How to create stunning garden borders - essential tips

Would you like to know the really practical aspects of creating a stunning border like these ones at West Dean in Sussex? Your garden borders are the first thing that anyone sees when they come into your garden and they're all the color and they're probably the bits that you enjoy the most, so I've come here to West Dean to talk to head gardener and garden writer Tom Brown about the way he plans a border, how he plants a border and how he keeps it going and all the judicious editing on the way. It's Alexandra here from the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel I'll put links to West Dean in Sussex in the description below and also any other resources that we might mention and there'll be timestamps so if you have a particular question that you'd like answered you can jump to that just by clicking on the timestamp. If you're new here, the Middlesized Garden uploads weekly with gardening tips, ideas and inspiration, so if you want to see it when you open up YouTube then click the subscribe button and if you'd like YouTube to tell you when a new video is uploaded then tap the notifications bell. West Dean Gardens are part of West Dean College of Art and Conservation and there's been a garden on this site since 1622. Many of the trees around here are hundreds of years old. In the early 19th century the gardens were renovated and laid out, the walled kitchen garden was created and some of the glass houses were built and at the end of the 19th century an amazing pergola and walkway were created and also the glass houses were added to. So this is very much a late Victorian garden, it's laid out as it was. In the storm of 1987 a great deal of destruction was caused and since then the gardens have been restored and renovated and that act of renovating them and taking them forward into the 21st century is being carried on by Tom Brown. So Tom, what's your starting point for creating a border? I mean do you make a list of the plants that could be in that sunny place or that shady place or do you start with structural plants or how do you do it? I've been fortunate enough to sort of look at different types of borders at different stages in my career I suppose. I've had some situations where I've had a complete blank canvas, an empty bed or I've had a situation where I've got an established border that I need to embellish or enhance but the process is pretty much the same. So I pick a theme or a colour palette that I want to work with or work with and identify my tall plants, medium-sized plants and the short plants and also accent plants that fit within that theme or that colour palette. So I've got sort of four lists on a piece of paper then start to boil that down and I would say trying to boil that down into probably a lot fewer than you're comfortable with to begin with but ultimately you end up with a real cracking list. Once you've got that short list and you've got your piece of paper you start to think right I need some height and I need some repetition in here. So in the border we're in at the moment we've got the cardoons, the sinaras that are our accent plants at the back of the border, the tall plants if you like and they're repeated so they bounce from left to right as you go down the border because rhythm and repetition are absolutely key and you think that rhythm and repetition are going to be the factors that decipher a good border and a great border so often less is more in terms of planting and in terms of the message that you're trying to get get across. So put those big structural plants at the back and make sure they bounce and rhythm all the way down the border and then start to bring in some of those medium-sized plants so it might be phlox paniculata or asters those sort of cushioned plants that are going to give you lots of flower at a particular time and then start looking at the front of your border so it might be the salvia nemorosa or the germanic irises that you start to put in and when you're putting all these different components together be aware of contrast so whether it's rounded foliages or sawed foliage upright or spiked flowers like foxgloves or rounded daisy-like flowers like peonies for example try and put contrasting plants next to each other so contrasting foliage contrasting flowers because if you've got two plants that look the same it's very difficult for them to get your attention as you walk past whereas if you've got a right upright foxglove and a nice rounded hummock of salvia then they sort of complement each other in a contrastingly strange strange way. And so apart from colors is there any other kind of theme or idea that you might go for when you're planning a border? Yeah the principles are pretty pretty universal about putting plants together and it could be subtropical planting it could be more of an arid sort of alpine style again it's all about working with heights and accents and and rhythm and repetition in that because you want your eyes to work a bit harder than your feet when you come to a border so if you come into a garden and let's say for example iris jane phillips the lovely blue germanic iris that's one of my favorites if you walk into an enclosed space and if you've got iris jane phillips flowering in four or five different spots in that garden you walk in and your eye is instantly drawn and bounces around the garden before you've even taken a step and it feels much more cohesive and natural that way as well so um i think the whether you're working with irises or you're working with banana palms the the principle is the same. And what percentage of a border do you think needs to be either perennials or annuals or evergreens i mean is there a formula or was it just instinct? Over the years i've come to the conclusion that the majority of the plantings should be permanent and so i would say about 80% and the reason i say that is because a lot of us are a time poor we haven't got a huge amount of time to spend in our gardens and also the cost of sort of replacing these annuals too so with me i tend to have about 80% of permanent planting but then i have a cast of annuals that i will grow and pop into those borders and to give me the fireworks and that lift because when we visit gardens quite often we'll go away saying oh do you remember the alliums or do you remember those lovely tulips you want to have a memorable element in the border and if you can achieve that throughout the seasons um that's i think of urging on a very successful border if you can do that. And is there a rule as to how many varieties of plants you can have in a border to keep it looking lush but not messy? Sort of i would say again less is more and i think i would rather have bigger clumps of fewer plants than smaller clumps of lots of different plants and i always like in a border can be quite a hostile place for plants you know it's survival of the fittest in a lot of ways so if you can plant things in drifts let's say a groups of seven nine eleven you've got quite a nice substantial clump and that clump is big enough that if on the edges of that clump they're fighting and battling with their neighbours and you lose a couple from the edge you've still got that really strong core that's delivering that particular quality from the flower that that you want so when you're working with these sorts of borders you do find that some plants just aren't don't cut the mustard and they do tend to disappear and it might be if they look weaker and aren't happy then move them into another part of the garden because this particular border is a bit like a rough school playground you know the strongest survive um but where i've got cardoons in this border and i've got oryngiums that like the space they like the open aspect a couple of the cardoons have lent forward so the oryngiums at the very front of the clump are doing quite well but the ones further back are being out competed by the cardoon so this autumn i'll lift those and either move those clear of the cardoon or move them to another part of the garden there's been quite a lot of questions from the youtube viewers and quite a few people have asked questions along the lines of what plants um sort of mingle together without looking messy there's this war that you speak of was a playground jostling in this border and really how you how you sort that out and how you prevent it from just turning into chaos so when i i form a clump of a plant i think of a tadpole shape so i have the main body of the clump and then the tail will often then disappear off into the back or will then dovetail into another tadpole that's got the large clump there editing is very important so when you've got borders at august i often think it's a good time of year to review what's happened because in august everything's at its maximum capacity so you can see how much something's spread but with this sort of thuggish environment you do get the bullies in the border and quite often i'll go through with a notepad and it can be quite civilized with a gin and tonic at the end of the day and actually write down and take pictures of that particular aster that's trebled in size over the last sort of four or five months and then make a note to say in the autumn or the spring reduce that back by 50 percent so you're trying to address that balance every autumn or spring but you're making those notes and making those photos in the august so you're doing it well in advance because i guarantee you when it comes to the autumn or the spring you think now where was that aster where how far did it go out you do have to be the puppet master you do have to have that moment where you just go in there blow the playground whistle and get everybody organized again can you recommend some good sort of successions of plants sure i mean with the perennial side of things you've got your this is the backbone of the border that should be there all the time but then i often use a cast of of contenders that i want to be more firework like in their in their what they deliver in a border and again it's that memorable thing that people can take away so i would start the season sort of january time by sowing things like scabius atropurperia daucus carota the wild carrot amimagus verbena benariensis and just have sort of 20 of those that i'm growing from seed so they don't have to be too expensive but they're coming along from january because they're hardy annual so you can start them quite early and they'd be looking to go into the border about end of march when you've done all your mulching and cutting down and that's ready to go you then look at tulips april may time so tulips would be your first big performance they would then start to die down and i said look at alliums as a succession from that and you can get some really big dramatic alliums and again planting them in in groups of 10 15 throughout your planting some at the back of the border some at the front because at that time of year we haven't got the very big plants that are starting to fight for space at the back once your alliums are done that's when your scabius and your daucus will then start to flower and give you that early summer color sort of through until july august time and then i'm a big fan of gladioli i think people often see them as quite old-fashioned but there's a wonderful selection of miniature gladioli that are available to us gardeners now they don't need staking and you can put them towards the front of the border and they almost act like a summer tulip so they'll give you that rocket of color and again they're not going to break the bank if you order a few bulbs and they'll give you that flower power right the way through until sort of september october time and that's when the daisy family really come in so things like the rudbeckias the solidigos the helleniums make sure you and the asters make sure you've got some of those in your border because they will pick up the baton when a lot of other plants are sort of taking a deep breath because they're exhausted from the summer the daisy family then say right it's our turn in august september october look tremendous how deep should a garden border be i always think you want to feel sort of slightly immersed in a border so if it's a very thin strip then you haven't got the ability to play with perception and that height i would say probably looking at if you can a couple of meters two or three meters just so you've got enough enough depth so that height can sort of flow up and down as you look down the border so give yourself enough room to play i would say and two or three meters should do that so presumably you think if you've got a garden that's perhaps a bit narrow and better to have a big border on one side rather than two slightly narrower borders on either side would you say i've sort of got to the stage where that's sort of that 360 experience is quite interesting and if you look at a border from say the lawn and you've got your border and then the fence you're very much a spectator of what's happening if you've got a narrow border a narrow garden excuse me and you can create a winding path that sort of meanders left to right you've then got that ability to create a wider border on one side and a slightly narrow border that you can echo the planting on the other and then it flips back and reverses so with a excuse me very narrow garden you can create that depth by sacrificing the depth on the other side so when you're walking through a border if you can feel slightly immersed i think it just goes up a notch what you take away from it now we'll come to the sort of practical aspects of of actually planting and choosing a border and one of the things that i'm quite curious about is you know how do you personally actually plant plants do you dig the hole exactly the size of the root or do you dig it you know the size of the root plus a half which i think is what's usually recommended and do you differently advocate people watering their plants before they go in an old boss of mine said you never get that opportunity to saturate the root ball again once it's in the ground so with if you're buying plants get a small bucket particularly in warm weather and drop the plant into the bucket of water until the air bubbles stop coming up you know then that that root ball is totally saturated it almost gives it a really good start because then trying to put water back into the center that root ball is almost impossible once you've covered it with soil i like to plant smaller plants and more of them because i find that it gives me more freedom when it comes to creating those drifts if you've got three plants it's very difficult to come away from creating a triangle whereas if you've got seven smaller plants you can really start to get some movement with the clump and when it comes to planting i think you want to think about what those roots are going to do so if you've got a very small hole and compacted sides you put the plant in the roots are really going to struggle to penetrate out and find the establishing sort of nutrition and water that they need if you've got a trowel and you can just sort of loosen the the soil up around the root ball those roots are going to be able to punch through that so so much easier and you'll find establishment is better so i i dig a big enough hole to make sure that establishment is um is successful and when we're planting those first three weeks are critical so i'm always there with some water for the first three weeks just to make sure things are established once they're established they tend to be happier and be able to fend for themselves rather than a little bit of water one month and a little bit of water the next month because it just drags the whole process of establishment as if you can really bed them in and say right you're on your own chaps and get on and do we have to stick to the spacing recommended on the label i work at about a foot spacing and again working with smaller plants if you're trying to create a clump so if we think about plants such as phlox if you can buy some nine centimeter plants what you're looking for is a clump of phlox you're not looking for three individual clumps of phlox so create your drift and your movement with the with the planting and they'll merge together so almost the quicker they merge together and form the kind of effect that i want the better and then with my editing and my gin and tonic i'll then look at whether i need to reduce or lift and divide in a couple of years time but initially i want that impact as soon as i can get it how do you create natural patterns or drifts without it looking messy the art in gardening is is picking up on those subtleties and maybe removing a stem or cutting something back to allow something to come through where you've got foxgloves that have maybe maybe seeded themselves in parts of the border and you're not quite sure if they're in the right place let them flower and if they then all of a sudden look untidy or blocking something go in there and just gently cut it back opium poppies again if you've got these seed heads and you think i don't like that there because it's blocking the geranium then just pop it out so it's those constant gentle touches which is the real art of gardening and i think when you're trying to orchestrate a border little and often just gently corralling things into a space is much better than saying right once a month i'm going to come in here and bang some heads together and sort people out it's so if you can get into that habit of just gently making sure that everything is where it should be and if something looks out of place a little trim plants recover much quicker from a little trim rather than a hack do you think i mean taking that you've got years of expertise and professional gardeners here do you think amateurs can get the full gorgeous colorful borders and if so is there any particular tips that would help an amateur gardener to achieve some of this professional look taking that they're not going to do three years at horticultural college i think it's always easier to curtail growth than it is to sort of encourage it too much so i think fertility is really the key we're asking our plants to do an awful lot in these borders so looking at mulching for example in the spring so giving it a nice layer of the amenity compost the local council compost can be incredibly rich and quite inexpensive as well if there's a way that you can cut your borders down and then put a reasonable layer of mulch on every every spring that will gently increase the fertility you'll find your plants are a lot more buoyant i used to find with with our homemade compost which is very similar to the immunity stuff that the shrubs would just take on another level of vigor so i would say if you can get that fertility into your soil every year do a nice layer of mulch you'll find after a few years that base fertility is really built up and then you've got this billowing effect that quite often you see in professional gardens so what about staking i've had questions from people saying that their plants either flop forward or they flop over each other staking is one of those things that if you can get to it early it makes all the difference and everything is so much easier early in the season it's very difficult to remedy a plant that's decided to take a tumble forward without it looking completely strung up for the next month or so so i would say as the young shoots start to emerge sort of april time that's a good time to get in with your staking so whether that be bamboo canes and string whether it's birch or hazel or even the plastic or plastic coated metal rods that you can use to support perennials get in there nice and early and as long as it's done in a way that the plants will outgrow the staking so for example if we've got a nice mound of of birch the geraniums coming up through as long as the birch is at the right height that the geranium will then protrude out from the staking and it doesn't look as if it's overly trussed up then that's the way to go but go early and if you've had problems with that plant in the past go more extreme because quite often a plant will hide the staking in time and it's very difficult to then drag it back into some sort of order if it decides to take a tumble if you'd like to see more videos about flower color in your garden there's a flower color playlist at the end of this video and do subscribe to the middle sized garden youtube channel if you'd like more tips ideas and inspiration and thank you for watching goodbye