It's time to be ruthless

GARDENS:SO FAR, IT has been a good year in the garden, even though it seemed as if things would never get started after the bone-chilling winter.

For the most part, we’ve had the right amount of rain and warmth, and not too many of the gales that leave the borders looking as if a couple of cows have taken a nap in them. At least that is the situation at the time of writing. (Who knows what meteorological insults will have been hurled at the garden by the time you are reading this?) A well-behaved growing year such as this one is valuable, because it gives us a norm against which to measure our gardens in the future. And early autumn, before the big wither of winter sets in, is a good time to take stock: the garden is rarely fuller, and it is easy to see what needs to go, what needs to stay, and what needs remedial treatment. In many gardens, my own included, it’s usually a matter of taking things out, or, as Dublin gardener Helen Dillon puts it: “editing the garden”. Woody plants can grow too large for their billets, and cast too much shade. And on the herbaceous front, plants may be cramped, or make uneasy companions for their neighbours. In my case, our garden is intensively worked, with food-growing, hen-keeping and compost-making, as well as the usual ornamental goings-on. Simplicity is hard to achieve, but it is what I crave. I don’t mean minimalism, with just a handful of plant species, some gravel and a sheet of water; I mean clarity and ease, a place where the mind and eye can rest without wanting to edit the view.

This blissful state of affairs does not happen magically. It involves a fair amount of thought and ruthlessness, in other words, continual and careful revising. Over the years, I’ve used a few basic rules of garden editing, which I would like to share:.

Always edit out the following:

Some plants are just wrong, and should be cut out of the garden composition as soon as possible. These include plants that are too large for the space, plants that are doing poorly, plants that require too much cosseting to look good, plants that you dislike (even if they were given by a dear friend) and plants that don’t pay their way. This last category is important in a small garden, where every plant should look good all year, or at least not be offensive when not flowering, berrying, or doing its thing.

Avoid competing ideas

Certain plants draw your eye, because they are beautiful (Japanese maples, for example), because they are bizarre (corkscrew hazel), or because they are otherwise remarkable (plants with variegated leaves). In each case, once you have ascertained that they are worthy of being in your garden (some variegated plants are absolute dogs, in my opinion), let them be the main such plant in that particular view. A clump of three Japanese maples, for instance, is less impressive than a singular, well-placed specimen, while a plant such as corkscrew hazel needs careful locating. Similarly, if you have stripy- or spotty-leaved plants, don’t mix them together: surround each one with calming green. The same applies to pieces of garden sculpture and other eye-catching features – one is plenty in any given view.

Avoid monotony

Too much busy-ness is tiring, but lack of variety is stultifying. If you have a green leaf-scape in an area, use contrasting foliage shapes to make the scene stimulating: strappy-leaved plants look good with broad ones, as do frondy ones. Ferns and hostas are a classic combination for a shady corner. Flower heads that are similarly-shaped, but in different colours look well together; or that are the same colour, but different shapes. The picture is grounded by the similarities, and is lent dynamism by the differences. A simple illustration is where you might plant a group of astilbes: instead of going for just one colour, you use two or three different tones of pink. The elegant, plumed flower heads are comfortably the same, but the tints are excitingly different. An extension of this idea is just to use plants from a single habitat: they will be similar in many ways, but quite different in others. Prairie plants are alike in their lanky airiness, and warm and chintzy tones, but they may be distinct from each other in many other ways.

Edit before you plant

Much editing can be avoided months or years beforehand by making smart decisions. These might include choosing not to acquire plants unless you know that they will work in your garden. When planting, make sure that it is in the right place with the right soil and conditions, and – very importantly – at the right distance from other plants and structures.