How do you plan a garden?

[WildFlowerBees]

I want our patch of front garden to have interest all year round. No idea how to plan this. Is there an app to help? I am absolutely useless.

Bumping because I would love to know this too!

I don't know of an app, but I know the principles for designing a garden. First you need to establish what kind of garden is possible/ideal for the space. Some of these questions will matter more than others, but:

• what is the aspect (eg., south facing or north facing?)
• how shaded is it, and where?
• how dry or wet does the soil get? (eg., is it waterlogged in winter? Very dry because of mature trees in the garden? Etc.)
• what kind of soil is it? Is it heavy (clay) or light/sandy? If you dig into it, are there lots of bits of stone (or rubble from building). If it's a newbuild, has it been very compressed during works?
• What size and shape is it?

Then you need to work out what you like and dislike. Do you want it low maintenance or not? Look at pictures of gardens (instagram is good) and pick out things you love or hate.

Without knowing the answer to these questions (especially how big it is!), I will assume it's not a huge space, because you say 'front patch'. I'll assume it's not super shady.

If it is only really big enough for one large shrub (which is a common front garden size), you might choose something with more than one season of interest - say, a dwarf crab-apple, which has lovely decorative spring blossom and pretty fruits in the autumn. Some varieties (eg., Evereste) hang onto their fruits for quite a long time, so they can look decorative until late. Or, you could choose something that will be a backdrop in spring, summer and autumn, but which will really come into its own in winter, when everything is more sparse - a daphne would be a good choice. At the moment, mine is covered with beautiful, scented pink blossom, which has been out for a while and will last weeks. It's not so exciting the rest of the year, but at other times it is much easier to get interest from other things. A shrub centrepiece will give you height, so it's a good way to start. You don't have to plant it right in the middle: it might look better top right or top left, with everything else stacking up against it.

Having chosen a 'centrepiece' I would then choose other things to complement it. You definitely want a load of bulbs - very easy, very reliable, and you will soon learn which ones suit your space. Bulb flowers go from late winter (iris reticulata; snowdrops; aconites) to early spring (crocus; daffodils) and into summer with lilies and alliums. I also really love cyclamen (techically a coum not a bulb) if they like your soil, as they have very pretty flowers and decorative leaves that provide good ground cover.

You then want some perennials (which will come back year on year too). Herbaceous perennials will die down in winter, so won't give you winter interest. There are masses to choose from - maybe nepeta, cirsium, geraniums, aster? You could mix in evergreens and perennials with winter interest - so perhaps rosemary, if it's happy in your soil (you can clip rosemary into shapes and it's good for structure), or smaller varieties of hebe, or hellebores (lovely structural leaves; winter/spring flowers), or santolina (grey-silver foliage which makes a welcome bit of pale colour in winter).

You want to avoid planting everything in ones - you want repeating patterns, so if you go for (say) nepata, you want three of them dotted around.

You could tweak this if you know that you always feel really grim in winter and need to skew the planting to winter interest - or tweak it in all sorts of ways, really. Whatever the answer to the questions I put at the start of the post, the principles will be the same: you need to choose a centre-piece (or, in a bigger space, several 'fixed points' or 'stars'), and you then need to plan around them with groups of repeating plants.

I had this last year. I googled. I asked. Eventually I found a really good family run garden centre. The staff were amazing and helped a lot.
I would start there. The smaller ones are better.

Two things to decide before planning a garden:

1. Do you want a lawn?
2. How much time do you have, realistically, to regularly tend it?

Once you have these 2 things in mind, planning becomes much simpler.

This is great advice and has really helped me get my head around the same question - thank you

Oh gosh I need to know this too... we have a blank canvas with very little shade. I love evergreens but many of them got scorched in last summer's heatwave as I didn't do enough homework.

I think I've missed the opportunity to plant bulbs?

Thank you so much @SarahAndQuack really good advice.

Have a look at what already grows well there.

There's no point removing a healthy thriving plant and replacing it with something new that will struggle to survive.

Nothing planted yet, just a bare patch of grass L shaped around 9ft long 6ft wide. It's at the side so pretty redundant. I'd love a pretty bit there the other side looks lovely.

Pop in a photo? And one of the “other side” that looks lovely?

To work out what goes well in your soil, walk your neighbourhood and see what thrives in surround8ng gardens. The front gardens round our way are pretty much all relying on the same 5-10 plants, but are all done differently.

Predominately I'm looking for that particular area to be all year round oasis for wildlife. I think I'm finally getting a clue!

I'm thinking of Buddleia, English Lavender and other native plants.

Crocus.co.uk have an 'inspiration' section which is very useful for ideas. Also if you Google 'garden ideas wildlife' loads of sites come up, including magazine articles and charitable or nature-focused websites.

That’s a nice idea.

Sorry to be picky, but I don’t think Buddleia is native and I’m sure English Lavender isn’t

In your position, I’d be looking for something evergreen, and for berries. If something looks good in winter it tends to look good all year. Buddleia provides nectar for butterflies, but the wild form more than cultivars. So If the garden is sunny I would instead plant scabiouses, either Field scabious, Knautia arvensis, or Small Scabious, Scabiosa columbaria, or their many garden forms.

If there are male holly trees in the area, then a female holly will attract the thrush family.

Lavender seed heads attract goldfinches and, if you’re lucky, hummingbird hawk moth. Fuchsia (doesn’t like full sun) is an alternative food plant for Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillars.

Particularly showy native plants include foxglove, musk mallow, meadow cranesbill, bloody cranesbill, wood cranesbill, and, of course, primrose, cowslip, lily of the valley.

@WildFlowerBees 'I'm thinking of Buddleia, English Lavender and other native plants'.

That does sound lovely - but you've skipped the actual 'planning of the garden' stage that you asked about in your original post. Choosing particular plants is just the final part of that.

For instance - lavender thrives in sun but struggles in shade. Native plants have particular requirements of soil type, aspect and moisture. None of the plants you mention will look good in winter.

I would take a step back and research the planning stage, including using the great advice you have received so far from posters. It will save you time, cost, and wasted energy in buying plants that don't thrive in your garden.

I've done this - I couldn't find anything that really fitted the bill if I'm honest. I wanted a garden for bees and insects that worked all year round. And I didn't have to order as bedding every year.

One of the things I read was try and have lots of different types of flower shapes because different insects and bees are attracted to them - so for example ones that they have to go into as well as open 'daisy shaped' flowers.

I've got a south facing garden which is quite exposed to a prevailing wind, but has a short wall for a certain amount of protection so I can't have too much tall. And really clay soil which isn't ideal though saving grace is it is slightly sloped. It's not that big but I try and Matthew most of it. I also have a back north facing garden which I do put other things in - mainly veg and herbs.

Trick is to base around bulb planting first for flowers. But to have a And a few shrubs / grasses that you plant first and then put everything else around (keeping in mind how big these shrubs get! This is crucial).

The other often overlooked thing is ornamental grass as it flowers for long periods and insects like. They often look good in autumn winter due to colour and shape. We put in a dwarf Acer tree last year for same reason.

You then have things that flower earlier with other things that grow up around them after. The draw back is you have really missed the window to plant bulbs. I had the same problem and planted them in after other things doing seeds first. I went a bit loopy the first year as I grew everything from seeds (this is not the way to do it for most people as it's time-consuming as I discovered!) but I've since tried and avoid too many annuals and have now settled on a few that are relatively easy.

I found it hard to plan as such because garden centres tend to have what's nicest at that time in, rather than a bigger range. So you do need to really think about it first. And having a degree of understanding of how tall things are. This took me ages to get my head around as I'd never done any gardening before.

What I have planted in my garden:
Flowers December
Winter flowering tree (we think it's some kind of ornamental cherry)

Flowers January
Heather
Snowdrop

Flowers February
Bulbs: I currently have snowdrops, iris reticulata, crocus flowering with anemone blanda just coming in. These are under my lawn and around the tree. My daphne bush is just starting to flower (you need to check flowering time for various species) - it was one of the shrubs I found most friendly for bees that flowered before spring.

Flowers March
Species tulip and above bulbs still going. Daffs start. I also have some giant daisies and they are early.

Flowers April
Tulip season. I go big on tulips. They are a bit of a pain because most usually only flower well for a year but some varieties do come back if you are picky and look for ones with this in mind. My Candy Prince have done very well on this score to date. Again Anemone. I have Mount Everest and De Caen. They are actually coming up ATM and looking like they will start flowering next month (they aren't supposed to - I think it's supposed to be May really! But they did start very early last year and carried on all the way through til autumn). April is cherry blossom season and we've got a spring flowing one of these on addition to the winter flowering.

May (Inc seeds to think about)
Alliums. There's various different ones that flower in May through to August so if you pick a range you can stagger them. May is really when my perennials start in full. First up is usually aquilegia. I like salvias a lot and they tend to start flowering pretty early and run really late into the autumn

Lavender. If you are planting for bees you need lavender and borage. They go nuts over them. Borage is an annual and I find it does take over but it is pretty and self seeds aggressively. I want to get a smaller variety if I'm honest - there are pygmy varieties about. But it is really pretty.

More seeds: I quite like cosmos and cornflower, and although annuals, they are quick growing so whack them at start of May for June / July flowering - go for polka dot cornflower and cosmos bipinnatus as they are shorter and work better in my opinion. Seeds are cheap and they are a great little filler. Just shove them anywhere sunning! I really like nigella too as they have interesting seed pods, reseed on their own well and flowered for months last year. The other obvious one is poppies but I'm less keen on them. I am going for some white ones this year though (tried last year but they didn't come up)

Achillea. It's not my fav but the multiple flowers are supposed to be really good for bees. You can grow from seed so it's cheap and it's perennial. Goes for ages. Tall though, so put at back.

June
Iris (this time the big ones which name I forget). And Dianthus. I've got rainbow loveliness and spring beauty as mine main two but I have a few others around. The spring beauty have a foliage which stays green all year so they are nice for that reason. Dead easy to get one and do cuttings from in a single year - to keep your costs down. If dead headed I've had them run til September.

I've shoved flowering chamomile everywhere too - including the lawn which I'm not good at mowing as regularly as it really should. You can get lawn chamomile but I'm just not that bothered. It's lovely to walk over though due to the smell and doesn't mind a small amount of trampling.

July
Echinacea if your garden allows them - they like sun. I have heard they are temperamental, but they've been brilliant the last couple of years in my garden - because they are drought tolerant. I love them. (Also Rudbeckia Cherry Brandy).

Most of the above will run until October though it does slow down after August and are fairly easy to grow (with possible exception of echinacea and lavender). They all just need a certain amount of cutting back. The biggest thing has been the thought and getting everything in for the first year.

I've also a couple of roses which are a bit of a pain tbh. Which I could really take or leave at this point.

November into December is really the month I've struggled with tbh. I've settled on Michaelmas daisy as a good shout. I did have pineapple sage last year that miraculously overwintered (it's not hardy) which flowered in November which was beautiful but I'm fairly sure it's dead after the winter we've just had!

I've not cut back at the end of November which many gardeners do - a lot of my choices have good structure so look interesting. I think if you don't cut back in Nov the general wisdom has been to do so in Feb. This year I'm holding off as the insect friendly advice is to hold off til after last frost (I may not do that for the whole garden) and to leave leafs, stems and seed heads for bugs to hide in, instead. I did cut back in Feb last year but I want to see how it goes doing it later this year. The other advantage of doing this, is there are still seed heads which do create interest even when dead. I know that the RHS gardens lean to this idea of leaving in things for longer and not just cutting back when flowered these days too.

Have fun. I didn't find it easy or straight forward and to a certain extent found it trial and error.

One of the things I say to people is that you don't have to plant everything all at once. Get a rough idea of the sort of thing you are after, and then buy things a bit at a time. What you can do is visit a garden centre (or look in your neighbours' gardens) every few weeks and buy things when they are in flower or have good foliage colour. This is helpful particularly with shrubs, and you spread the cost. That means that you end up with plants looking their best all year round, as something will always be in season, whatever the time of year. You can then fill in the gaps with bedding plants, bulbs or herbaceous perennials.

This is so helpful @RedToothBrush thank you so much. We have similar gardens it seems. South facing, clay soil etc. Thank you so much for replying.

Thank you everyone, such good info and I have a starting point.

This is a great idea, thank you 😊

@RedToothBrush that's an excellent plan. I'd just had to chuck a packet of nasturtiums in too. Great value and if you leave them to reseed you'll have them for years to come

@SarahAndQuack "If you dig into it, are there lots of bits of stone (or rubble from building)." this is my garden - was an old railway yard/sidings 60 years ago. What does this mean for the gardener then?

Well, only that you need to be aware of it when you're planting. I'd check the PH of the soil, just in case something has soaked into the ground. If there is lots of stone/rubble, either you live with it and grow things that like stone and free drainage (I do this in part of my garden that was hard standing for lorries!), or you commit to digging it out and improving soil quality. What you can't do is to plant something that hates stony soil, and expect it to thrive. So not a big deal! Just something to sort out as early as possible.

Thanks @SarahAndQuack yes i will bear that in mind.