Shrub Bed and Garden Design

Hello, again. I hope you and your garden survived this weekend's rain in good shape. My Iceland Poppies took a slight beating but I am comforted by knowing that they are rooting in and by the fact that their peak of bloom won't be until late February. And my California Poppy seed and Lobelia seeds are germinating in their beds so things are looking up.

First things first. Feel free to contact me. Secondly, please start clipping these columns if you find them useful since I may refer to them in future issues. Make sure to date them so you can keep track. Thirdly, I must assume that you have all pruned your roses. Tom Farley's Tip of The Week is to debud your roses over the winter. Roses develop many buds after pruning. But not all buds are well placed. Buds become canes and branches, consequently, likely crossing and growth can be eliminated now by rubbing out any bud that may cause trouble later. Rose pruning seeks to thin and open the center of each plant in order for it to grow well. It does not do, therefore, to tolerate buds which will produce interior growth and fight against the pruning you just accomplished. Eliminate errant and inward facing buds with an easy swipe of the thumb. No pruning shears needed and you'll save lots of time later. Do this every week until the rose is completely leafed out. Let's proceed then to the main feature of this column.

It's time to start thinking about the shape of your garden – its physical shape, that is. You'll need to rough out or renovate some planting areas before spring. We'll discuss shrub bed design and bed preparation. But before we do, let's go over some garden planning basics. I practice a free wheeling, ad hoc, unplanned kind of gardening with the rental properties I've lived at. It is best, though, for a property owner with a large lot to follow a plan and not to freelance the garden's design bed by bed. A scale plan allows sidewalks, irrigation, fences, night lighting, drainage, large plantings and other structural elements to come together in a coordinated fashion, instead of being put in one piece at a time with no thought as to what will come next. Many homeowners take years to install a plan. They put in a little of what they can afford each year and the garden works out because they've followed a detailed blueprint in building it. A landscape plan is so important that I will have future columns on it. Let's get back, though, to what I wanted to discuss originally: individual shrub bed design.

I like big shrub beds with strong, clean curves. Houses and fences are straight edged, boxy things. Curving beds break up this rectilinear monotony with flowing lines. A straight, narrow bed is often the only shape possible with small houses and small properties but I am rarely happy with their look. A bigger bed lets you do more planting, shows off your plants better and cuts down on mowing time since a bed displaces turf. A bigger bed can even make a house look better.

How? It's a matter of scale. A typical house is at least ten to fifteen feet tall on each side. A four to five foot wide bed is far more proportional than a two to three foot bed. A large bed commands and controls space, a small bed merely occupies it. Above all, don't construct the usual tiny, straight bed along a foundation perimeter if you can possibly avoid it. If you can't help this kind of thing then try making it a raised bed – the extra depth of field or change in relief gives a narrow bed a visual weight and impact that it does not possess when flat.

Determine the shape you want by sketching out several possibilities on paper. Or lay out a garden hose on the ground to try different designs. Move the hose around until you get the free-flowing effect you want. French curves, flying buttresses and art deco angles are all shapes to get inspiration from. Not all curves are good curves, of course, and you should avoid ones that look like an "S" turn or a distorted sine wave. The point is to achieve something graceful. As Thomas Church put it when discussing garden design, "Rhythm and movement are essential. You expect them in the pictures you hang on the wall, in the music you listen to, in the poetry you read." To that I would only add one word: restraint! It is sometimes too easy to set beds in motion. Sometimes the best approach is flare out a existing straight bed with just a small jog at the end. A little roll to contrast a long line. But start laying a hose out on the ground or start drawing on paper – you'll see what looks best to you.

Okay, let's assume you've got the perfect looking shape for your first bed -– Thomas Church is complimenting you from beyond the grave and Burle Marx is flying in from Brazil to take a look-see. What next? Get out your shovel. A good one. Creating a shrub bed is straightforward but physically demanding: you mark off the new border and then you turn over and cultivate the ground within its outline. Got it?

A landscaper, by comparison, creates shrub beds by killing off existing grass or vegetation with herbicide, cutting the dead growth out a week later with a sod cutter and then rototilling the soil after that. Most of us, though, don't have this equipment. So let's go through a low tech way to develop our low cost beds. I'll focus on a Bermuda infested yard like the property I rent. It's a worse case example and one I've dealt with many times. Don't fear that the Bermuda will come back from within the bed; the following steps will nearly eliminate this possibility. You will, of course, still have to deal with Bermuda coming into the shrub bed from the lawn. But that is a continuing struggle anyway and one that can be fought by routinely edging.

We'll look at constructing the shrub bed in the next column. Until then, happy gardening!