from The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner – intelligent garden design software

Need a Planting Plan? Click here

Different garden styles evoke different feelings and emotions. While you may appreciate or even admire many gardens you visit or see photographs of, they will not necessarily be the blueprint you want to follow for your own garden borders. But if you’re planning to spend some time changing your garden either piecemeal or in one fell swoop, it’s useful to think about the atmosphere you would like to create in your own garden. It’s a personal thing – reflecting your own taste and individuality.

What’s your style?

Read through the style guides below. One or more of these will instinctively feel right for you – summing up how you feel about your garden (or the garden you are planning to create). Once you have chosen the type of garden-personality that suits you, you can select features, accessories and materials to complement your chosen style.

Garden Planting Styles - Cottage Garden Planting
Cottage Gardens – a charming, informal profusion of planting
Cottage Garden

A riot of colour and form. Flowering shrubs, perennials and self-seeding annuals jostle together to create a charming, informal profusion of planting. Traditional cottage gardens would mingle vegetables and flowers together and you may like to include some crops, especially herbs, amongst the flowers.

Accessorise: Include winding paths and rustic arches or pergolas to complete the effect. Weathered or reclaimed materials are particularly effective.

Romantic Garden

Soft pastel shades, highlighted with splashes of more intense colour, to create a more relaxing feel. Flowering shrubs and scented perennials are combined in enchanting, billowing drifts.

Garden Planting Styles - Roses in a Romantic Garden
Roses – an essential element of the Romantic Style
Garden Planting Styles - Delphiniums in a Romantic Style Garden
Delphiniums and foxgloves in a romantic garden
Accessorise: Use arches, pergolas, sculptures or sundials in your design. Meandering paths and benches set amongst the foliage and flowers are a must.

Contemporary Garden

A cool, stylish effect, often used in town and city gardens where space is restricted. Planting is minimalist, using repeated forms and bold colour. Drama is added with clumps of architectural plants.

Garden Planting Styles - architectural plants in a contemporary garden
Architectural plants in a contemporary garden

Accessorise: Make use of modern materials, such as metal and glass, for garden ornaments and sculptures. For a sophisticated look, plant up a row of matching containers with specimen plants. Pebbles, coloured gravel or paving slabs provide interesting texture. Contemporary planting tends to have fewer plant specimens, spaced to allow each plant room to display its character. Mulch with gravel to enhance this display.

City/Courtyard Garden
Garden Planting Styles - Astrantias in a courtyard garden
Astrantias against a white-painted wall in a courtyard garden

Since these areas are often enclosed, they may provide a sheltered environment for a border of more exotic planting. Scented flowers work well here, along with climbers for vertical interest. These are often fairly formal gardens, with paved areas and container planting.

Accessorise: Larger gardens could incorporate arches and pergolas, but even small courtyards would benefit from a seating area and pots of fragrant flowers. Paving slabs or cobbles are good for hard landscaping. White-painted walls will help lift dark shady areas.

Meadow or Prairie-Style

Drifts of low-maintenance ornamental grasses and herbaceous perennials create a swathe of relaxing, naturalistic planting. This style takes its influence from the great North American prairies and creates movement and informality, as well as late season interest.

Garden Planting Styles - movement and informality in a prairie-style garden
Movement and informality in a prairie-style garden
Garden Planting Styles - Helenium 'Pipsqueak' in a prairie-style garden
Helenium ‘Pipsqueak’ – great for prairie-style planting
Accessorise: Looks good in large areas but a small border planted in this style can also be effective. Use paths of gravel or pebbles to emphasise the natural look. Allow the plants to self-seed to reinforce its naturalistic style.

Mediterranean

Bright flowers, spiky foliage, aromatic herbs and silvery evergreens are typically found in Mediterranean-style gardens. Many drought-tolerant plants come from Mediterranean regions, so if you have a dry, sheltered garden, this might be a good choice for you.

Garden Planting Styles - lavender in a mediterranean-style garden
Lavender – the quintessential mediterranean plant

If the climate or conditions in your garden are less than perfect, you might still be able to create a Mediterranean-effect with more tolerant plants. Remember that less hardy plants, such as sun-loving citrus and olive trees, can be grown in containers which are overwintered in sheltered areas.

Accessorise: Mediterranean planting is influenced by the character of warm climates. Plants are positioned to allow each plant air-room and to display its character. Mulch with gravel to conserve moisture. Gravel, small pebbles and glazed tiles enhance Mediterranean style planting. White, blues and terracotta are particularly effective for painted walls and containers. Pots of succulents and a cooling water feature look good too. Don’t forget an area for al fresco dining on balmy evenings and an arbour or pergola to shelter from the heat of the day!

Woodland
Garden Planting Styles - a woodland-style garden
A small border around a single tree can be planted up in the Woodland style.

The subtle planting schemes of foliage plants and soft hues of many native woodlanders create an aura of peace and tranquillity. Shade-loving plants enjoy the cool, sun-dappled conditions of wooded areas. Spring flowering bulbs are a particular focus beneath deciduous trees before they leaf up and cast deeper shade.

Even a small garden border around a single tree or large shrub can be planted up in this style. Woodland style planting is also suitable for flower beds shaded by walls or neighbouring buildings.

Accessorise: Sinuous bark or stepping stone paths can wind through larger woodland areas. Rustic benches and bridges look charming, but contemporary sculptures and seating can also sit well with your design.

Wild Naturalistic

An informal area, perhaps further away from the house, which uses trees and shrubs, under planted with swathes of annuals and perennials. Nothing is too regimented here, so flowers are allowed to self-seed and wildlife is encouraged in by the scented flowers, seedheads and berries.

Garden Planting Styles - Rosa rugosa in a Wild Garden
Rosa rugosa in a Wild Garden

Accessorise: Materials such as bark and railway sleepers help create a natural look. Allow paths to meander where they will – bark chippings make a good surface. You will want to avoid straight edges and geometric shapes in a wild garden, but a natural-looking pond, boggy area or small woodland all create a sense of going back to nature.

Decided on your garden style? Need a Planting Plan?

Now use the Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner to generate a stunning, tailor-made planting plan for your garden in your chosen style.

Enter details of your border’s growing conditions, then select a garden style and colour scheme. The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner will create a planting plan just for you in minutes.
What's Your Garden Style - from Weatherstaff garden design software
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The Weatherstaff Team

from The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner – intelligent garden design software

Looking for a gift for the gardener on your Christmas list? This one ticks all the boxes.

Image of Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner
Top of the “Easy to Wrap” List!

The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner makes a great Christmas present. This exciting garden design software creates bespoke planting plans, tailored to the individual’s own garden. So, what else is good about it?

Why put it on your ‘gardening gifts’ list?

Here are some compelling reasons:

  • The recipient is unlikely to have a collection of these from previous Christmases. They may have other garden software – I have a shelf-full – but this one is radically different. It’s the first to use intelligent design logic to randomly generate plans, based on the gardener’s choices of style and colour.
  • Downloadable software is extremely economical on wrapping paper! If you want a tangible present to put under the tree, you can download the software and copy it onto a USB memory stick. The download is less than 1/2 GB – so even the cheapest memory stick shouldn’t have a problem with this. Take your time choosing an attractive memory stick – after all, you’ve already saved yourself hours of agonising over the present itself.
Pimms in the Garden - sit back and appreciate the gardening gift you gave last Christmas
Sip your Pimms and congratulate yourself on another superbly selected present.
  • Do you have a friend whose garden you don’t enjoy sitting out in?! This is the perfect gardening gift for them. Next summer, as you sip your Pimms stretched out on their designer deckchair, admiring their beautiful borders, you can congratulate yourself on yet another superbly selected present.
  • This is a gift that is not just for Christmas. The recipients of your gift will be able to spend their winter evenings playing with the new software and creating tailor-made plans. It provides an excellent exercise regime for spring. Plenty of reading matter, too, as they peruse the program’s detailed plant descriptions and maintenance schedule. A thing of beauty to admire through the summer and autumn. And a purposeful winter, dreaming of new projects to tackle.

Yes, we know it’s better to give than to receive, but if you were to add the PlantingPlanner to your own Christmas wish list, perhaps one you’ve accidentally left lying around, someone close to you might also know the joy of giving rather than receiving. It’s worth a try…

The Weatherstaff Team

from The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner – intelligent garden design software

The BBC reported that Herefordshire Perry cider makers were suffering this year from a poor pear harvest. Not so in my garden, I’m delighted to report. After 6 years of divvying up a solitary pear amongst our family of five, for the very first time I am hunting out cunning new recipes for enjoying our pear harvest.

I wouldn’t go so far as to report a glut of pears. What we have is one of those vertical, column-trained trees, carrying fruit along its single upright stem. Actually, we have two of these – one Beurré Hardy and one Doyenné du Comice – planted over half a decade ago and spectacularly failing to keep us supplied with pears – until this summer, when we counted over 3 dozen hanging plumply from their shortened spurs.

Weatherstaff Harvest Pyrus Doyenne du Commice
Pyrus Doyenné du Commice

My little fruit-growing book tells me that one belongs to Pollination Group C and the other to Group D i.e. one flowers earlier than the other, but that there should be a sufficient overlap in their flowering periods for them to cross-pollinate one another.

I was beginning to wonder what was up with my pair of pears and had even resorted to wafting around a child’s paintbrush in a feeble attempt at hand pollination. The Beurré Hardy, the earlier flowering one, never seemed to produce much blossom. Maybe that was the problem? Then this spring, both burst into a glorious display of pear blossom and proceeded to develop their superb (relatively speaking) crop.

Was it something to do with last winter’s severe weather? The cherry blossom this year was fantastic and that was credited to a combination of last summer’s conditions (not too dry, not too wet) and the harsh winter which enhanced the quality of the blossom.

Spain has had a bumper year for its Conference pear crop too, harvesting 8 million kilos of the fruit (approximately 8 million kilos more than my crop).

So what happened to the poor Perry cider producers? Well, apparently they had a very good season last year and a good year is often followed by a poor one. I suppose I’d better make the most of this year’s pears then.

For a good variety of fruit trees, try http://www.kenmuir.co.uk.

The Weatherstaff Team

from The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner – intelligent garden design software

Most buyers are prepared to pay extra for a home with a garden. According to Phil Spencer, of Location, Location, Location, outside space could increase the value of your property by up to 20%.

We can be reasonably sure, though, that a well cared-for, colourful garden is a far more attractive proposition than a weedy, cluttered outside area.

So, whether you are intending to put your house on the market or stay put, you have all the justification you need for spending more time pottering in your garden.

Autumn beech leaves
Autumn – a good time for tidying up

Autumn is a good time for tidying up, cutting back spent flowers and clearing away fallen leaves. It’s worthwhile spending time thinking about how your garden has looked over the course of the year.

If there was a definite lull by mid-summer, then some late-flowering perennials might bridge the gap.

Check that you have sufficient winter interest. Evergreens provide a good structural framework, while winter-flowering shrubs and the coloured stems of dogwoods and willows will cheer up the view from your window.

A garden that seemed to take a while to get going after the winter would definitely benefit from an influx of spring bulbs and autumn is just the right time for stocking up on those. The garden centres are full of plump bulbs, waiting to be plucked from the shelves and transplanted into your soil.

Narcissus Hawera
Adding value with spring bulbs

Plant-shopping and garden-pottering – go ahead with a clear conscience. It’s all in a good cause!

If you need help with extending the season of interest in your garden, try the Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner. This interactive garden software generates tailor-made planting plans for your garden.Using complex, intelligent design logic, the Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner selects plant combinations which are uniquely tailored to your garden’s growing conditions and your choices of colour and style. Using a sophisticated structural framework, the plants are arranged within your border plan to create a tapestry of colour throughout the seasons. So if you’ve ever planted up a border that looked fantastic in June and boring for the rest of the gardening year, why not give the Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner a whirl?

The Weatherstaff Team

from The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner – intelligent garden design software

A postscript to Season of Muddy Dog

The collected sloes lay like shiny glass beads in the colander, I had staggered back from the supermarket with an armful of gin bottles (“Couldn’t you just mention they’re for sloes?” muttered my embarrassed daughter) and amassed my kilner jars. I was all ready for a bottling session.

Gathered sloes

There’s something very therapeutic about being creative in the kitchen. I felt like a Victorian pharmacist, lovingly creating my recipes and remedies. Or perhaps an old wise woman. (Though not so very wise – having removed the metal bands from my jars, it took me quite a long time to reassemble them. Not so old either…)

The recipes I’d gathered were reassuringly varied. There were slight variations in the quantities of sloes, gin and sugar from recipe to recipe, which confirmed the image in my mind of some little old cottager sloshing in the gin after a swig or two, throwing in the gathered sloes and shaking in handfuls of sugar. Taking a rough average from a selection of recipes, I settled on about 450g of sloes to 1 litre of gin and 220g sugar.

First, prick the sloes. My little cottager might have used a sharp thorn from the Blackthorn, but I found a cocktail stick left over from the last birthday party did the trick very nicely. I like to think the tiny splinter of wood felt at peace meeting its end after engaging in the age-old tradition of liqueur-making rather than being thrust unceremoniously onto a sausage and left to its fate.

Sloe Gin

Add the sloes to the kilner jar along with the gin and sugar, seal and give it a shake. My recipes told me to leave in a dark cupboard, shaking every day for the first week then weekly for 2-3 months. That fits in well with my natural inclination to initially take the jars out at every opportunity and hold them up to the light, admiring the liquid reddening daily as the sloes steep in their alcoholic bath. Then as the impulse to keep checking wanes, it’s good to know that they are still there, the sloes quietly and steadily infusing the gin with their ruby juices and fruity flavours, while autumn passes and winter creeps in.

Here’s a summary:

How to make sloe gin

  • For each litre of gin, you will need 450g of sloes and 220g sugar.
  • Rinse and prick the sloes with a cocktail stick.
  • Put sloes, gin and sugar in a kilner jar, seal and shake well.
  • Keep in a dark cupboard.
  • Shake once a day for a week, then once a week for 2-3 months.
  • Strain the liqueur into a clean bottle, using a sieve lined with muslin or a straining funnel.

How to make sloe gin - from Weatherstaff garden design software
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The Weatherstaff Team

from The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner – intelligent garden design software

It was a glorious autumn morning, the sun streaming low across the harvested field, the dog charging off to chase crows and investigate rabbit smells.

The dog is Marnie, our inquisitive, excitable, two year old Golden Retriever. One of the great advantages of working from home is being able to stride across the fields with her, before starting on the day’s work.

The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner blog - sloes in the hedgerow

We clambered over a stile and into the next field. More accurately, I clambered over the stile. Marnie doesn’t do stiles. She adopts her bewildered “But you surely can’t expect me to jump over that?” expression, then goes off to scout out an alternative route.

The heavy rain of the previous night and the recently ploughed field were a potent indication of the changing seasons. Marnie, splashing happily in muddy puddles, thick clay clinging to her golden fur and a rakish smear of cow pat above her left eye, confirmed that the summer is over and the season of muddy dog has definitely arrived.

The blackberries were still glistening in the hedgerows, which dog and owner cheerfully devoured, but it was the beautiful, glaucous fruits of the blackthorn which caught my eye. Sloes! Enticing, blue-black drupes, with their powdery bloom, hanging there, murmuring “Pick me… Do something rural and interesting with me… You too can be a child of nature and creator of home-grown produce…”

The planting planner dog
Wet, tired and muddy

Reader, I picked. As a responsible dog-owner, I carried a wide selection of serviceable plastic bags, perfect for transporting home the booty. Now all I need is a recipe for sloe gin…

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core…

Ode to Autumn – John Keats

The Weatherstaff Team

from The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner – intelligent garden design software

For tailor-made Planting Plans click here

Creating a successful planting design for your garden borders can involve hours of decision-making. I know – I’ve put those hours in and scrawled lists of plants on countless sheets of paper and backs of envelopes.

The first step is to know your garden.

1. Go on a fact-finding mission

Check out which areas of the garden catch the sun and at what time of day. In other words, where’s the best place to drink your morning coffee? And is it the same for your afternoon tea?

The Weatherstaff garden design software for tailor-made garden plans
Planning the perfect garden

Know where the wind whips through, creating draughty corridors and which parts still have frost on the ground long after the rest of the garden has warmed up.

Find out what your soil is like. Is it sandy, clay or loam? Rather boggy underfoot or permanently parched? Is it acidic, alkaline or neutral? – you may have to treat yourself to a soil-testing kit to find out the answer if you don’t know.

2. Start a list

Now you can start jotting down the names of plants you like and cross them off one by one if they’re not suitable for your growing conditions.

Or check out the Plant Encyclopaedias and make a list of plants that will be happy with your conditions.

3. Do some day-dreaming

You’ll probably have a good idea of the kind of garden you’d like to create. Do you see yourself drifting amongst your roses, secateurs in one hand, glass of something suitably chilled in the other? Or admiring the reflection of your stylish, minimalist planting in your contemporary, metallic water feature? Rearranging your log piles and bat boxes in your wildlife-friendly habitat? Or gathering armfuls of cut flowers in your rustic, riotous cottage garden?

And behind this vision of yourself in your perfect garden, what colour-wash is brushed over the planting? Soft pastel shades? Hot pinks? Harmonious hues or clashing colours?

4. Start another list

Take your earlier list and worry away at it until you find plants to suit your growing conditions and your colour/style choices.

Ah, but will your flower borders look wonderful all year round? Next step:

5. Check for seasonal colour

Make sure you plan for year-round interest by incorporating spring bulbs, choosing plants for autumn colours and providing winter interest with attractive skeletal plant forms and evergreens.

6. Keep thinking

Just as you’re all ready to head off to the garden centre, stop and think again. What have you forgotten?

Do you need plants that can cope with coastal conditions or urban pollution? Prickly hedges to deter intruders or tall screening for unsightly views? Do you need to avoid poisonous plants in a family garden? Despite being terribly keen to create that beautiful picture you imagined earlier, have you been practical enough if what you really need is a low maintenance planting scheme? Make some new lists.

7. Take up a pencil and a clean sheet of paper

The back of an envelope will not do for this. You need space! Because now you’re going to take that final list of perfect plants and get creative.

The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner - intelligent garden planning software
Leopard’s bane and forget-me-nots in a yellow and blue colour theme

The best garden designs have a structural framework, scaled to suit the size of your border. Trees or shrubs form the backbone to your planting, while perennials and bulbs create splashes of colour for seasonal interest.

Plan out where your plants will go in your garden border – keep thinking as you go. Have you checked final heights and growth rates? Bear these in mind as you place your plants – so that you won’t have to dig them all up and start again in two years time. Try to visualise your flower beds at different times of the year, especially in late autumn and winter. Remember your framework.

8. Try a new approach!

Of course, you could always try the Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner.

Enter details about your garden bed’s conditions and select your colour scheme and style, using the simple interactive screens. Then sit back and let Weatherstaff do the work….

Using complex, intelligent design logic, the PlantingPlanner whizzes through thousands of plant combinations, selecting colours which harmonise (if you want shocking colour combinations – it can do that too!) and finding plants which not only suit your conditions and style preferences, but also work well together.

The best combinations are then arranged within a sophisticated structural framework, to create a tapestry of colour throughout the seasons.

Sorted!

Looking for gifts for gardeners you know? The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner makes a unique gardening gift, suitable for all levels of experience. Interactive and fun to use, new gardeners can create beautiful flower borders, with built-in help panels to provide support all along the way. Experienced gardeners will enjoy experimenting with the suggested designs, trying out different colour combinations or adding in old favourites.

How to make a successful planting plan - from Weatherstaff garden design software
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The Weatherstaff Team