I don't plant anything in rows at all. I try for swatches of one thing interspersed with a shrub or plant with different heights, sizes, forms and textures. I found that I prefer a lot of green with some flowers. I have dfferent shades of foliage in my garden. For flowers, I like exhuberant colors. All in all, I try for something interesting to look at 12 months of the year. Oh, fragrance too. :-) I love fragrant plants & flowers.

I live in an urban suburb. My philosophy is a mullet.

Business up front; party in the back.

If chaos has an arrangement, then that's mine.

Cute Bakemom!! My giggles came out when reading your answer! :O)

Party everywhere here. No plan, but lots of happy gardening. I have started to plant in groups in the last couple of years. I find it helps, but some of my gardens aren't as deep as I'd like so as to create those awe inspiring drifts in some gardens I see.

I think the look I'm starting to go for is the look of graceful gardens. There's a picture in my mind...

Just took some pictures today so I hope to post them in the next couple of days. I see some of those gardens starting to take the shape I imagine.

I have been planning a mullet post for a while. Computer problems and other more pressing gardening issues have put the mullet on the back burner. Nice to hear mullets are alive and well in Canada too. I'm a teen from the 70s, and it's nice to hear the theory crosses the border too.

My garden style is "HAP-PY-HAZARD" and I love it that way.
;')
Bonny

Arrangement?

Hmmm...

Nothing you can trip on by the walkways and nothing gouging at eye level.

I think that about covers it.

mullets, hockey, beer = 99% of Canadian Youth in the 70's 80's and early 90's. Thank goodness I fit into the 1% of those who hated all three, lol.

Guess mine is a massive boob job. Incredibly lush up front, nothing to tow the line in the back.

GGG

GGG, I made up the other 1%.

Mine's bottom heavy, everything is waiting in holding beds in the far back until I dig up the real beds.

Everyone's descriptions are great!

GGG,
Lol! You're giving me scary memories of working at my father's bar(The Imperial Garage down on Third St. in the Falls if you ever saw a band there.) on weekends. Come one o'clock am, there was an invasion of those idiots : )
Remy

This post gave me my first laugh of the day :-)
"Mullet" method here. Must be the influence of native Oswego County residents...lol.

GGG "mullets, hockey, beer". Yep. That's where I live. And that's the folks my age. Add Harleys and pickup trucks to it, and you really got it to a T.
So far the choices are

Tripless
Mullet, aka "Business up front; party in the back" (love that, Bakemom!)
Happy Hazard
Massive Boob Job
These are things I can relate to...lol.

Mary,
One thing I noticed is, because perennials really put their major performance in on the third year, what you thought should be in front sometimes should be in back (and visa versa)...this has and is happening to me (with Feverfew and Yarrow, to name just one) Also, I'm noticing how happy some Sunflowers are in certain places in the beds (not in back, but in front). So creating a horizontal peak in the beds is going to be one of my goals for next year (so that not everything in front is low-growing)

Linda

My gardens are in the 'happy hazard' category. I am really trying to get some sort of order from chaos but not succeeding very will.....

Lynne

I forgot to mention, other than the "Mullet method", I tend to plant things in semi-circles and weird kidney shapes, rarely in rows (although I did that with some dwarf Zinnias this year, at the front of the border). I don't know if the end results look like semi-circles or kidney shapes, but I'll find out as the plants start to bloom.

Linda

Start by figuring out your beds, place out your watering hose in the desirable shape and be generous with spacing- do what pleases your eye. Then decide on hardscape and architectural points- shrubs, conifers, trellises etc- they hard to move. Each bed should have some focal points and some repetition- be it same color or same shape or same plant. Then plant everything else and let it grow- see what you like and do not like- that is why we have shovels... :)

Repeat after me: "The shovel is my friend."

Last fall was some major moving of many small (year 1) perennials, this year it'll be major moving of several LARGE perennials that strutted their stuff more than anticipated. (Ie: 5-foot Valerian in the 18-24" section)

So that's that. I'm liking the 'cottage' look, but still needs some tweaking, and some fillers.

arrangement... oh man, you mean its supposed to be arranged? definately... uh... cottage.

But its colorful... and it smells good.. and it makes me LOL.

ditto neon - - cottage all the way! (But would be even with more diversifying textures - e.g. more grasses, large leaved plants, less tall stalks - ) but all in all - love my gardens! They make me happy!

Carrie

In my imagination, its like the gardens int he books, in reality, its the one seed that sprouted and survived the bunnies and slugs.

Working on soil quality and eco-system stuff in our new house.

One bed is a memorial to my mother who passed away in the fall of 2001. We dug out many of her perennials from her garden and moved them to my newly dug bed that I had planned on using the next summer. It also has lots of annuals that where started the next year from seeds of her annuals. Every year I add more and more annuals and perennials from a list that she had made of plants she wanted years ago. It also has her garden decorations in it.

2 other small beds are the cosmos beds.

Under the picture window are my 2 beautiful blue hydrangeas.
The darkest blue I've ever seen and never seen anywhere else. Those are my lucky hydrangeas. Hubby bought them for me at the market 26 years ago around Easter time. Everyone said the chances of them being hardy and surviving a New England winter where "slim and none". the jokes on them cause they are there every year and bigger and bigger every year. Just in front of them is an old plastic birdbath that no longer can hold water for the birds. It is taped together with white duck tape, but it sure holds soil for some plants.
In the same bed are all my potted herbs that I dig out and grow in pots for the summer.
the rest of that bed gets all the extra morning glory that I have no room for on my fences, arbor and trellis. They get grown in pots.

I have another area that is all daylilies

A whiskey barrel that gets filled with what ever I decide to stick in it from WS. I really mean stick in it and fill it up well. It changes from year to year.
This year it has cosmos, painted tongue, a datura and still room for more to stuff in.

The center of the yard bed has an arbor with 4 heavenly blue morning glory growing up it. On either corner of the back of the bed are lupins. At least there where 2 lupin yesterday. One large blue one, WS last year and bloomed this year. The opposite corner "had" this years WS lupin la chaterlaine growing. that was until this afternoon when I found it had been eaten by some 4 legged critter. all that is left is a small stem.

The rest of this bed is just crammed full of whatever is there from WS seedlings. This year I decided to plant it to face the street, so it's tall stuff in the back, going to very short in the front. Had it the opposite direction last year. So where ever I find a spot of soil, some seedling gets put in there. This year, so far, annual poppies, zinnias both tall and short, dwarf dahlias, 2 foot sunflowers, 5 foot sunflowers, blue thimble gilia, scabiosa ebony and ivory, 2 kinds of malva, a nautica, livingston daisy, dwarf nasturtium, california blue bells, chinese forget me nots, verbina, edelweis, painted tongue, cleome both short and tall, cosmos, nigella, 4 o'clocks and a pot of nicandra.
It's all crammed in there and I hope when it all is blooming, I won't see any bark mulch.

The back yard has a chain link fenced in area that will be covered with about 50 different kinds of morning glory vines and my tomato plants in pots and my 2 snowpea plants in pots.

I also have a bunch of plants in containers that get moved around to where ever it looks empty and needs some color.

Some design, but the basic motto is this. Where ever there is dirt and a smal trowel will fit, a hole is dug and a WS seedling fills the hole. The less grass the better, the more flowers the better. Need more and more beds dug every year.

Fran

I'm with PV. Chaos rules!

Most of my active bedspace is nursery beds. Good soil and irrigation, and a place for the perennials to mature before I move them to display beds. Most of the pathways, walks etc. are crowded with potted plants doing the same thing...waiting for the show.

When I finish ripping out the old foundation beds, and building new display beds (hopefully this year, I'm hiring a crew starting next month), I'll start planting in earnest.

The arrangement in my gardens could be called "Great Plans Gone Awry". I honestly DID consider size and color and such when I laid out the beds and planted the seeds and sprouts. No, really...I did! But how was I to know that the cosmos were going to be taller than the elephant ears!? How was I to know that seeds wander here? I planted morning glories in one spot at the foot of a trellis...I've found them coming up in three other places. Same with nasturtiums. Who knew that the Yvonne's salvia I planted at the back of the bed would be only a foot tall and the zinnias I put in front to cover the legginess of the salvia would be almost 4 feet tall? (Even dh admits that bed looks odd.) Who knew that everything would lie down in the first rain...and not get back up. I feel like a referee, trying to prevent the bachelor buttons from smothering the daisies and holding the cosmos back off the baptisia. Who knew that volunteer Wave petunias would ambush my hydrangeas and threaten to cover them up? (HEY! Cut that out! This is a part shade bed!!)

And then there are my own goofs - I read on the package that my verbascum would be very tall so I put them at the back of the bed...where they appear to be green pancakes flat on the ground. Same for the baptisia australis. I just hope they will be in the right place next year. They sure look silly now.

Chaotic? Well yes, but that wasn't my plan.

For me, I start out following a few rules and after that the only rule I follow is "where there's space":

1. No like colors side by side
2. No like foliage side be side
3. No like shaped flowers side by side (no coneflowers or daisies next to each other. More like Coneflowers, maltese cross and foxgloves)
4. Low growers up front, tall ones in back (doesn't always work, but I make a conscious effort)

For the most part, this keeps everything looking interesting.

The rule of threes is useful. Plant three of the same plant in a triangle, and as they grow they'll make a nice natural looking clump - better than a straight line. If you have more than three (the joy of WS!) fit them into a diamond or staggered rows, so you don't have a long straight line.

I guess I am not sure what you were asking. Did you mean how to arrange the plants in the beds or how your beds are arranged in your yard. I am assuming both. [g] I also use the rule of three, but it can go into rule of 5 or more. The important part of it is that it is an odd number, not even.

I also do what valiche does, trying to get variety in shape and texture. Color is predetermined by my color scheme and since every plant is usually chosen with that in mind, anything goes anywhere in that regard.

Some of my beds are edged with rock and some meet the lawn and are edged with a V cut to keep the grass out of the beds. It works somewhat, with minimal effort needed to keep this maintained. Within the beds, I have stepping stones in order to get in there comfortably to work. Still working on having enough and moving plants to accommodate that.

A vegetable area borders one long full sun/butterfly border and it has raised beds and is mulched with bark mulch all around it. It usually looks pretty neat.

As for how to arrange plants in the beds...although I use the above rules, I still haven't got it the way I want it yet. With winter sowing, I find you can not always depend on the color of the plant, and/or you are unfamiliar with the plant, or you lost the label. [g] So, it is a coin toss sometimes getting the look you want. I do a lot of moving of plants. Very rarely do I get lucky and it works out the first time.

:-)
pm2

Linda, you said your verbascum "appear to be green pancakes flat on the ground" ... so funny and true ... mine were like that last year and kept me scratching my head. This year the stalks are very tall with many blooms ... yours will be, too ... it grows wild here, which I discovered this spring ...

marymax, my gardens are mostly chaotic because all the beds last year were carved from what was once a cornfield that grew up with trees. Most of the trees were cut and replanted with pines. When I started reclaiming space for beds, I just followed the stumps (wonderful soil there) and laid out the shape of a bed with sticks and limbs that were lying all over the field. Tacky-looking, but the limbs helped hold down thick layers of newspapers I put around the edges for weed control. Most bed areas are circles, ovals, curves. I just planted, planted, planted, to cover each area ... this year the beds look much better because I have mulched all around them, even farther out from the tree limbs (since removed) with newspaper or cardboard covered with wood chips and I can actually see defined beds now that the weeds and sticks are history. From that I learned that mulch itself can be a defining element, especially among interconnecting pathways.

In the back of several beds I have sunflowers and they unify the chaos somewhat. Next year I will use many, many more sunflowers to get that effect and backdrop. I also plant in drifts, thanks to WSing, and have large masses of salvia, vinca, balsam, marigold, and happy mixtures of those and other plants.

I try not to plant in rows and I plant in odd numbers. One thing I learned last year is that WSown plants tend to be larger than nursery stock. I found that true especially with celosia plumosa, which look like shrubs. I sometimes miscalculated the height of some plants such as Mexican hat. Last year it was at the back of a bed and was about a foot tall. This year it's about 3 1/2 tall. From that I learned to muster the discipline to space according to a plant's mature size, especially perennials) as puny as it might look the first year.

All in all, I guess my plan is one of evolution. But that's okay because I like to move plants and I like happy surprises, like the verbena bonarensis that volunteered so much it claimed about half a bed with no objection from me or the finches. Another aspect of my so-called "design" is, where possible, to leave volunteers in the places they choose, even in paths.