When designing a landscape one of the first things that comes to mind are the plants. Observing a thoughtfully arranged planting design is a bit like watching a professional athlete on the field or court—it looks a lot easier to do when you’re merely a happy bystander. If you’ve ever tried to grow a garden or maybe even just a small houseplant, you’re probably familiar with the difficulty of maintaining healthy, good looking plant life. An important part of keeping the plants in your businesses’ landscape or home garden in good working order is to have an understanding of the needs and habits of the plants that will be utilized in the design. A professional like Shippey Landscape Architecture has a broad background in planting design and can help ensure that your next project is a success.
Over the next five posts I’ll be writing about important things to consider when you decide to make improvements to the plantings on your property. A well functioning and aesthetically pleasing landscape requires a multi-pronged approach. With that in mind, today we start the Planting Design Series. Each post in this series will cover some of the most important elements in planting design. Today, we will start with plant scale.
1. Proper Plant Scale
The importance of proper plant scale sounds like a simple concept, but that still doesn’t seem to prevent landscapers and homeowners from choosing plants that are either too large or too small for their landscaping projects. When crafting a planting plan, it’s crucial to carefully consider the mature sizes of plant material to be used. For example, when placing plants under a window, it’s best to think about their height at full maturity. All too often tall growing plants like Schip Laurels are seen blocking views into and out of many homes and businesses, when the original goal was to create a neat, low hedge against the building. A better choice for this situation would be a shrub that has a lower, spreading habit such as the Densiformis Yew.
This photo of a commercial development in Cleveland, TN provides an example of improper plant scale for the site. These Loropetalums are way too tall!
This is the same commercial development after it was redesigned by Shippey Landscape Architecture. As you can see, the plants are lower (improved visibility), and more thoughtfully arranged.
Another important factor to consider is the relationship between the scale of the plant and the scale of the project site. Those Daylilies may look great sitting on the rack at the garden center but they will look way too lonely when they’re planted in a bed at 5 foot on center along the side of your two-story home. You want your planting design to have good visual weight and balance with the existing conditions on site. A good rule of thumb is to make decisions based on the backdrop for the area to be planted first (a large shade tree or hardscape feature such as a wall, fence or a patio) and only then choose smaller trees, shrubs, and flowers that complement and balance the scene. Think about it this way, if you were building a home you wouldn't install the walls before a good foundation is constructed.
Plant growth habits also factor in with plant scale. I’ve seen planting situations where a property owner unwittingly planted something like English Ivy, Creeping Liriope, or even Bamboo in a place where there wasn’t enough room for these aggressive growers. Every plant grows in a particular way. The plants I listed above grow by underground rooting systems, which makes controlling their growth limits a difficult task if they’re not planted in a suitable location.
Overgrown English Ivy creeping onto a tree. Without regular maintenance, the ivy will quickly cover this tree (which leads to health problems with the tree) and the surrounding landscape.
Photo Source: walterreeves.com
In the next post I’ll be focusing on another common issue related to plant scale: plant spacing. In that post you’ll learn about the importance and practical applications of proper plant spacing. Until then, try to notice the scale of plants that you see in the landscapes you encounter on a daily basis. Consider the scaling and, more specifically, think about what makes the scale of the plantings good or bad.