An Issue with Garden Design

In 2015, our two native plant areas, the Road Garden and the Parking Lot Garden, were planted in different styles. Three years later, one style is demanding more maintenance from us. 

Plants in the Parking Lot Garden were positioned randomly - we literally opened up each five-pack plug case and tossed the plugs here, here, there, here and over there. The resulting bed is a confusion of multiple layers and colours:

Parking Lot Garden in 2017

For example, Three Flowered Avens blossom in May. After blossoming, here are the grey-pink seed heads of Three Flowered Avens showing through other plants that will soon grow above them.

Mid June: grey-pink seed heads of Three Flowered Avens just showing above the surrounding plants

Plants in the Road Garden were arranged in individual clumps and positioned front to back based upon their heights. Here is our original layout - creases, mud, comments and all. Notice that the Three Flowered Avens were eventually planted in the lower right hand corner:

Here are Three Flowered Avens in the Road Garden this spring:

Now at the beginning of July, the Three Flowered Avens have gone to seed. There is nothing else to grow in this area and, indeed, some of the other plant groupings have failed. There are now unsightly blank areas filling with weeds, demonstrating gardening failure. These need to be weeded and replanted - right now!

Yarrow and Goldenrod gone - and, off picture, just to the right of the Giant Hyssop, spent Three Flowered Avens

The spent and failed areas of the Road Garden are filling with opportunistic weeds. Actually, that is exactly what weeds are - opportunistic. Whereas in the Parking Lot Garden, when spent plants and failed plants occur, these areas are smothered by surrounding native plants. One does not notice this natural activity in a randomly planted garden. In a tightly designed planting area, any failure is totally obvious.

So, in conclusion, plant randomly and let nature do the maintenance.

One caveat, there is random and then there is random. But that will be the topic of a future post.