Category: Designer Tips

  • Wildlife Garden Design Tip: Focus on Shape

    Think native plants and wildlife-attracting gardens look messy? It doesn’t have to be that way. In this series, we’ll talk about the techniques involved in designing a beautiful wildlife garden. Recently, Rachel Matthews wrote a guest post here about what she sees as the most important aspect of landscape design: Shape. I want to follow…

  • Wildlife Garden Design Tip: Choose a Simple Color Palette

    Think native plants and wildlife-attracting gardens look messy? It doesn’t have to be that way. In this series, we’ll talk about the techniques involved in designing a beautiful wildlife garden. Today’s tip goes well with my last piece of advice, which was to plant native and wildlife-attracting plants in masses: The tip? Choose a simple…

  • Wildlife Garden Design Tip: Plant in Masses

    Think native plants and wildlife-attracting gardens look messy? It doesn’t have to be that way. In this series, we’ll talk about the techniques involved in designing a beautiful wildlife garden. Many native plant enthusiasts and wildlife gardeners start out by trying to replicate the randomized “design” of nature, by planting a lovingly-curated collection of individual…

  • A Designer’s Take on Wildlife Gardening

    Though recent polls show that using native plants and attracting wildlife are big priorities for gardeners, these types of landscapes have a terrible reputation for being messy and poorly-designed. It’s gotten to the point that many landscape designers I’ve spoken with shy away from mentioning native plants to their clients, even if they plan on…

  • Backyard Landscaping Not Looking as Good as You’d Like? Here’s Why

    Gen here – today’s article is a guest post from my friend Rachel Mathews of Successful Garden Design. Rachel’s an established landscape designer in the UK, and I’ve been been enjoying her landscape design eBooks and courses for some time. Today she’ll share one of the biggest secrets to success in designing a landscape: