British landscape designer Dan Pearson shares some top tips on planting design ahead of releasing his first online design course with Create Academy.
Are you happy with the framework of your garden but struggling for inspiration on how to plant it up? Perhaps you have a new balcony you’d like to inject with colour but are anxious it might look a mess? In this article, Dan Pearson shares his expert planting design tips to inspire you to get planting in your outdoor space.
Watch a preview video on the topic taken from Dan’s new online course with Create Academy and afterwards read our Q&A with the top landscape designer.
Watch Dan’s video on planting design
Dan offers planting design tips from Hillside, his beautiful naturalistic garden in Somerset:
Q&A: Planting design tips
We catch up with Dan about how to decide on a planting palette and where to go for inspiration.
You’re an advocate of choosing plants which suit their environment. Why is this so important?
I’ve always looked at plants growing in the wild to understand why they grow where they grow. If you go to the seaside or climb a mountain, for example, the leaves will be reduced in size and you’ll notice more grasses and silver foliage, which reflects light and holds moisture. It makes sense to grow the plants which do well in the conditions you can provide so that they are working with, not against, you.
Of course the most vocal proponent of this was Beth Chatto. When I started reading her in the 1970s, she was already talking about how plants shouldn’t be fighting their conditions. Therefore, it’s best to grow things that like damp soil if you’ve got heavy clay, and so on.
Which public garden follows this mantra well?
There are many gardens that now follow the “right plant, right place” principle but I think the best example is still Beth Chatto’s Gardens in Essex. This garden features several areas with distinct growing conditions, and in all of them the plantswoman grew plants intuitively. The result is naturalistic and beautiful.
For example, the dry gravel garden there is planted exclusively with mediterranean plants. Then you step down into a damper hollow with heavy clay soil and ponds, an area which features moisture-loving plants. There’s also a woodland garden with plants that like dappled light and shade.
How can we achieve naturalistic planting like yours?
- Choose plants that are closely connected to their natural cousins. If they’re not a cultivar, make sure they at least have similar forms. These types of plants tend to have smaller, single flowers that are easier to pollinate. Therefore, they are more effective at attracting wildlife.
- Plant in larger numbers with less variety. Opt for say 10 varieties rather than 30 and repeat them in waves across the garden.
- Include plants with open habits to achieve a nice gauzy quality. I particularly like Verbena ‘Lavender Spires’ which has open sprays of tiny flowers. Grasses are also good as they seem like wild plants even when they are cultivated.
- Choose plants that are right for the environment. My garden is on an open hillside surrounded by meadows, so I reflected this in my planting palette. If it had been on the edge of a woodland, though, I would have looked at the type of plants you find on a woodland floor rather than an open meadow.
What do you enjoy most about the planting design process?
Once you’ve got a theme for your planting, it’s time to pull together the plant palette. This is like getting the ingredients together for a cake: there’s the basic foundation in the mix and then you add things that will provide the planting flavour, as well as a small number of little moments that happen at various times of year.
I think it’s this coming up with the palette that I enjoy the most. That first shopping list is what really gets the creative juices flowing!
As winter approaches, bare trees and plants are more of a common sight. Do you have any planting design tips to add interest to the winter garden?
Winter is often seen as the least interesting season of the year when actually it’s very beautiful. Everything is pared back and you can see the skeletons. Form is really important during this season, so pick trees and shrubs that have good structure. Interesting bark is also good to look out for, in terms of texture and colour.
I always try to make sure there’s a certain amount of evergreen in the winter garden. Not just hedges and bushes, but also ground covers like hellebores, which have beautiful leaves, to cover the ground and ensure the garden doesn’t fall away to nothing.
Once you’ve combined evergreens with nicely formed trees and shrubs, begin to inject some winter flowering plants. Though less in number, they are all the more precious. I recommend winter flowering cyclamen, hellebores, the beautifully scented winter sweet (Chimonanthus) and witch hazels, which come in a wonderful range of colours.
What have you enjoyed most about creating your online course?
It was the collaboration with the team at Create Academy that I enjoyed the most because their interest in the learning process spurred me to think about my work with fresh eyes. While my colleagues in the studio and myself are completely familiar with the design process, it was an interesting challenge to explain the reasons behind the work. The directors were excellent at encouraging me to untangle the ideas behind what I do.
There’s a real clarity in the final programme but there is also nothing dry about it, with each section beautifully shot and formed. I’ve also loved having the opportunity to invite everyone into my garden. I’m very proud of it.
About the course
Dan Pearson’s Naturalistic Garden Design course explores the fundamental building blocks of great garden design.
The course grants access to 27 online lessons and a series of downloadable workbooks. It covers practical and philosophical aspects of the art, from learning how to plot plants for optimum structure, to choosing the right plants for your ecosystem, to planning the framework for your garden and learning to provide year-round interest through planting.
‘Naturalistic Garden Design’ goes live from 12 November 2021. Find out more about the course and preorder your access for £127 at createacademy.com.
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