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Design

Create your dream garden from scratch

By Beckie Fox Filed Under: Design

Wide planting beds are easier to design because they provide space for focal points, such as birdbaths or columnar trees.

Confronted by empty yards front and back? Here’s your detailed guide to creating your dream garden from scratch.

Punctuation in the garden

By Karen York Filed Under: Design

Two tall cedars act as punctuation in this large garden, and also signal where the entrance is to the vegetable garden on the other side of the hedge.

Punctuate your garden to create a compelling narrative. Here’s how to use trees and plants as exclamation marks, periods, commas and other signals.

Design a white garden

By Judith Adam Filed Under: Design

white garden

Be it day or night, sunlight or moonlight, white plants will add a wondrous effect to your garden. Two designs for a white garden in part shade or sun.

8 plants for dry and shady gardens

By Stephen Westcott-Gratton Filed Under: Design, Plants

Hellebores grow well in dry, shady gardens. (Photo by Joanne Young)

Gardening in full shade and dry soil is a challenge. Tips on how to cope, with ideas for 8 plants that will survive in dry and shady gardens.

16 plants for soggy soil

By Stephen Westcott-Gratton Filed Under: Design, Plants

Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) survives in soggy soil and partial shade, but will grow more robustly in damp soil and full sun. (Photo by Walter Gardens Inc.)

Don’t let soggy soil bog you down — these 16 perennials don’t mind wet feet and provide a steady succession of blooms as well as attractive foliage.

6 steps to a beautiful perennial border

By Stephen Westcott-Gratton Filed Under: Design

A perennial border filled with delphiniums, astilbes, lilies, daylilies and lamb’s ears. (Photo by Joanne Young)

Perennial borders can be located in front of fences, hedges and walls. 6 steps from planning to planting day for a new flower bed of perennials.

5 patterns for using pavers in garden design

By Beckie Fox Filed Under: Design

An inviting patio. (Garden Making photo)

There’s more than one way to lay down bricks or concrete pavers to make a path or patio. Five patterns to consider for pavers in garden design.

How to use a bloom chart in your garden design

By Judith Adam Filed Under: April in the garden, Design

The Garden Making bloom chart will help you plan a succession of flower blooms in your garden design.

Two spring plant combinations to try

By Beckie Fox Filed Under: Design

Purple alliums, columbines and camassias fill a display border at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.

Two of Beckie Fox’s favourite spring plant combinations that would be easy to recreate in most Canadian gardens. The first is inspired by Longwood Gardens.

Garden design ideas for all season blooms

By Judith Adam Filed Under: Design

Get garden design ideas for all season blooms in your garden. Enjoy non-stop flowers from spring right through to fall. Lists of plants and planting plans.

Visit new gardens to explore garden design

By Beckie Fox Filed Under: Design

There’s eye candy for plant lovers everywhere you turn at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania. I love how the containers, foliage, branches and blooms all work together to create intimate vignettes. (Garden Making photo)

Visit gardens helps you explore the creativity of garden design – how someone else arranges plants, combines colours, positions paths or places ornaments.

Visits inspire garden design ideas

By Beckie Fox Filed Under: Design, September in the Garden

Visiting gardens farther afield also offers up lots of inspiration, especially garden design ideas that can be transplanted to your own space.

Front garden design changes

By Judith Adam Filed Under: Design

Dwarf conifers such as a columnar blue spruce offer multi-season interest. (Photo by Brendan Adam-Zwelling)

Removing a large fern-leaf beech from front garden became necessary because of its eventual size. Dwarf conifers will replace it in front garden design.

A garden designer’s view on trends

By Beckie Fox Filed Under: Design

Determine how you want to use the space. (Photo by Catherine Geraats)

Catherine Geraats of Aphrodite Design Group was the garden designer who designed Garden Making’s feature garden for Canada Blooms in 2012 in Toronto. We asked Catherine about what’s new in garden design. And she had some advice for new homeowners hiring a landscape designer.

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