HOW do you plant and how do you like the garden to look? Some love to see their plants as islands in a nice sea of cultivated earth, scuffed and hoed so that no intruder may encroach on the elbow-room carefully provided. Such is the attention to bare earth in some places that the plants sometimes seem to be of secondary importance.
Of course, where trees and shrubs are grown, space must be allowed for growth and clever and far-seeing as we may seem, carefully checking on eventual spread and height, more often than not we over-plant and fail to make adequate provision for full development. There is no real harm in that, and most gardeners would opt for more now rather than later. Besides, all trees and shrubs will not succeed equally, and long before full size is reached the fickle gardener may tire of one thing or another - if nature has dispatched it sooner.
The average garden can only accommodate so many woody plants without tortuous pruning and cutting-back. Thus, the over-enthusiasm and greed of the novice (and we all fit this category when presented with a new patch or a bare corner) must in a few years give way to considered decisions on what may stay and what must depart.
The planting of woody things does not bother me; it is the approach to and the use of herbaceous plants, bulbs, annuals, biennials and bedding plants that irks me. Why do so many gardeners insist on treating these as though they needed the space of a shrub or even a tree? Economics may be the given cause in some instances - too much ground and too lean financial resources - but that is really no excuse. Annuals are not expensive and a few packets of seeds will hardly break the bank.
Annuals or bedding plants set out now and well spaced apart in a sea of cultivated soil may eventually meet up in September, just when it is time to get rid of them and to prepare for spring planting. Perhaps such a gardener really does delight in hoeing and in keeping plants apart.
lam not one for the hoc at all (dangerous implements entirely). So I opt for dense planting. Shoulder-to-shoulder the plants are put in, be they herbaceous. annuals or biennials. I just hate the sight of bare earth, indecent it is and it fills the mind with bad thoughts, mainly bad thoughts of weeds. Too much bare ground leads to too many weeds.
So under trees, among shrubs and in areas filled with spring bulbs, the plants are put in thickly and I am all in favour of prudish gardeners who cover up their bare bits likewise.
Happily, I find this approach is very fashionable and is certainly considered very chic on the continent. The gaps of spring and early summer quickly fill as new growth develops on established plants and annuals and biennials such as foxgloves, honesty, sweet rocket, violas, fever few and mallow seed about, filling any available space. In early summer there will also be unwanted weeds but these can be removed with a trowel; the swathe of a hoc is much too dangerous for this sort of gardening. A discerning eye which can distinguish wanted from unwanted weeds is required the average gardener will learn very quickly.
THIS new taste, which is most evident in Germany and in Holland will be seen there in public parks and gardens where adventurous gardeners treat their flowers and flowering grasses rather differently to the traditional Irish or British way. Our way was to isolate each group, an island of lupins and then an island of daylilies and after a little gap an island of meadowrue. There are no islands allowed in these new gardens and plants are encouraged to mingle, mix and invade each other, running in and out in a mad, merry dance
It is a style which will not be suitable for all perennials any more than it will suit all gardeners. But it suits a great many of the things we grow so let your garden flow, loosen up and be less neurotic about it, we all have corners where this sort of wild look will be ideal.