Whether you’re considering hiring us or just interested in learning about the landscaping bed design process, I should be able to provide you with some golden nuggets to keep.
Let’s look at the most recent design that we closed. The first thing I like to start with is choosing the plants that will act as corner pieces, or plants to compliment the pillars of this house. If you want a more tropical look, I recommend going with red sisters. If you want a more formal look, I recommend going with blue point juniper. In this particular design, we are going to go with blue point junipers.
Okay, next, let’s figure out what we are going to use for the back row of plants that will go up against the house. You’ll usually want some type of shrub that will grow taller than the middle and front rows of plants. In this case, we are going to utilize the sweet viburnum as it’ll create a visible hedge once everything is mature. Also, it was requested by this customer. For the smaller bed to the left, the customer requested we use something that won’t grow above the height of the windows, so we are going to use boxwoods, as they will stay small.
Now, let’s go ahead and create the front row of plants. I usually go with Florida’s bread and butter front row plant, which is the liriope, but you can utilize other plants such as Aztec grasses, blue daze, or any other smaller growing plant that won’t get more than about a foot.
Next, I’m going to fill in some of the larger gaps with primary focal points such as date palms and crape myrtles. Here, I’m going to utilize some date palms in the middle and will have a pillaring crape myrtle off to the side for balance.
With the focal points in place, we can start thinking about accents for them. For crape myrtles, I like putting a circle of small flowers around them. Let’s go ahead and use fashion azaleas. For the date palm trees, I’m going to accent them with agave, boulders, and African irises. We have some space in front of that first date palms so let us utilize a 2nd front row plant. I’m going to use some blue daze to fill in the space and any other gaps up to the crape myrtle.
We are pretty close to being done but I see some space along the walkway that can be filled with a plant that’ll grow a little taller than the front row, but smaller than the back row. Let’s use flax lilies as they meet the conditions and will continue the tropical theme.
Alright, with all of that in place, this design is finished. I don’t like to oversaturate designs and usually have a rule of thumb to keep plants 3 feet apart from one another so they have space to grow into and mature. If we take a look at the overhead view of this design, I’m satisfied with the spacing and overall plant coverage.
To simplify what was just done, here’s the order of what to install from first to last. Start with your corner plants, then move to the back row, front row, primary focal points, accent plants/ornaments, and then, if there are still gaps to fill in, utilize a 2nd front row or middle row of plants. Now, let’s see the final rendered Image that I’ll send over to the customer…
