It's time to make some tough decisions on what plants and landscaping materials you include in your new garden. It's normal to feel overwhelmed at this point, but don't panic – I've got an easy tool to help you find the perfect plants for your garden, plus advice on choosing landscaping materials to create a cohesive designer look, whatever your budget.
We've finally made it to the plants! Hopefully, by now, you have your garden design mapped out and you know which areas of your garden you'll be planting and where you'll be using hard landscaping. In this guide, I'll help you find the right combination of plants and landscaping materials to suit your style and garden environment.
Before I dive into the green stuff, let's touch on how to choose the right materials for your patio, paths and garden structures.
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Selecting landscaping materials for your garden
Landscaping is expensive, and you may need to compromise between your preferred style and budget. The key thing to remember is not to blow all your budget on the groundworks as however beautiful your paving is, your garden will look bare and lifeless without plants!
That said, there is often a tradeoff between initial cost and maintenance. Gravel is a cost effective option for paths, but you have to factor in replenishing the gravel every few years and weeding. A stone pathway will cost a lot more upfront, but you may never have to replace it. If your budget doesn't stretch to what you ideally want, you have three options:
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Choose a cheaper material with a similar colour palette (e.g., yellow gravel instead of Cotswold stone).
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Source reclaimed or second-hand materials.Â
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Go with a lower cost (or free) option for now, with a view to upgrading in the future when you've saved up some cash.
Don't forget that as well as patios and paths, hard landscaping covers fences, raised beds, steps, garden structures like pagodas, trellises and arches, and sculptures or water features. All of these need to come out of your garden budget.
Match the hard landscaping to your house
You want your garden to feel like an extension of your home, which means choosing materials that mirror or complement the colour and style of the materials used in your house.
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Warm-coloured homes (e.g. Cotswold stone, cream render, light red brick) pair well with pale gravel, natural wood and stone.
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Dark-coloured homes (e.g. slate, aged stone, grey render) can pair with materials that enhance the moody feel or offer a contrast, such as warm-coloured wood or metal.
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Modern homes, dominated by glass, concrete or metal, suit a modern or contemporary garden, using similar materials.
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Rendered homes can complement a variety of garden styles and materials, including modern porcelain paving, Mediterranean-style terracotta tiles, and traditional light stone and gravel.
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Cool red-brick houses pair well with light grey or charcoal paving, dark metal and warm wood. Too much red can be overwhelming, but using brick or clay in larger gardens for walls or beds gives a cohesive feel.
If you have patio or bifold doors, then consider using similar materials for your patio as your indoor flooring. This creates a seamless transition between the two spaces and can make both your garden and home feel larger.
Repeat materials and colours
Using a limited colour palette that's repeated throughout your garden helps create unity and give that designer feel. Choose no more than three or four materials to use for your patios, paths and structures.
When choosing a colour scheme, you also want to have your planting in mind. If you have a strong preference for certain flowers or colours, you want to make sure your hard landscaping will complement and support your planting.
Landscaping your garden on a budget
You may be able to save on landscaping costs by keeping or reusing materials you already have in your garden. Jet washing old paving slabs can give them a new lease of life, and a lick of paint does wonders in brightening up a gloomy side return. Keep an eye out in your local area, as people often give away quantities of local stone or other building materials when renovating their own gardens.
Rather than tearing down existing fences, see if you can smarten them up. A great way to create an illusion of depth in a small garden is to paint the fence dark grey or black. Dark colours recede and can make a space feel bigger, as well as being a dramatic backdrop for evergreen foliage. You can upload a photo of your garden to ChatGPT or another AI tool to get an idea of how different coloured fencing could change the look and feel of your space.
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Selecting the right plants for your garden
This is where all your hard work gathering information and working on designs pays off. Now that you understand your garden's unique microclimate and you know where in the garden plants will go, you can choose plants that will thrive in their new home. But before you get click happy, there is still a bit of planning work to do. Stick with me…
Add structural plants first
It may sound counter-intuitive, but you need to plan for winter first, summer second. Flower-lovers can often get carried away planning beds full of annuals and perennials, forgetting that come winter, these will die back, leaving you with a flat, empty garden. Remember the importance of balancing mass and void that I covered in Part 4? That applies to your garden in every season of the year.
Before planning individual borders and raised beds, consider your garden as a whole and place plants strategically in this order:
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Trees and large shrubs: These are the backbone of your planting, giving you height and structure throughout the year.
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Evergreen plants: Plants that keep their foliage throughout winter make your beds feel fuller and add permanent colour to your garden.Â
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Smaller plants that die back (perennials, annuals, grasses, bulbs etc.): Incorporate flowering plants and grasses around your structural elements to add interest and colour at different times of the year.
This is probably the hardest, but most important, part of garden design. Don't forget that trees and large shrubs will change the microclimate of your garden, creating shade and sheltered areas. To avoid overplanting, look up the maximum spread of each plant and draw it on your garden plan using a drawing compass. You can find the eventual height and spread of each plant we stock in the specification section on a plant's product page.
Designing a garden border
Once you've figured out where your trees and shrubs are going, you can fill out the rest of your border. Perennial plants come back year after year, making them excellent value and low maintenance. It's tempting when creating a new bed or border from scratch to pack in perennials to make it feel full, but this doesn't do your plants any favours. Instead, use the guidance on eventual spread to give each plant enough space to grow and establish itself. You can fill the gaps between young plants with annuals for the first year or two.
To make your beds look professional, limit the number of different plants you use, but buy multiples of each plant. Group smaller plants together and repeat these groupings at intervals down large borders or across different beds or containers in smaller gardens.
What to consider when choosing plants
When selecting plants for your garden, you need a mix of plants that:
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Will thrive in your soil conditions and light levels: If you put a sun-loving plant in the shade, you'll be fighting a losing battle from the start.
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Match the style of your garden: In a cottage garden, you'll want native English species, whereas in a Japanese-style garden, you'll want to use plants native to Japan, like acers and hostas.
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Create a consistent colour scheme: A jumbled palette of colours looks disjointed, so unless you're going for a maximalist effect, it's best to limit the range of colours you use.
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Add different heights and textures to a bed or container.
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Add colour to your garden during different seasons.
That's a lot! Fortunately, our website makes it easy to find the right plants for your garden. You can search by different types of plants (e.g., shrubs, perennial plants, climbing plants) or apply filters to our entire range of garden plants. You can filter by colour, height and spread, hardiness, period of interest, and sun and soil requirements. It's much easier than manually checking labels at a garden centre or falling in love with a plant only to find out it's not suitable for your garden.
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Balance your planting for each season
As tempting as it is to have a border that's ablaze with colour during July and August, you don't want to put all your eggs (or bulbs?) in one basket. Plan a garden that you want to spend time in all year round by choosing plants that follow on from each other; as one fades, the next blooms. Plant these in groups throughout a border or garden, and you'll always have something beautiful to look at.
Winter is not just about evergreens. My article on 40+ Plants for Winter Colour just skims the surface of how to brighten up your garden during the dark months, from fiery cornus, feathery hamamelis and bright heathers to delicate hellebores and snowdrops. You could create a rainbow of winter colour in your garden, but it would look rather disjointed and, besides, you need to leave space for the other seasons…
For spring colour, focus on bulbs and blossoms. Layer spring bulbs like crocuses, narcissus, tulips and alliums in pots or beds to get flowers from February through to June. A magnolia, flowering cherry or crab apple tree is a beautiful focal point for any garden. Flowering perennials include native primroses, bluebells and cowslips.
The hardest thing about choosing plants for summer is narrowing down your options so you don't overwhelm your garden and push out plants that flower at other times of the year. Make sure you have a mix of shrubs and perennials that flower in early summer, such as roses, nepeta and irises, and plants that flower in mid-late summer, like crocosmia, hydrangeas and rudbeckia.
Autumn is a beautiful time of year in the garden. Choose trees and shrubs with vibrant autumn foliage, such as acers, Euonymus alatus and cotinus, to grow alongside asters, sedums, fuchsias and Japanese anemones. Ornamental grasses often look their best at this time of year.
In large gardens, you have more freedom to include plants that shine for just a few months, but in small gardens, every plant needs to earn its place. Choose plants that provide interest across multiple seasons, and ideally offer scent or an unusual texture. Some of my favourite hardworking plants include:
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Cornus 'Midwinter Fire': Cornus is best known for its vibrant red, orange and yellow stems in winter, but it also provides white blossoms in spring, berries in summer and colourful foliage in autumn – a true all-rounder.
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Heucheras: With varieties to match every possible colour scheme, textured leaves and year-round foliage, heucheras are invaluable for groundcover. The delicate flowers in summer are a bonus.
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Malus 'Evereste': If you have room for just one tree in your garden (and the right conditions!) a crab apple is an excellent choice. Gorgeous spring blossoms, colour-changing leaves and stunning fruit that stays on the tree through winter, providing valuable food for birds.
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Sarcococca confusa: Enjoy scented white flowers in winter, glossy berries in spring and dark green foliage year round. A great choice for shady patios and courtyard gardens.
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Lavender and rosemary: These two herbs are a perfect pair. Both have similar growing requirements, beautiful scents and retain their foliage year-round. Rosemary typically flowers slightly earlier than lavender, though this depends on the variety.
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Hydrangeas: Many hydrangeas produce showy blooms from mid-summer through to autumn, but in my humble opinion, they look just as beautiful in winter, especially when the dried flowerheads are laced with frost.
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My final tip to enjoy your dream garden
That's it! You've designed a garden that will meet your needs and look amazing. Whether you carry out the work yourself or hire a landscaping contractor, your garden design will provide the blueprint to work from. For complex projects, you may still need to hire a garden designer to produce technical drawings or choose a company that does both design and construction.
My final tip to help you enjoy your finished garden is to remember that gardens are always changing and evolving. Embracing this and going with the flow rather than trying to control every last detail will make your gardening experience enjoyable and less stressful. The beauty of this approach is that it gives you the freedom to experiment and make mistakes. Gardening is a journey, and we're all learning as we go. Enjoy the ride!
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