Planting Spring Flowering Plants in Swathes

 Spring Flowering Plants Making An Impact

All the spring flowering plants are coming into bloom now. Some, like my tulips, have finished but the calla lilies are keeping me waiting. As a self-confessed plant collector, (some would say addict), I make no claims to being a landscaper as well. I buy plants when I see them, with little regard to where I am going to plant them. At the beginning of a planting season I’ll do a plan in my head of what I want where but by the end of that season I have at least another twenty plants squeezed into little gaps here and there and others popped into pots just because I have literally run out of ground space.

My back garden is tiny and, as such, I have tiny beds. Gone are the days of borders 50 yards long and 3 yards wide. My entire back garden growing space, including grass, would fit into one large bedroom! So if I want all the plants I love and adore, I have to ration myself to one or two of a kind unless we’re talking bulbs which usually come in packs and don’t take up much room in a bed.

As a result, I have a hotch-potch garden, an amalgamation of gorgeous plants that I know and love and cosset but that neighbors probably find quite confusing to the eye! A friend recently commented to my husband that I’m not afraid of clashing colors! Well, she’s right, I’m not. On the whole nature doesn’t seem to mind reds cozying up to oranges and pinks. But after she said that I did distance my potted orange alstroemeria from the pink one. In fact, I bought a yellow one to place between them! You see how my mind works?

But a recent visit to a beautifully landscaped floral exhibition recently reminded me about the effect of planting in swathes. There is no doubt, planting spring flowering plants in swathes definitely has more impact on the eye.

The theme of the exhibition in was Chinese New Year and, as such, was filled with pagodas, bridges and floral sculptures, including China’s national bird, a crowned heron, made out of rose buds and spring blossoms.

There were fresh flowering cherries and peaches, all woven onto living tree sculptures, and paper umbrellas hanging from the ceiling, not to mention hanging baskets 20 feet up. There were floating flower displays in a large koi pond with a waterfall, constructed out of bamboo.

Now that’s a busy effect in a fairly small area (let’s say 6 bedrooms with very high glass ceilings), but the whole scene was pulled together by flowers. Large plantings of spring flowers were woven like one gigantic living tapestry around the room, gathering everything else into its folds.

Hundreds of tulips swirled like a river around rocks and trees, flowing into a mass planting of hyacinths, then calla lilies, cyclamens, chrysanthemums and foxgloves. As I walked from one planting to another the fragrances also blended into each other, starting out with the unmistakable smell of hyacinths and ending up with the fresh cut smell of chrysanthemums.

It was the flowers that led me around the room, the other artifacts only noticed when I looked up every now and then. Obviously not everyone in the room is as enthralled by spring flowering plants as I am but I think I can safely say that the cherry trees seen through the doorway may have been what drew people to the entrance but it was the swathes of spring flowers that brought people into the room.

Happy gardening and please don’t forget your sunscreen. There’s so much skin cancer about, you must protect your skin.

By the way, here is a link to a list of gopher resistant plants: http://www.groundcoversandgardening.com/gopher resistant plants. If you want to buy plants that deer probably won’t eat, look here.

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