Four seasons in one garden
Planting for a garden that carries the whole year rather than one month of it. What to put in so that February has something to say.
Most gardens are designed for June. It is the month the photographs are taken in and the month the client is imagining when they describe what they want, and it is the reason so many gardens are a disappointment for the other eleven.
Designing for four seasons is mostly a matter of restraint in the first. If June is doing everything, nothing has been left for the rest of the year — no structure to catch frost, no bark worth looking at, no seed heads to stand through November.
The test we use is simple. Stand at the kitchen window in the second week of February and ask whether there is a reason to go outside. If the answer is no, the design is not finished.
