Having explored the different types of vegetable garden and the options best suited to them, let’s now move on to ornamental flower beds. As with vegetable gardens, there are a multitude of possible layouts, each with its own advantages and style. Whether you are looking for a structured and neat garden or a freer and more natural space, the important thing is to create a flower bed that reflects your tastes, your needs and your lifestyle.
In this new article, we will profile different types of ornamental gardeners and see which flowerbed configurations suit them best. Will you recognize yourself in one of these profiles? Follow me to find out!
Personalities in Garden
The Orderly and His Refined Sibling
A tidy person is someone who enjoys putting their drawers in order. Because it’s so satisfying to have all those T-shirts folded exactly right and sorted by color. In the same way, regularly removing weeds or dried flowers is not a chore for you, but an reflex. Besides, there’s nothing more relaxing than clean, perfect lines in the garden, isn’t that right?
No, you like clean, uncluttered lines, but you’re more inclined towards simplification than perfection. You’re willing to put in the effort to achieve beautiful straight lines, but you focus on the uncluttered aspect so as not to spend too much time on it.
The Romantic
The romantic loves mystery, he wants a garden where not everything can be discovered on the first visit. Unlike the orderly, he does not disdain a little mess, he has a penchant for the grace of the curve.
The Mystic
The term mystic is perhaps a little strong, but it is the archetype of someone who is attached to the sacredness of mother earth. They like to make offerings to her, perform rituals, talk to their plants and walk barefoot on the earth. For them, gardening is an act of collaboration and sharing with the living world of which they are a part.
The Eco-Friendly
Our environmentalist is someone who seeks out biodiversity, natural environments that remind us that nature does not need humans to be beautiful and diverse. I have taken my observation further and divided our environmentalists into three subgroups.
The Environmentally Friendly Conciliator
This ecologically-minded person loves all native plants, even weeds, and also includes, without too much discrimination, ornamental cultivars, as long as they are well naturalized in the environment. Each plant has its own reasons for being loved, whether for its beauty, edibility, medicinal properties or even just its resilience in remaining beautiful when other plants suffer from prolonged drought. Rather than looking for the plants he likes, he finds something to love in every plant.
The Organized Eco-Warrior
The organized eco-warrior seeks to create a sustainable, diverse and as autonomous environment as possible. They are well informed and use the best techniques to achieve this result with the fewest possible detours. They understand the cycles and imperatives of nature and take the time they need, but do not stray from a clear objective.
The Enthusiastic Ecologist
For them, the word “biodiversity” is poetry in itself. Their motto is: there are never enough flowers! To realize their vision, they puts their resources to work for this explosion of color. They know and recognize plants well, but they create their environment more with impulse than with their head.
Types of Arrangements Based on Personality
The orderly will like and be capable of keeping French formal gardens beautiful, but he might also like Zen gardens and modern gardens.
Achieving a straight line with plants in a garden is difficult, maintaining it over time, over the years, is an art! We all have in mind the magnificent gardens of European castles, maintained with an iron fist and expressing great refinement. Here, we think of a central aisle with symmetrical arrangements on either side, leading to a statue or a fountain.
If you like clean lines but are looking for an atmosphere that is more soothing than majestic, Zen gardens and modern landscaping are the options of choice. Here, rocks and architectural elements are used to trace the main lines, and then the vegetation is placed, either in straight rows with ample spacing or to draw attention to a central point. Excess and confusion are avoided; everything has a place which, with good care, presents the visitor with a garden that is unchanging and reassuring.
The romantic will prefer English-style gardens.
The English garden has more sinuous lines, with several surprises in store for the visitor. It also loves water, but prefers a gentle waterfall to the majestic fountain of the French garden. It adapts to the undulations of the land, which it seeks to take advantage of rather than to control. It also allows plants to flourish in more natural forms, favoring perennials and wild and fragrant flowers over horticultural cultivars with particularly ostentatious flowers. A beautiful English-style garden is not, however, simply a pretty chaos. Behind its wild and natural character lies a lot of love and planning, but sometimes also happy accidents that have been carefully recognized and encouraged.
Mystics will love the symbolism of the mandala gardens
Various symbols, such as the peace sign, the shape of a leaf, a tree, a heart, a flower or a star. Sacred or historical geometries, such as the golden ratio, the native medicine wheel, the circle and the love knot, are original ideas for designing a flower bed that speaks to you.
The environmentally friendly conciliator will find what they are looking for with a natural wildflower meadow.
Without complicating his life, the easy-going person will choose a mixture with a large percentage of native plants adapted to their environment. They will provide good conditions, but will limit their interventions to a minimum. For example, they will mow once a year to prevent woody plants from taking hold. They will also harvest medicinal and edible plants, especially those that are more aggressive in nature. Without seeking to eliminate them, but rather to promote good cohabitation with other plants.
The organized eco-warrior will plan a perennial and grass meadow requiring very little maintenance.
The organized flower meadow is made up entirely of perennials. At first, the neighbors didn’t quite understand what they were doing, and it took three years for the meadow to reach its full potential. Fortunately, they took care to put in a cover crop the first year to prevent weeds. Now everything is in place: we have a strong ecosystem, beautiful, long-lasting flowers, very few weeds and practically no maintenance, apart from an annual mow.
The enthusiast ecologist will create a colorful and abundant display of flowers.
The enthusiast did not choose the flower-filled meadow for the ease of it, but because they could have maximum biodiversity without having to make painful choices. Their meadow is dense, although it has a happy mix of annuals, biennials and perennials. They sow seeds every year and increase the recommended quantities by at least 15%. What’s more, they spend a little time kneeling in the flowerbed to remove the weeds that are taking up space from another flower they have chosen. Well, I’m exaggerating a little here, because deep down we’re all a little jealous of these flowerbeds that could be on the cover of magazines.
Find the Style of Flower Bed That Suits You
Of course, I have no training in psychology, and these observations are without pretension. The idea is not to judge whether one attitude or type of flower bed is better than another, but to highlight their relative advantages to help you determine whether yours are satisfactory.
And Me, in All This?
I am a creative, mystical, romantic and environmentally-friendly unifier, who brings together more than 300 species, most of them medicinal and edible, on a small city plot of land, arranged in curved flowerbeds with a medicine wheel, a leaf garden and many little secrets just hidden enough to convince you to come back and take a second look.
I must be nice to lay out a plan on paper and follow it to it’s logical conclusion, with maybe a few modifications along the way. Yours looks wonderful, so full and intentional. I’ve never been able to do that. So I call my gardening style higgidy-piggidy or idiosyncratic. You know how it goes: “Oh I thought this whatever would be perfect here in this bed, but no, I think it will just get too big for here, maybe over here, or I could just enlarge this bed and stick it here.” You can talk yourself into just about any accommodation for a plant that you just have to have.
I enjoyed your article! I also would be a blend. I love the way you have used your entire property for gardens!