Is It Me, Or Is It Getting Crowded In Here?

As a gardener who has been dealing with a lack of success growing perennials for the past two seasons, I have come to a baffling realization:  I’m not sure how I want my beds to look now that many of my plants are fully mature.  I suppose you can choose from two options (I’m sure if you design gardens for a living, there are a lot more than two options) when your plants are fully grown.  One choice is what I call the “chaos” look, where the plants are growing in such a way that the colors and textures blend with each other, so your eye doesn’t focus on any one plant.  Instead, you see a pleasing mix of plants that together form a palette of color that is beautiful.  The other choice is the “organized” bed, where the plants live far enough apart that you can focus on each plant, but the total bed makes sense from the standpoint of how it is organized and designed.  The way I think of it, an organized bed is beautiful, but it’s more about the space between plants and less about plants growing close to each other. 

In  my garden, I have a little of both.  My back bed and astilbe bed are chaotic, at least to my eye.  The ostrich fern bed and waterfall bed are full of plant material, but don’t yet score high on the chaos scale.  The sun bed is a mess and defies any description, and the steps bed and the woodlands bed are much more organized in terms of design and look.  To be fair, it’s harder to plant under the trees in the steps and woodlands beds, so the number of plants is limited because I’m unwilling to dig through tree roots. 

What a strange conundrum I find myself in as I contemplate beds where the plants are getting too big for the space allotted..  I tried to plant them the recommended distance apart from each other, but in several cases the mature plants have grown to an eye-popping size.  The result is, well, chaos.  Some plants are getting lost in the bed due to the aggressive growth of bigger plants, or groundcovers.  My problem is that I think I might like the look of plants outgrowing their allotted space, as opposed to cutting them back and giving them room to breathe.  How and when to cut them back is another story, which I’ll share in a post coming soon.  For now, let me share a bunch of recent photos that will give you a much better idea of what I’m talking about. 

Let’s start with some photos of the back bed, which is planted with astilbe, blue star (amsonia), toad lily, plumbago as a groundcover, and a few blue sedge grasses around the border. 

Can you see the variegated and curling leaves of the toad lily, right in the middle of the image?  Toad lilies grow well in partial shade, and I love the crazy look of the flowers.  This plant was installed next to my blue star and astilbe with plenty of room between them.  Photo by Me.  July 15, 2024. 

Now let’s look at the bed from a little farther away.  I would say this is garden chaos theory in full effect.  Can you see the variegated leaves of the toad lily in the top center of the photo? 

Here you can see the plumbago (blue flowers) nicely filling in the bed.  The plumbago are about 12 inches tall, much taller and robust then they were in the first two seasons I installed them.  The blue star plants are in the upper right of this photo, and the astilbe are tucked in against the steps to the rear of the bed.  If you like chaos (and I think I do) this should do it for you.  Photo by Me.  July 15, 2024. 

One more look at the back bed, complete with my shadow in the photo, showing all the plants coming together in a blend of textures (but not too much color at this point in the season).  The blue star tower over the other plants in the upper center of this image.  The plumbago fill in the space between the blue sedge grass on the front border and the astilbe in the back left of the bed and offer some pretty blue flowers throughout the summer.  Trying to find the toad lily is like playing Where’s Waldo.  Good luck.  I think the blue star needs to be cut back and the toad lily needs to be moved.  Photo by Me.  July 15, 2024. 

My astilbe bed, which is next to the back bed, is also getting crowded.  The anemone, or windflowers, are filling in nicely in the back of the bed, and with Pop Pop’s hydrangea and the elegans hosta, there seems to be more than enough plant material.  The main culprit in this bed is the blue sedge grass, which is growing to immense size.  I’ve already dug up and moved some plants to the border in the back bed, trying to make space for the astilbe.  I think I’ll be cutting back the blue sedge at some point when the temperature isn’t sweltering.  It’s my way of telling it to leave the astilbe alone.  But I think (not sure) I like the way the way this bed looks as is. 

This what happens when the blue sedge grass isn’t cut back all season.  I did give the seed heads a haircut earlier in the spring, but that’s about it.  I don’t know that the sun can get through to the crown of the plant as is, and it looks to me like the grass is about to eat the astilbe just behind it for breakfast.  Photo by Me.  July 15, 2024. 

But if you take a step back and look at the entire bed, the chaos becomes beautiful to my eye.   

This view shows all the plants in the astilbe bed but unfortunately doesn’t show enough of the blue sedge, which borders the front.  No doubt the plant material in the bed is getting “chaotic,” but I’m entirely befuddled about whether to cut the grass back to a more manageable size.  It’s literally 100 degrees outside today, so even if I wanted to cut it back, I’m guessing I should wait until much later in the season.  Photo by Me.  July 15, 2024. 

Moving on, I mentioned that my sun bed doesn’t fit into the organized category, or the chaos category, in part because the plants in the bed are still immature.  Frankly, it’s a mess.  However, I can see I’ve already made a mistake with the plantings in the center of the bed, where the panicle hydrangea “Little Lime” is already being buried by plants in the immediate vicinity.  

You can see the purple coneflowers flopping onto the hydrangea just to the left, and if you look carefully, you can see some the hydrangea flowers trying to peek out from underneath.  To the right is moonbeam yellow coreopsis, which is one of three surviving plants.  And just to the left of the coreopsis is yarrow already beginning to spread out of control.  Photo by Me.  June 15, 2024. 

I would be remiss not to include a photo of the Russian sage in the sun bed.  Its 5-foot high and very chaotic looking.  The purple flowers are gorgeous, and I can’t decide whether to cut it back or leave it alone. Photo by Me.  July 17, 2024. 

Having shared photos of the flopped, overgrown, chaotic, but beautiful beds in the garden, I want to end with photos of the more organized beds.  For me they have a totally different vibe: much more calming when I spend time there.  Here are a couple photos of the steps bed. 

Looking down from the deck to the steps. The mulch creates a beautiful contrast to the colors and textures of the plants, not to mention the natural colors of the steps themselves.  Photo by Me.  July 17, 2024 

Hosta, toad lily, coral bells, astilbe, Japanese forest grass, and lamium (dead nettle) in the lower left, surrounding the crape myrtle tree.  I like the space between the plants, which is great because it’s tough to dig under the tree with all of the roots, not to mention wiring for landscape lighting and hoses for irrigation.  Photo by Me.  July 17, 2024. 

I hope you don’t mind me dumping my angst about designing and tending garden beds on you in today’s post.   I guess tending beds and pulling weeds is what you do in the garden as you roll through the summer season.  I enjoyed taking the pictures for you.  I’ll let you know if I get around to doing something about any of this. Please feel free to share this post with friends, family, acquaintances, enemies, etc., by clicking on the SHARE button in the text.  You can find other great posts about being a Type A Gardener by visiting the archives.