Garden Planting Plans

PhotogTom

My Googling skills must be off! I had thought it would be easy to find, but can anyone suggest a site? I'm looking for planting plans for, say a "cottage" style garden or say a perennial flowering border.
I'd like to find a site that suggests what plants to put in, what to put in front, in back, how close to plant, etc so that I end up with something that looks good.
To be honest, what me & the missus usually do is 1) go to garden centre, 2) see something that looks good, 3) buy it and 4) bring it home and look for a place to plant it! We end up with the predictable results.
I have a round bed, have done the hardscape with a walkway, a bench and a feature (a cow tail pump). I'd like to plant it out this spring by getting all the plants in one go. (Think I could get Gardeners World or Ground Force to come along for the day?)
Any suggestions? I can't afford a "professional" designer - there must be something web based.

Kash

I could have written that exact post!
I would also be very interested in this - I also couldn't find what I was looking for on the web

redser7

Start at your local library. Gardening sections are usually well stocked. Good reference books with glossy colourful photos really fire the imagination at this time of year. Read read read and study photos. Eventually you'll absorb it and get a good sense of what will work in your garden. There are no quick fixes for this if you don't employ someone to do it for you.
Post some photos of your garden and maybe people will offer suggetions.

lovemygarden

There's a gardener I use in co Kildare, if you email him aprox size of the area and details such as how much sun, size of area and so on he will work out a list of suitable plants for your site you'll find him at dalylandscapes.ie he is not expensive (like €50 for plans for my border)and very good. He even supplied the plants for me to plant at half the prices of the garden centers

Ellechim

Hiya.

There are a couple of places to look but they wouldn't be intuitive.

This is a UK plants website - they don't deliver to Ireland but have really good planting schemes including one for a cottage garden: http://www.crocus.co.uk/bomcard/_/perennials/other-perennials/verbena-bonariensis/classid.2000002969/

The BBC website is really useful - I couldn't find any planting plans however it used to have an online design tool which you might find if you have a dig around.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/gardening_guides/

The Royal Horticultural Society website has 2 planting plans: keep an eye on their website and they may post more during the year.

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardens/RHS-garden-planting-plans/Wisley-planting-plan

Also, worth a visit for ideas (at least a few years ago was the last time I was ther) was the National Garden Exhibition Centre in Kilquade which is open all year round: as far as I recall they gave out a brochure with some of the planting schemes when you vistied (might be wrong as it is a while ago - however it is great for ideas).

http://www.gardenexhibition.ie/


Also, Bakker do a couple of planting schemes where you can buy a job lot of plants for a reasomable amounts. The plants come in spring as plug plants - most are perennials and will come up again and again. They have a cottage garden plan here for €50 for 30 plants:

http://www.bakker-irl.com/product/30-plants-in-7-varieties/

Also, last year at Bloom for the Woodies gardens, which I have to say were really lovely and something you could recreate at home, they gave out little booklets with the whole plan on it.

The other thing is, I do have some of Alan Titchmarsh's gardening books and they do give some plans as well.

I agree, I do the same as you and it ends up looking very pedestrian indeed :-( I'm hoping for better things next year!!! I must get going on these planting schemes myself!!!

PhotogTom

Hi,
Thanks for the links. I really liked the Crocus plan. Now I need to see if my local garden center can source the plant list for me!

Rinker

Mount Venus Nursery in the Dublin Mountains have a great range of plants suitable for a cottage garden. Their plant catalogue has several planting plans and they offer a discount if bought together. I've nothing to do with them but I'd highly recommend the nursery and plans.