Whichever region you call home, it's easy to adapt the ideas and designs featured in this story if you allow shape and form to be your guide.
Garden Path
Combine hardscaping with drifts of ornamental grasses and flowering plants to create the effect of paths winding through a meadow. Use:
Fescues, fountain grasses, and switch grasses; sedges, daylilies, and irises.
Fragrant creeping thyme or lily turf as a ground cover instead of dymondia.
Sand, soil, mulch, or gravel between pavers, instead of mortar, to prevent heaving during freezing weather.
Cactus Garden
To achieve a desert look in gardens throughout the Northeast and Midwest, work with plants that have striking profiles and forms. Use:
Swordlike yucca instead of strappy aloe and agave.
Fleshy sedum, hens and chickens, and donkey's tail spurge instead of echeveria and aeonium.
Gray-green artemisia or santolina instead of sage.
Fragrant woolly thyme as a ground cover instead of dymondia.
Edible Garden
For a decorative edible garden just about anywhere in the country, cultivate all plants as annuals. Use:
Ornamentals, such as purple millet, amaranth, and nasturtium.
Fruits, such as tomatoes, elderberries, raspberries, and blueberries.
Vegetables, such as frilly lettuces, ornamental peppers, rainbow chard, Asian eggplants, and kale.
Herbs, such as parsley, sage, chives, and rosemary.
Cardoons and artichokes (if you don't live in a warm climate, they will need a second year to flower).
Shade Garden
For a similar garden where rainfall is plentiful, choose plants that thrive in moist, shady conditions. Use:
Delphinium for spring flowers instead of dianella.
Azaleas and rhododendrons instead of camellias.
Crested iris, coral bells, Solomon's seal, and other woodland natives.
Evergreen gingers, hellebores, and elephant's ear.
Hardy ferns.
More Information, Please
Quick and accurate organic gardening help is just a click or phone call away.
The Garden Spot Garden guru Mort Mather posts questions and answers sent by readers of his comprehensive and delightful site. E-mail him at mmather@maine.rr.com
The Green Building Resource Center Part of the Chicago Center for Green Technology, the GBRC offers a hotline for any gardener in the country who has questions on sustainable design and growing. 312-746-9642
OrganicGardening.com The Web site for our sister magazine, Organic Gardening, is an online community for gardeners who want to connect and share practical advice. Clearly organized categories on the message boards make it easy to narrow your search. Hot links in the Garden Center offer a vast database of companies and products, from fertilizers to pest-control solutions.
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