One key way to make your garden artistic is to add vibrant colors. Flowers are great for accentuating wall fountains or making a stunning focal point in an ornate planter. For example, the Flame Nasturtium, blooms in masses of scarlet, adding a stunning contrast to green of a garden. The trumpet vine offers a similar alternative.
The red shades look great against dark foliage creating a dramatic effect. You can add colors that are in contrast, or colors that create harmony. Depending on the size for your space, you may choose to incorporate both, or one or the other.
If you have a line of shrubs, the addition of palmate leaved Japanese maples adds a stunning accent and a quiet touch of color as well. This adds a nice appearance of color, texture, and tint.
The golden leaf box elder will add a common look to your setting, but if you place it carefully, and only add one of the specimens, it can add a striking touch of color. A common elder can do the same thing, but make sure it is cut to the ground each year to make sure to stays bushy.
Flowering trees create many opportunities for adding colorful patches. It is best if these trees are placed with a solid backdrop of green foliage to get the best effect. This applies particularly to trees with loose, open foliage like the thorn, almond, and laburnum. Subjects like the horse chestnut are sufficiently dense in foliage to constitute their own background.
The use of bulbs in planting can create beautiful effects. These are perfect for areas that are less formal. This includes flowers like daffodil, crocus, scilla, and snowflake.
Arrange the bulbs in large groups of one color only, even though this is not the norm. In shady areas, along banks, consider adding polyanthus or lily of the valley, as they will create stunning features in the springtime.
Tropical gardens can be hard to maintain in non-tropical places, as well as rather costly. You can, however, create a sub-tropical effect on a small scale with specific plants. Make sure the ones chosen are the hardy varieties, and try not to place too closely to a formal setting.
The success of the garden depends on how well you are able to use the materials. If you require a more shaded garden consider the addition of trees like Staghorn sumach, Ailanthus, Aralia spinosa, and Salisburia adiantifolia.
Create a collection of hardy bamboos, yuccas, reeds (particularly Arundo conspicua and A. donax), pampas grass, and bold-foliaged plants like acanthus, polygonum, rhubarb, and rodgersia. Kniphofia can be introduced for its color value. In the line of smaller plants, a selection that would give a suggestion of exotic form include funkia, Bocconia cordata, crown imperial, Solomon's seal, coltsfoot, verbascum, ferns, and many others.
Creating a beautiful tropical-like garden will be dependent on the variety and character of the foliage. It also depends on your ability to care and maintain the plants so they last.
Hardy climbers are a desired addition to a garden because they create a graceful and beautiful material for the garden. The addition of pergolas, walls and fences, arches, and other effects are perfect for hiding house walls, creating a more natural setting. Climbers need these aspects as this is how they thrive and develop.
There is such a variety of examples of climber- covered houses around us, that it is remarkable that the possibilities of creating a beautiful picture on the house walls are so often overlooked. The myth that growth of this kind causes damp walls has already been disproved. Dampness only accounts for neglect of this part of the garden picture.
The treatment of walls with these climbers and creepers is the perfect way to tie the house into the garden. The informal clustering of the flowers creates a very natural and enjoyable accent. These also conceal sharp angles and hard ridges.
Be sure to add climbers that bloom through all seasons so there is never a stagnant period. Some ideas include climbers like roses, clematis, jasmines, honey-suckle, and wisteria.