For those of us in the northern hemisphere, winter is the perfect time to take a really good, dispassionate look at our gardens. What we see may not thrill us. With no flowers to distract us and all the deciduous trees and shrubs bare, it's rather like looking at a black and white photograph. Some of my first articles focused on the "bare bones" of the garden, but that was nearly two years ago and I think it's time to revisit this topic from a slightly different perspective.
Much has been written about the garden in winter. Frankly, I don't spend much time in my garden when the temperatures dip low. But I do see the bones as I scurry from house to car and back. Views out of windows become important, too, when you're house-bound.
So, take a tour of your garden without the blinders of summer glory. What do you see?
Is your garden a barren expanse, with a few large trees and shrubs dotted around, now that your perennial beds and borders are sleeping? Does your house poke up out of the ground with a toothed fringe of "foundation plants" instead of being anchored firmly into the landscape? If your neighbors are close, do you spend your winter looking at their kid's swing set? Are they looking downhill, right into your bedroom?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then it's time to think about form and shape in your garden.
The title graphic for this article illustrates the basic shapes of plants; the tools with which we can create pleasing form in our gardens. In winter, these shapes are most evident in evergreen plants although the delicate tracery of the stems and branches of deciduous trees and shrubs can provide an added layer of interest. But, we're not going to talk about plants just yet. Plants come later, after you've worked out the form.
Playing With Shapes
Simple shapes can be combined in many ways to form the massing that will provide your garden with good bones; pleasing in winter and a framework to enhance the glory or your summer flowers and foliage.
Let's start with two basic shapes, the rectangle and the circle. Cutting the circle in half, gives us another one. Most gardens start around the house and move outward, so we need a house.
Most houses are basically rectangular in shape - you can just imagine that this one has a roof. Like many houses, it's just sitting on a bare site like a bump. Or maybe, it's new and the builder installed typical foundation planting. A pointy evergreen at each corner and a couple of shrubs along the face. If this planting survives, it will never be "good bones". The corner evergreens (probably forest conifers) will outgrow the position and dwarf the house in time, while the other shrubs are too far apart to ever form a massing. Perennials planted in between the foundation shrubs can make a connection in summer, but in winter, the truth will out; the lone plants will look forlorn - they know they can't truly make the house become one with the land.
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