Digging In: Plant Your Garden for You

By Jennifer Smith

Plant a garden that pleases you, first and foremost. People often wonder aloud, What will the neighbors think of my new garden? What will happen when I sell my house? Will my garden look out of step with the rest of the gardens on the street? To the final question my reply is, I hope so!  We need more front yard gardens that break the mold of expected shrubs, vast, unnecessary lawns and invasive ground covers. When it comes to selling your home, unless you plan to move in a few years, why worry? The new owners will either embrace your new garden or not. Just as they may love your bathroom wall color, or not. Fair warning though. I had a very extensive garden in a previous home; one I spent years creating. Once the house sold, the new owners dispensed with the gardens and replanted the lawn. It was sad to see, but gardens are ephemeral, often lasting only as long as the garden’s creator is on hand to tend to them. 

Back to planting a garden for you. Your garden should make you happy. It should nurture plants you love, be they native or cultivated. The more you enjoy your plant selection, the more apt you are to tend to your garden, expand it over time, perhaps adding more native plants. But, if you allow yourself to be pushed into a specific way to garden, chances are the garden will turn from joy to yet another chore. So, what to plant and how to plant it? 

Add native plants when they suit your garden. Remember, we are gardening, not undertaking habitat restoration. Native ironweed can look out of place and awkward in a small urban front yard, but Asclepias tuberosa fits in quite well. Second, opt for plants that do no harm and are not overly manipulated. The double-flowered coneflowers are rather useless to nature, but ‘Magnus’ has been a constant attractor to pollinators in my gardens. Chinese Privet, while still for sale, is highly invasive. Create your hedge, but with a less intrusive option: Do no harm. 

Couple cultivated plants with native plants. If you want that heirloom peony, have it! Then consider what you can partner with it that would be alluring to pollinators. When your garden displays peonies tucked within prairie dropseed and punctuated with tall, delicate stands of Liatris, your garden shows others that native and heirloom plants may live in harmony. It’s a beautiful reminder that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. You now have a balanced approach to plant selection. 

As we adopt a wider plant offering, one that includes native plants, we are expanding the traditional garden space to accommodate this new pallet. As a result, the traditional pillars of garden design are faltering a bit. No longer beholden to a four-foot bed extending from the house that accommodates shrubs and little else, we’re making large beds with graceful lines. 

With more plants comes more flexibility in design. Almost by necessity, your new garden planted with nature will be different than your neighbors’ garden. If you want your garden to inspire others to plant with nature, employ elements of formal design so even a novice gardener will understand or read the garden. In short, the garden should look intentional.

For example, if you desire a taller, wild garden, add elements that interject areas of calm and intention such as a gravel and stone path, a planting of shorter plants, and dare we say, even a strip of lawn along the public walk. A lawn, that transitions to a display of shorter plants that then becomes a more intermingled garden as you approach the house, allows viewers to follow the evolution of your landscape from lawn to a more natural looking garden. It shows that we can have traditional lawn, a bit of formality and a bit of wild, all at once. How extraordinary! It also tells them that all is well in your garden, that you haven’t planted it, walked away, and hoped for the best.

Jennifer Smith is an award-winning pollinator garden designer with Wimberg Landscaping.