With the vegetable garden slowing down, I’ve been gradually cleaning up after our main season crops. I miss those heady days of summer produce, but my thoughts are already turning to next year’s gardening. Which, if I’m honest, is almost as much fun as puttering around in the garden itself.
It depends on what type of space we're talking about: vegetables or shrubs/flowers.
For the veg garden, the decisions are more practical than aesthetic. You have to think about how much space each crop requires: some tend to expand horizontally, others are more compact or vertical. And there are some plants that thrive when planted together and other combinations that could actually be damaging. And then because each plant makes different demands of the soil, it's also best to rotate crops to another bed from one year to the next. So my sketches are more like a series of rectangles for each bed with notes about which crop(s) to plant there.
The garden spaces with shrubs and flowers require more of a design approach (you'd love this). You think about things like color palettes, when each plant is likely to flower, and the relative height of each plant (so you don't put tall plants in front of short plants, for example). Our landscape architect created some really useful planting plans. They've been a good starting point for selecting plants, and we've added to it as needed based on availability or just to fill the space. You can get a peek at a planting plan here: https://willowgreens.substack.com/p/two-new-gardens-ahem-take-root
That's probably more than you wanted to know, but thanks for asking! 😂
How do you figure out what you’re planting where in the garden? Do you sketch it out?
It depends on what type of space we're talking about: vegetables or shrubs/flowers.
For the veg garden, the decisions are more practical than aesthetic. You have to think about how much space each crop requires: some tend to expand horizontally, others are more compact or vertical. And there are some plants that thrive when planted together and other combinations that could actually be damaging. And then because each plant makes different demands of the soil, it's also best to rotate crops to another bed from one year to the next. So my sketches are more like a series of rectangles for each bed with notes about which crop(s) to plant there.
The garden spaces with shrubs and flowers require more of a design approach (you'd love this). You think about things like color palettes, when each plant is likely to flower, and the relative height of each plant (so you don't put tall plants in front of short plants, for example). Our landscape architect created some really useful planting plans. They've been a good starting point for selecting plants, and we've added to it as needed based on availability or just to fill the space. You can get a peek at a planting plan here: https://willowgreens.substack.com/p/two-new-gardens-ahem-take-root
That's probably more than you wanted to know, but thanks for asking! 😂
I love this! And the sketch plan from the blog post you linked is beautiful! Thank you for elaborating 😊