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!