Playing Mix ‘n’ Match in the Garden

Mixing and matching plants is one of the most enjoyable parts of gardening and a genuine challenge. I rate it just behind planting and caring for the garden--what some people call “chores”--and while I confess that sometimes gardening does seem like a lot of work, it is never too much to keep me from digging everything up and trying again when my planting schemes don’t work out.

Right now my garden is uprooted and undergoing great changes during this fall planting season. Toward the end of November is the prefect time to do such rearranging, because several things are working in your favor.

Time to Plant

First, this is the tail end of the fall planting season and still a fine time to plant anything from shrubs to flowers. The first rain has already arrived and thoroughly soaked the soil, and hopefully more is on the way to help with the watering of new plants. That last storm couldn’t have been better timed, because it watered a weekend’s worth of planting in my garden.

Though this past week got pretty chilly, especially at night, the days remain pleasantly warm. The soil is not yet so cold as to halt plant growth, so anything planted now is becoming established, though you may not notice much activity on the plant’s part until spring.

This is also a good month, as is December, for digging things up and moving them, or dividing them if they are perennials. Plants can sit out of the ground for hours and show no ill effects, because they are much less likely to wilt or die this close to the onset of winter. They are becoming “hardened,” in gardening jargon.

The days are a trifle short for big projects, but rearranging is not quite like starting over.

During spring and summer, I make notes of what looks best next to what, or which have grown too big, and I accumulate new plants to try out. Then I begin digging up those that are to be divided, moved or gotten rid of.

For instance, two plants I was trying out this summer turned out to look fantastic together, but they were unfortunately separated by about 30 feet, so one is being moved next to the other. The shrub is an exceptionally handsome one, Correa Ivory Bells, which tolerates a little shade, has lovely cream bellflowers in late summer and foliage tinged gray and golden.

What looks great next to it is a rare plant discovered down in San Diego, Verbascum undulatum , with foliage even more golden. It got moved closer to the shrub. Because it presumably will have tall spire-like flowers (most verbascums do), I also planted some foxgloves in the vicinity and some lamb’s ears to pick up the gray in the correa.

Minor Adjustments

This was not like starting from scratch but was simply an adjustment. Other adjustments involving more common plants included moving a white azalea (about 4 feet across) to where there were no white plants; two camellias (still youngsters at 3 feet tall) that got burned by the hot sun back in September; two roses (both were cut back like they would be in January) that didn’t go with the other colors nearby, and several clumps of agapanthus that had simply grown too big. All look better already in their new locations.

Several plants are being moved or removed because they are too big. To try and avoid too much of this moving about, I have come up with a final checklist to go over before I turn on the sprinklers to water everything. It includes the following items:

--Did I leave enough room between plants? This item forces me to stand back and honestly appraise the situation. I often don’t leave nearly enough room but at this point, I can dig them up one more time and space them a little farther apart.

--Are they going to be growing in sun or shade? This is especially important at this time of the year, because the sun is so low and some spots are going to become shady as the sun climbs in spring. And some spots in shade are going to get sunnier.

--Do they have the same water requirements? I want to avoid planting things that need lots of water next to those that need little, because one or the other is going to suffer.

--Do their colors go together? Many of the things being moved or planted are not in flower and it is difficult to keep track of them all, so a final check is called for.

--Can they be easily watered? This reminds me to build basins around shrubs that are going to need deeper, more thorough irrigations (by hand, with a hose) at first, and prompts me to see if the sprinklers reach all the plants in need, before I turn them on and get everything muddy.

This checklist is a new idea for me and hopefully will help avoid too much in the way of adjustments. But adjustments are part of making a garden and frankly, it’s kind of fun to keep changing everything around. It’s not bad as exercise either.