Friday, July 13, 2018

What I Learned - Planting Without Beds

It's not quite as ridiculously hot anymore, and last weekend, there was a big clean up in the garden, so it looks very neat right now. While I bask in the fact that all the weeds (well, most of them) are gone, here is the next lesson i learned at the Fling. Pictures of the cleaned up garden will be coming soon - hopefully before the weeds move in again!

The next thing i noticed when looking back at my pictures of the Austin Fling is almost the opposite of the clean and orderly mulch & gravel I mentioned before - plants growing every which way they wants.

At the Lady Bird Johnson Wild Flower Center, there were desert-y plants spilling out of their bed:

And poppies blooming where they wanted
At Mirador, even though most of the garden was more structured, there were still exuberant plants going where they wanted
Manfreda in the vegetable garden
i think this is russelia equisetiformis - growing in the corner of the stairs
I think that part of the reason this worked so well was the consistency that the gravel mulch gave everything. I noticed a similar thing in Jenny Stocker's garden:
Aloe in the gravel
Wider shots of Jenny's garden show that "english cottage-y" style she has perfected. While it looks like plants are just growing everywhere, there's obviously a lot of thought that goes into which ones stay where. And some great structure with those walls.
repetition with color, form and plants everywhere
Three areas in particular in Jenny's garden caught my eye as great examples of 'garden beds without beds' - this first one features a big opuntia. In my garden, opuntia can sometimes look messy because it gets so overgrown.
here, the combination of room to grow, and other plants make it fit in beautifully
This next piece was in one of the "hallways" between garden rooms - plants were sitting in the gravel walkway.
it's obviously well maintained, but still very free


The last picture is of Jenny's fish - here in a sea of mexican feather grass. I would have been so tempted to add a border/edge right there in the front, but this is so much better. It looks like the fish could just swim off into the gravel.
and again, the same gravel as everywhere else. 
Thoughts on how to apply this lesson to my garden:
  • This is a bit cheating, since this is a style that i already have a lot of in my garden!
  • Like with the poppies that plant themselves in the DG - but i think i should apply some more of Jenny's editing (especially of the actual weeds!) to make it look a lot nicer. 
  • Plants spilling out of beds is something that happens naturally in my garden, since i never seem to think about how big the plant gets. 
  • I should remember that even if a plant plants itself, i should still take care of it & prune it back when needed. I have oceans of mexican feather grass. Since the older plants don't look as good, i should remove some of them. 
  • While all these gardens have plants outside of beds, they don't have weeds. I should weed more to make sure the pretty plants stand out from the self seeding weeds! 

14 comments:

  1. As you said, I think you're most of your way there. The weed thing is a constant issue for me, too, especially when weeds seem to grow faster than anything else.

    Jenny's garden was a big eye-opener for me as well. I'm going to leave plants more room to do their thing as long as I like how it looks.

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    1. Her garden was an eye opener in so many ways! Her editing skills are something to aim for.

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  2. I love the free feeling of Jenny's gravel garden too. I've thought it would be nice to see flowers pop up in the gravel area of my cutting garden but somehow all I ever get there is weeds, lots and lots of weeds. It occurs to me that larger size of the gravel in my garden (dug up from elsewhere in the garden when we removed our lawn) may be an issue there - plants (except weeds!) have a harder time coming up through it.

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    1. Have you tried seeding the plants you want in the fall, assuming you want wild flowers? That was how i got the poppies started... My other approach is to redefine the "weeds" as "flowers", but i don't think that's a good approach! :)

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  3. I got the same lesson from my first Fling too, from Shelagh Tucker's gravel garden right here in Seattle. She had let plants (mostly Mexican feather grass) seed themselves into her gravel, and I liked the free-wheeling way it looked. I think she had ground covers in the gravel too. When I put a gravel patio in my front garden a few years later, the first thing I did was plant woolly thyme right into the gravel.

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    1. Oh! that's a smart idea. I threw some wild flower seeds in different areas to get them started, but planting ground covers is a good idea too. Mexican feather grass doesn't need any help in my garden - it's busy planning world domination!

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  4. A good lesson. I need to learn the other part where one respects the edges at least a little bit. Jenny's garden is beautiful. It must have been wonderful to see it in person!

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    1. it really was! Like you - i need to remember that edges are important too... Jenny even says gardens like hers are not "low maintenance" even though they look it!

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  5. Gravel gardens are well suited to this look, as are woodland gardens mulched with wood chips, with wood-chip paths. I think it's only when lawn is used that you have to have an edging or other border, just to keep the runners out of the beds.

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    1. someone should tell my remaining Bermuda grass to stay out of the beds... of course, it just grows everywhere! As do the grass weed seeds in the spring. Only in my garden is nice fescue grass a "weed"!

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  6. Your recent garden design analysis posts are so good!

    With Arizona probably the world's center of arid landscape design (yep), they mostly use plants naturalistically without defined beds. That influenced me early on, but it was quite the tough sell to some clients even with good plant massing or hardscape, and some became ex-clients as a result!

    In green Central Texas edging is used often, and so is a greater diversity of styles than just "naturalistic"...sometimes all their edging works, other times it's overkill.

    As you say, it's maintaining or removing volunteers to keep the structure going.

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    1. Thank you! I think its been helping me see the garden in a new way, which is great. That whole "editing" skill is one i can work on more, i think... Always learning!

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  7. Educational post, well thought. Thank you!

    I'm struggling with the border between where my front slope ends and the street begins...a hard border, and an ugly thing it is.

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    1. Thank you!

      I have one of those borders in the front garden, between the garden and the side walk. I'm hoping the germander will grow to soften it, and even if it grows a little bit over the sidewalk, it won't get in anyone's way. I can't wait to see what you do with yours!

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