Growing Tiny Gardens: Fourth Steps, and Onward

Keep in mind balance, a color palette, and room to grow.

Choosing Your Plants for Your Hypertufa Trough

After having broken ground in preliminary reconnaissance of the market (step one); having built up inventory (step two); having gotten comfortable handling and working with plants and figuring out their growing patterns, kind of (step three); the time has come to work with the dirt.

Choosing plants for the trough is like weaving a tapestry: you think about balance, color, compatibility and complementarity.

First thought: Is the trough going to be a full sun trough or a part shade trough?
Second thought: Is the trough going to stand alone or will it be part of a larger trough installation?
Third thought: How much growing room will the respective plants require (read: how to space the plants) and what are the depth requirements for the roots?

Even if you have not achieved 100 percent competence in these matters, put something in the dirt. It's time to let the plants do what they were made to do. Your job is to watch, tend, clip now and then, and try again if the trough is telling you it's not happy.

Keep in mind a few key principles:

~ Odd numbers of plants create a more natural-looking arrangement than even numbers.
~ Introduce into your trough a mixture of vertical growers, sprawling flow-ers, and creeping ground coverage (each of these categories will be addressed in upcoming posts).
~ Try to stick with a color pallet. For example, dark bluish-green conifers work well with pink-tinged sedums and gentle mossy thyme. Bright green conifers work with reds and lime-green grasses or herbs.

Think of the trough as your canvass and the plants as your palette.

This smaller trough contains a vertical Mexican
Feather Grass (Stipa tenuissima), a sprawling miniature
Cotoneaster 'Tom Thumb', and a low-growing
red sedum (Sedum rubrotinctum), which adds
a splash of color.

Soft hues define this stunning trough design: Vertical Lavender,
low-growing, pink-tinged Sedum siebaldii and sprawling
beloved Sedum angelina

Aspiration: To create living art that evokes pleasure.
Garden Lesson: The true beauty of the trough will come in time, sometimes months after the planting. Bear this in mind. Plants grow. Plant your trough with care and forethought and then be patient while nature does its work.
Life Lesson: Be vigilant and dutiful in the choices you make ~ allowing for a flourish of whimsy and spontaneity ~ and be patient. Time does its work.


Go here to read First Steps and subsequent ones