FEATURE FRIDAY: MIXED BORDERS

I’m  sorry the posting has been a bit sporadic lately. Although a deadline a work certainly has much to do with that, I’ve also been spending some blog time working on a redesign. It’s almost finished and I hope to launch it soon so don’t be alarmed if you visit The Impatient Gardener soon and it looks different. Same blog, same gardener, different look.

I’ve been staying up late at night watching all the BBC gardening shows I can find on youtube, and one was on herbaceous borders. The examples they showed were stunning, although I detest such borders when they have a bowling alley of grass down the middle. Anyway, it got me thinking, and I believe that a mixed border is my favorite kind of garden.

Tracy diSabato-Aust has several wonderful books and one of my favorite is The Well-Designed Mixed Garden. In particular, I love the mix of textures in mixed garden, especially when a few evergreens are mixed in. Even just seeing the trunk of a tree does something really interesting for a mixed garden.

So that’s what this week’s Feature Friday is about.

Photo source

Photo source

4 Responses

  1. I love a great mixed herbaceous border with curves that invites the eyes to follow as opposed to uninspiring strips as you quite rightly say Erin.

  2. My short and narrow borders in my 1st garden felt more like these borders in colors and plants. My current long border is 12 ft. Deep by about 55 ft. long but is more subdued than these. Makes a big difference being next to the cement drive rather than grass.

  3. Beautiful mixed-border photos! And I love diSabato-Aust's books, because she gardens in zone 5 like I do, which means her experience is almost always directly applicable to my garden areas. Happy armchair gardening (until the weather warms up and we can get to the real thing)! -Beth

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