Longwood Gardens

If you are looking for an excellent botanical garden to tour and you are in the Philadelphia area, you need to spend a day at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA.  It is amazing!  A couple of weeks ago we went down to see the current exhibit, Light: Installations by Bruce Munro, and spent several hours walking the grounds.  Botanical gardens, like Longwood, are perfect for getting ideas for your own garden. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the shear size and number of plantings, but remember the numbers can easily be scaled back for your backyard and flowerbeds.  So here's are my tip for visiting a botanical garden: take tons of pictures!  Here are few of my pictures from Longwood Gardens that will give you some planting ideas to inspire your personal gardens.

Chances are you are going to take pictures anyway, but take a few pictures of the tags.  I know that sounds odd, but you'll be thankful you did.  Most professional gardens label the plants they use.  It will be easier to reference a picture then a note written on a napkin ("purple leaves, some sort of vegetable?") You will now know exactly what you are looking for at your local nursery.

Color blocking is not just for fashion, it works well in your garden; plant groups of the same plant close together.  There are not as many different plants surrounding this fountain as you might think.  There are impatiens, coleus, grass, and clematis. The large numbers of the same plant creates a big impact.  The color also helps create the wow factor -- chartreuse, burgundy, and pink.  Coleus are great for mixing with your flowing annuals.  There are so many varieties in all types of colors.  I think there were about 4 varieties of coleus in this fountain garden.  

 Add some contrast.  Besides color contrasting, the mix of hard and soft always makes for a pleasing garden.  Here the fountain urn and stone wall add the hard element.  These elements help make a backdrop to the soft leaves and colors of the impatiens and coleus.  If you can't add a fountain like this to your garden, add a large urn or sculpture or boulder.  Make sure it's large enough so that the low plants have a background and do not hide it. Like this urn, sometimes it looks great empty. But filled with complimentary plants, this would look just as beautiful.










Repetition.  One way the formal nature of this path is achieved is by the repetition and spacing of the urns.  You've seen this before done with trees along a driveway or street.  It creates a sense of importance to the end of the path and you instictively want to walk down the path.  These urns are about 4 or 5 feet high and the agave make a dramatic "top" to the bottle shape of the urn.  Use a smaller urn, or tall shrub and this could be your driveway.

I've mentioned this before, but containers do wonders for landscapes.  This island of containers is the focal point of the paved area.  Here they used silvers and purples to tie all the containers together.  Not every pot has the same number of plants or even types of plants, but they all stay within the color scheme.  This is also a great example of everything I mentioned above.  The color blocking, contrasting, and repetition all make this grouping of containers a single garden.

And finally, height.  Take note that in all the pictures I posted that there is something that draws your eye up.   That's not to say that a garden cannot be beautiful with low plants.  But having layers of tall and low elements add drama and movement.  It could a fountain, an urn, or a tree. So as you visit those gardens, remember to take pictures and start planning for spring!