Don’t let your heart rule your head when choosing plants warns gardening expert Guy Pullen

When choosing plants for the garden it is hard to know where to start. Of course, you need to start with plants that you like, but if this is your only criteria then you are in danger of planting a muddled mess of colours, shapes and textures.

For a successful planting scheme that looks as one, I pick a theme and stick to it rigidly. I have planted three gardens recently all with very different themes and all are filled with plants that I love, but not one plant could be successfully transferred into another of the gardens.

The themes were chosen for their suitability to their site, so a shady garden under deciduous trees was easily transformed into a woodland garden; an exposed site blasted by the wind and baked by the sun became a Mediterranean scrub and a broad border running next to
a beautiful old house became Sissinghurst Castle Gardens…in my mind.

And it is in your mind where the theme needs to take root. Once I had decided that I was planting an elegant English garden reminiscent of one of our best loved National Trust properties, the idea of adding tough and tenacious dwarf pines became abhorrent and likewise, the thought of polluting my Corsican ‘Maquis’ with soft, fragrant roses was anathema. By sticking to my theme I ensured that the garden looked like
it belonged together.

I sacrificed my need for my favourite plants for theme that is not only greater than the sum of its parts but that would be destroyed by the addition of one or two of my favourites.  So next time you’re in the garden centre, check the labels of your favourite plants to find out the eventual height and the preferred aspect and then stand back and think ‘will this fit my theme?’; if it doesn’t, be ruthless and move along.

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