as those of the plants.
Erigeron karvinskianus
F Jun-Oct H x S 30cm x 50cm
Armeria maritima
F May-Aug H x S 50cm x 50cm

9 Lady’s mantle, molinia and sea holly

This is a combination that recurs in several beds in our brick garden.
The frothy foreground provided by the tiny green stars of lady’s mantle (alchemilla) while the fine stems of the molinia grass make a curtain in the background, setting the stage for sea holly (eryngium).
Alchemilla mollis
F Jun-Sep H x S 60cm x 75cm.
Molinia caerulea
‘Edith Dudszus’
F Aug-Oct H x S 75cm x 60cm.
Eryngium x zabelii
F Aug-Oct H x S 80cm x 40cm.

Source: gardenersworld