You are becoming more and more familiar with plants, how they affect and are affected by what is around them, how they grow, and everything else as you experiment with successes and failures. You are building your knowledge base and eventually will have enough familiarity where you can envision reasonably accurately much like you can with the hardscapes.

No one is born with that database in his head. It has to be built regardless of artistic ability or even formal design education. Success comes from the dynamic of those three things - knowledge of media, artistic ability, and functional design.

You mean why can't you get it right the first time? You can't do it because it is not possible unless you limit your plant palette severely. Oehme and van Sweden practically patented the Karl Foerster/Sedum Spectabile/Rudbekia combination that is used everywhere because all three plants are predictable and low maintenance.

What you need is a few old reliables that act, if you like, as the museum walls and then you can display your plant museum with confidence that a couple of failures won't spoil the whole thing.

I think you guessed it yourself, Madtripper. You don't want the "safe choice" so you go by trial and error - and these are fine teachers.
Try designing a planting scheme for somebody else, not yourself - how different would that be? Less exciting, but easy?

As an amateur myself, I feel a little bold chiming in here with so much experience above me, but I do understand how you feel. Hardscapes are not nearly as dynamic as plants are; plants are forever changing: they grow (not always as we want them to), and at different rates, bloom or not, drop their leaves ... or not, change color, etc.

Touching on what's already been mentioned, I believe it's a matter of building your plant "vocabulary". We all manage to get our message across with words ... poets, songwriters, novelists and historians, through skill and learning, elevate it to an art form. Musicians do the same with notes and musical phrases. Artists ... you get the idea.

I really like what ink suggested re the "museum walls" while one, as laag suggested, builds one's knowledge base. Thank you both!

I'm very much in the same boat you are, because, despite what I've learned, I'm (somewhat contrarily) never satisfied once I find a combination that "works" ... I'm off and playing with another variation of it. Ahhhh, but that's the fun of it all ;-)

Several of my most beautiful combinations (last year) were a big mess this year because one plant shot up a whole lot taller than it was before. It is good to pay attention to "Mature Size".

My yard is a one-of-each-kind-trial-hodgepodge - which builds my knowledge database faster than 3 of the same kind of plant - but it also drives me nuts. Will my "knowledge database" ever be full enough to make all of it work?

Several of my most beautiful combinations (last year) were a big mess this year because one plant shot up a whole lot taller than it was before. It is good to pay attention to "Mature Size".

But if one is trying truly new varieties, that "mature size" is just a guess. The tags, they often lie. I planted a Lantana 'Chapel Hill Yellow' this spring. It is a cross between Miss Huff and New Gold...in theory combines the hardiness of Miss Huff with the low spreading habit and color of New Gold. We shall see.

I have found that a consistent hardscape can help unify my plant collections. And I am lucky in that I have enough space, should a plant not work, I can move it. Assuming we are talking shade/partial shade plants. If a sun plant doesn't work, I have to give it away. (Or shovel prune it. Under-performing roses get the shovel.)

melanie

Ummm, well. The plants involved weren't exactly new - just new to me. And you're right, the tags do often lie.

Hmmm. Our hardscape is consistent, but we probably could use more of it than we have. A little judicious editing would probably help, too. (What? You mean I should kill the poor thing?)

I planted 3 Limelight hydrangeas and several Knockout roses in a spacing arrangement that I thought was adequate for growth, in an area in which I still intended to have several additional "layers" in front, both to have interest/bloom at other times, and to satisfy my plant collecting cravings, and have all these changing with the seasons bloom things that you see in books.

Those shrubs got about 3 times a big as I thought, and certainly faster than I thought, and took up almost the entire space alloted for planting in that particular area.
So they dwarfed and overgrew the stuff I had planted in front.

On the other hand, it turns out that so far, they make a great combo and for quite a long time during the growing season. However, they're all deciduous (though not without any winter form.)Fortunately, they are backed by a large evergreen laurel "shrub" (nearly a tree).

So I found myself having to develop a new design plan and a new form of discipline; instead of using so many of the perennials I wanted right there, I'm deciding to go with the serendipity of the arrangement, and just substitute some simple evergreen-type of foliage shrubs (well, some of these can bloom--haha) and plants for structure. I am extending the bed out to make more room in several areas, but at the same time, the extensions are designed to accomodate the structured evergreens and not just to be extra space for lots of perennials.

There are a number of perennials that also did well in that area, but I don't have room for both, and they don't "go" with the others, so that's what takes the discipline--I "want it all" in my head, but once I saw how it actually grew, it looked messy and erratic, so I have to try to be much more intentional and let the blooming shrubs be the main stars.

The nice thing is that along with having to give up one fantasy, there's the relief of narrowing down my choices to those items that will complement the form and bloom time of what essentially took over! (This is a lot like the mantra, when in doubt plant something, and then other choices will follow.) Also relief that if I am successful, I could get it so that this area will look interesting but still somewhat neat year-round and also bloom on its own for months; what more can you ask for? Because I'm willing to do some ongoing maintenance, there but wanted this area to get sort of "done", since it's in a side yard visible to the street.