What makes a beautiful garden?

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I love my garden. I also enjoy visiting other gardens, just to appreciate their beauty and sometimes to inspire me and garner fresh ideas. On a recent garden visit as I strolled alongside a huge herbaceous border I asked myself ‘Why is this garden beautiful and mine is just a mess?’ It wasn’t just a question of size – bigger isn’t necessarily more attractive. It wasn’t about the choice of plants – I have many of the same plants. It wasn’t simply about the lush planting either. Or the colour scheme. Or whether the plants were pruned or trained into a particular shape. Or the mixture of shapes and sizes. In the end I concluded that what makes a border such as this aesthetically pleasing and my border a jumbled mess is – repetition. I love plants and can hardly ever resist buying a plant or two every time I go to a garden centre, plant nursery, charity plant sale or open garden. But I generally just buy one of each type. I know it isn’t really all that apparent in this photo – the border was so long that the repeating pattern isn’t that evident in a snap of a short section – but the same plants were repeated at intervals and this gave the whole a harmonious overall effect. My borders tend to be just a collection of plants I like, stuffed in wherever I can find a space (although I do try to keep the smaller plants closer to the edges so I can see them!) The good news is that this problem isn’t that difficult to rectify, since many plants, once established, produce runners or offsets or clumps that can be split into several new plants. I started this morning by removing rooted sections of Phlox and Sisyrinchium (which I have at one end of a border outside the kitchen window) and pushing them in at intervals further along. I hope that this repetition, along with the contrasting sizes and foliage shapes, will produce a pleasing overall effect. Watch this space! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2022.