When the collecting bug bites gardeners, our gardens can quickly become overwhelmed and overcrowded with indiscriminate plant purchases. My garden, less than one-quarter acre in size, is packed with more than 2,000 species.
As a garden writer, I can easily justify such excesses. And biodiversity is the watchword when it comes to gardening in the 21st century. But that doesn’t solve the problem of where this continual stream of acquisitions is to go. The reality is that there is really, truly no room for even one more plant, let alone the hundreds I bring home each year. So, what are the plant-smitten to do?
The first trick is to make the most of every square inch you do have. For me this meant eliminating lawn. A brick terrace at the back of the house provides seating enough for entertaining and “outdoor living” and is also the perfect place to display hundreds of plants in containers.
Containers can be a garden’s movable feast. Every summer I add extra color to a small, dry waterfall in the backyard by arranging pots of succulents on the rocks. A recent trend in Denver gardens is balancing large, shallow dishes filled with hardy and drought-tolerant succulents, such as hens and chicks, on gate posts or arbors high in the air.
Vertical hardscape elements, where plants don’t usually grow, can also be pressed into service to provide extra gardening space. Fences and house walls can play host to as many climbing roses and vines as you can squeeze in, their small footprint taking up very little room in the garden. Rose towers, tuteurs, freestanding trellises and posts all perform the same function, allowing you to add vines and climbers into flower beds.
Trellises and fences can generally support multiple climbers and vines. The one caveat is to match all of the vines’ cultural requirements so you don’t have to cut back an alpine clematis before it has a chance to bloom each spring, as I do when cleaning up a hops vine that dies to the ground every winter. Vines that cohabit inevitably become as tangled as chains in a jewelry box and just as impossible to untangle.
Walls and fences can accommodate espaliered or cordoned shrubs and trees; techniques traditionally used on fruit trees to save space and increase production in the small garden. Espaliering refers to training a specimen flat against a wall in a symmetrical or geometric pattern. Cordoning is training any woody plant onto a low fence or wall, either horizontally or in a fan pattern.
I’d be the first to admit that the seriously overstuffed garden isn’t for everybody. Having so many plants violates every design rule ever written and creates somewhat of a visual cacophony.
But I wouldn’t have it any other way. To my mind, collecting plants is not so different from buying books. Although I have already read thousands, I’d still hope to read thousands more.
Marcia Tatroe is a garden writer and lecturer. Her most recent book is “Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West,” ($29.95, Johnson Books). E-mail her at rltaurora@aol.com.
