As a garden designer, many of my design requests from clients come with a list of plants as long as my arm that I must somehow cram include in the garden plan. Being an inveterate plant addict lover myself, I always find it fun to help these folks fit each of their plant friends into the garden.

I mean – plant fanatics – those are my people, you know?

But every so often a client requests something different. I had a client recently who couldn’t care less about flowers, told me she’d not be doing any garden maintenance if she could help it, and just wanted things to look green, lush, and fresh – with interesting structural and textural contrasts in all that greenery. The plants, in other words, were to play a supporting role in the landscape, with broad swathes framing the patio and the house.

That’s the kind of design request I imagine architects getting. Most landscape architects seem to design with plants in broad brush strokes, using 50 of this and 20 of that to create an effect. And that’s really fun to look at, but those gardens often lack something. Soul, life – just a few of the touches that show the designer actually loves the individual plants they chose. Does that sound too hippie?

So I was stoked to get to design in a way that’s different to what most of my clients request, and to get to do those broad architectural drifts with a plant-lover’s eye. The garden hasn’t been installed yet, so I don’t have any photos for you, but doing this plan made me wonder…

Are you a drifter?

Do you design with broad brush strokes and use plants en masse for their structural qualities, or do you fall in love with ten new plant-friends at the nursery and then bring them home and try to find places for them all? Or something in between?

Let me know in the comments below…

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