My key tips to achieving a planting scheme that continues to fill you with joy every time you look at your garden;

1. Consider your planting as a whole and have a plan. We all fall into the trap of going to the garden centre or a village fete and buying something that ‘looks pretty’ or ‘has lovely flowers’. This is fine, but without having a plan or structure for your planting scheme, these can often get lost in a border, or swamped by something else, and the impact you were hoping for is quickly lost or not achieved at all. Consider what style you like (contemporary, cottage, seaside, woodland etc), and plan from there. You can still add plants over time, it doesn’t have to be an instant garden planted in one go, but by having a plan you know where you have space to add something, and whether that style and size will work with everything else you have.
2. Think about the colours you really want to include. As well as having a preferred style, there will also be preferences around colour; either those that you particularly like, or the mood you want to evoke. Do you want it to be cool and muted with soft pastels, or hot and fiery with bright tones and darker shades? There is lots of science to colour and how it makes us feel, but often we just know what we like and that is the best direction to go. A planting scheme with the colours considered, always enhances the individual plants far better than something mixed together with less consideration. My advice is just to pick a theme and stick to it! It’s hard when there is that one plant or flower you really want to buy, but it just doesn’t go with everything else, but it will be better in the long run. If you really can’t leave it behind, you could always have different themes in different parts of the garden, or put it in a pot!
3. Think about materials, structures and surfaces. Fences, patios, sheds and pergolas can work in harmony with your garden and enhance those precious flowers, or detract from them. Fences are a good example of this as shown in the picture of the Jasmine; with a pale fence  the yellow flowers could have got lost and gone unnoticed, but by painting it in a colour on the opposite side of the colour wheel the flowers are highlighted in all their glory. When considered as part of an overall garden design, paint can add another dimension to your garden and enhance your planting to another level. (Remember to ask your neighbours’ permission if the fence belongs to them before painting it!) Think about whether you want the hard landscaping to stand out, and provide contrast, or fade into the background and go unnoticed, colour and plants can also be used to hide some of the less attractive features in a garden!
4. Colour doesn’t always have to come from flowers. The theme so far has been all about making the most of the flowers you have in the garden, but colour and interest doesn’t just have to come from flowers. Foliage can come in so many shapes, textures, sizes, and shades. A border built entirely from varying shades of green non-flowering plants can be just as beautiful as one full of flowers. There are also plants with purple, red, orange or yellow foliage, or stems that can provide a really impressive display. Consider a deciduous plant where the foliage can show off a vibrant herbaceous plant in the summer, but has bright colourful stems in the winter give a completely different dimension to the garden. How about a shrub where the foliage takes on completely different shades throughout the year and provides beautiful autumn colour. Don’t forget plants that provide fruit too, one plant can provide structure with its stems in the winter, have beautiful spring blossom and then berries later in the year
5. You don’t have to start from scratch. Many gardens will already have inherited some planting from previous owners, you don’t need to scrap everything to achieve the look you want. We are all different, and have different taste but often you can make what you have work for you. Consider if things need pruning better and could take on a different shape or form. Has a perennial got too big for the space, maybe you could divide it and use it elsewhere in the garden? A plant that has been poorly looked after might not be showing you what it could really offer.

If you are now thinking, ‘excellent, I now know where to start’, then I’m glad I could help! If on the other hand, you are now thinking ‘wow, there is far more to picking plants than I first thought’, don’t panic! Get in touch and we can point you in the right direction and pick a strategy that’s right for you and your garden.