Sunday, July 8

Repeat After Me
Repetition an important part of a well-designed garden

We’ve all seen it; the garden that’s a hodgepodge of plants, birdhouses, arbors, boulders and brick. And many times we’ve winced.

The most challenging aspect of gardening is not growing plants. It’s arranging them in ways that create a simple, balanced, unified landscape. And of all the important principles that go into making gardens successful, unity — harmoniously combining various elements to create a feeling of oneness — is the most important.

Accomplishing a sense of unity isn’t difficult. By learning to combine a few basic design principles — simplicity, variety, emphasis, balance, sequence, and scale — our gardens can become more than the sum of their parts.

Russian sage mirrors the form of specimen grasses while the monolithic shape of Juniperus communis ‘Hibernica’ repeats throughout this border. Coordinating yellow and purple plantings also pull the eye along the grass path.

Simplify
One of the easiest design principles to understand and use in your garden is simplicity. It just calls for eliminating any unnecessary or inconsistent elements. And one of the easiest ways to do that is by choosing to repeat colors, shapes, materials, etc. throughout your landscape. By duplicating a plant or group of plants in the same border and/or in different borders within the landscape, you allow that plant to have more impact and simplify its overall effect.

Repetition also helps move our eyes through the design by providing something familiar to look at. Perennials are one of the best groups of plants to repeat, but gardeners often make the mistake of using too many single clumps of different perennials. This is much less effective than repeating larger groupings of fewer varieties.

When you choose a perennial to repeat, make sure that it’s one that looks good during most of the growing season. These workhorse perennials should have a long season of bloom and great foliage plus be low maintenance and unaffected by pests or disease. My favorites include “Max Frei” geranium, “Rozanne” geranium, “Hummelo” stachys and epimediums for the front of the border. “Zagreb” coreopsis, “May Night” salvia, “Autumn Joy” sedum and hostas are good choices for the middle of the border, while blue indigo (Baptisia australis), peonies and grasses like miscanthus, switchgrass or feather reed grass make great backdrops.

Repeating hardscape materials is just as important as repeating plants in the garden.

Form and texture
Using the same plant isn’t the only way to create repetition in your borders. Repeating different plants that have similar form, texture or color also works.

Ornamental grasses are especially good choices. Their arching structure and narrow leaves easily pull the eye through a planting bed. And by using more than one variety you gain differing heights and longer flowering times. One great combination for full sun is a specimen plant like Miscanthus sinensis “Gracillimus” combined with odd-numbered groups of prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolopsis). Mixing Siberian iris with these grasses works well, too, because the grass-like leaves of the iris are similar in shape to the grasses.

Repeating flower color in the garden doesn’t necessarily mean repeating the same plants. There are many perennials that flower at the same time with similar colors. For instance, the blue-flowered combination of Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) intermixed with either Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) or vinca minor makes a great spring display. For summer, try blue-flowering balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) with Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), the yellow flowers of “Zagreb” coreopsis together with “Hyperion” daylily, or the pinks of purple coneflowers and “Gateway” Joe-pye weed.

The principle of repetition is used in several ways in this garden. The flower colors, the contours of the sheared hedges, the coloration of the paving materials and even the repeated shapes of the urns blend to add a sense of unity to the landscape.

The power of foliage
Foliage color can be as effective as flower color for providing repetition. The lime-green leaves of “Golden Tiara” hosta are beautiful placed next to the lime-green leaves of lady fern (Athyrium felix-femina). Or, for a fresh look in the shady border, back up the yellow flowers of Corydalis lutea with the yellow foliage of a gold-edged hosta like “Sagae” or “Frances Williams.”

While working to create unity in your landscape, don’t forget to repeat the materials that make up the hardscapes in your design. Materials used for the walkway and patio, as well as benches, arbors, trellises, or pergolas, should remain consistent and should also match the style of your home and the materials found in its construction. (i.e. If the front walk is made of brick, use the same brick to construct a patio. Or, if your retaining wall is flagstone, use flagstone steppers through a bed or as an edging, or use a flagstone bench in the garden.) Unlike most plant materials, hardscapes remain consistent year round and can carry your design even when the garden is not at its peak.

Marcy Stewart-Pyziak teaches gardening and horticulture classes locally and at the Morton Arboretum and the Chicago Botanic Gardens. With a degree in ornamentals horticulture from the University of Illinois, this former Will County Extension horticulturist also gardens on her own 10 acres near Wilton Center.