How to Design Your Garden

These are just a few guidelines to help you plan and design your garden.

• Drive around residential neighbourhoods to get ideas. You’ll quickly determine what you like and don’t like.
• Take notes and pictures.
• Visit a Sheridan Nurseries Garden Centre to look at a variety of plants as well as advice from our friendly experts.
• Talk to people who love to garden.
• Subscribe to a gardening magazine (print or email)
• Tune into programs on radio or television.
• Join a horticultural club.
• Go on a garden tour, or visit a Botanical Garden. Take some time to evaluate your needs as well as your dreams and don’t jump in unprepared.
• Lastly, if you’re a keen do-it-yourselfer, draw up a 3-5 year plan to stretch your budget over several years and to allow you time to evaluate and finalize your ideas.
• Use our Garden Guide as a reference; it’s full useful information about plant material hardy for your zone.

The first step in composition is determining an overall colour scheme that you like. You will want something that ties in with your house so the garden becomes an extension of your home.

• If you’re working with shade, keep in mind that pale colours really jump out from a darker background. Light pink, soft yellow, peach, and white will be noticed more than dark red, burgundy, blue, or purple.
• Hot colours like red, yellow, and orange advance toward the viewer.
• Cool colours such as green, blue, and purple recede. If you blend the hot and cool colours you’ll create a wonderful energy between the two. You can also create a soft, pastel effect or a monochromatic garden that is all white, silver, and green.

• The choice of plant material is determined by existing sun/shade conditions and mature height and spread.
• This last tip concerning size can’t be overemphasized. If you have an 80 cm space for one plant and put a Beautybush there that gets 3 m (10’) high and 250 cm wide you’ll be doing a lot of pruning to keep it in bounds.
• The Sheridan Nurseries Garden Guide is your best resource to avoid such concerns.

• Be aware of the actual shape or form of the plants you are considering.
• Dwarf Mugho Pine), rounded (Yucca, Ornamental Grasses), Columnar (Hicks Yew, Pyramidal English Oak), weeping (Weeping European Larch, Weeping Japanese Cherry), or irregular outlines (False Cypress, Ginkgo) to name a few.
• Consider the form and texture of the leaves. You’ll appreciate and notice this best when you plant a large leaf (like a Hosta) with a small leaf (such as Astilbe). Or plant velvety, felted Silver Brocade Artemisia or Lamb’s Ears under a shiny Mahonia. The contrast is dramatic.

Balance in garden design can be formally symmetrical where the two halves are the same or almost the same or asymmetrical and informal where components are balanced but not symmetrical.

• You need to balance off vertical elements with horizontal. You don’t want too much of either or your plan will look very static.
• Deciduous and evergreen plant materials also require balance in order to have winter interest. This is especially important for the front where a minimum of 50% of the planting should be evergreens. They will provide structure and colour for 12 months of the year.
• To further create balance, repeat the actual plant, the form of it, or the colour in several parts of your design. Your eye will link these areas of similarity from one part of a garden to another. If nothing ties together because you have too many unrelated hard landscape materials and plants, your eye will jump all over the place and there won’t be any continuity to the design.