🌱How to Design a Planting from Start to Finish (Spreadsheet to Rendering)🌸

Design Your Dream Garden Guide here:
Plant spreadsheet template in Chapter 8:
👉 https://stan.store/ygarden/p/design-your-dream-garden-a-howto-guide
Time stamps:
Intro: 0:00
Software I use: 0:45
Structure recap: 1:25
Redbuds: 2:00
Planting style: 2:35
Plant Selection: 3:15
Views: 5:55
Winter: 6:37
Spring: 11:05
Summer: 14:35
Fall: 20:30
Overview: 22:16

In this video, I’m sharing my full garden design process — from the initial structure and plant funnel to the final plant list and rendering.
You’ll see exactly how I turn a spreadsheet of native and naturalistic plants into a real, layered design that feels cohesive, seasonal, and low-maintenance.

If you love naturalistic design, native plants, and realistic garden planning, this one’s for you.

Hey you guys, UA here. So, in the last video, I showed you a space in the garden where we have been working pretty much all summer and we cleared out almost all of the plants from there and I walked you around and I showed you kind of like the structure of the space. So, in today’s video, I will be going over my design plan for the space and I’m going to talk about how I pick plants and combine them and uh make sure that everything works great together. I’m going to make a rough rendering of what the space will look like. Now, of course, none of this is set in stone, and things may change once I get out there and I start digging. Uh, it always happens, but it helps um to see kind of what the space may look like. Um, I use a lot of different software when I design projects. Um, I use SketchUp, Procreate, Illustrator, Photoshop. But for renderings like this, I usually use either Icecape or Garden Puzzle. And I will be using Garden Puzzle app today. As you can see, I already preloaded the photo of the site that I’m working on. Now, uh, Garden Puzzle is by no means a perfect app. It u kind of has a limited pallet of plants, plus it crashes away too often, uh, for my liking. But it is uh definitely a useful um app to do something like this. So as you can see here, we already got our structure here. There’s a beautiful pin oak tree uh the evergreen arborite American pillar arborite hedge and um the red buds that we planted early in the spring. I also moved the water feature from the right side to the left side. I thought it would be a little bit more balanced that way. But again, nothing is set in stone. I may move it again as I start working on the space. But the first thing I want to do is just include the red buds and kind of make them a mature specimen. So the red buds are in place. And I actually had a question from the previous video asking how far um the left one was from the house. It’s actually planted more than 15 feet away from any of the corner of the foundation. Red buds get about 20 feet wide. So that is plenty for it to grow and not even touch the house. But it will provide that beautiful structure, the shade that I sorely need. Next step is to decide on the style of the planting that I want here. The plantings could be formal, modern, u more naturalistic and really wild. I am going for something in naturalistic woodsy feel. This was um woodland garden before. It’s the theme that I would like to go with, especially with the walkway being so winding and informal. Quick note, this area is fenced and although I do have deer pressure in the front yard and I have to be mindful as to what I plant there, the backyard is fenced so I can plant pretty much what I want and not just deer resistant plants. So I decided on the style of this planting which is going to be naturalistic and woodsy. But how in the world am I going to pick specific plants out of thousands of plants available and millions of cultivars that people came up with over the years? Um well, I use u site conditions to guide me. In this case, I have um part shade area with really sunny pockets. uh because the red buds are still young, some of these areas receive pretty much full sun from six hours to eight hours a day. So, I have to keep that in mind. Also, soil uh this is dry shade, but in the spring and early summer, it stays kind of wet and we also have acidic soil. Also, for the size, I would like to keep the plants shorter. um anywhere from 2 to three feet for perennials and for shrubs maybe four to five feet. So I wouldn’t want uh my largest shrub to be taller than 5 feet. And I don’t want to forget my personal preferences, which are super important because I’m designing this garden for myself. And um even if someone else would like to have some hot colors in the space, I personally like more of cooler tones like purples and blues. And that is the color theme that I’m going with in this space. So, all of the criteria that I mentioned um like the size, site conditions, uh your personal preferences, style creates a funnel. And this is a page out of my design guide where you can see all of the things that are going into this funnel. And in the end, you come up with your ideal plant for this space. But you actually will come up with a list of many, many plants that will be suitable for the space. Um, and what I do next is I put all of those plants in a spreadsheet, which is also part of my design guide. And the spreadsheet is incredibly helpful because it shows you the size, the um kind of moisture levels that the plant likes, but also the seasons of interest. Not just the bloom time, but if the plant has beautiful bark or decorative leaves off season, it also goes into the spreadsheet. So, if you looking at, let’s say, late spring and you don’t have a lot going on, you can continue looking for those plants that will fill in those gaps. I have all this information. I compiled my list of shrubs, perennials, and grasses and bulbs. I’m going to start combining them in the space. But um when I was thinking about this, my initial reaction was that I will be looking out into the space from inside the house a lot more than being in the actual space because those two windows right there, that’s um kind of the view that I get every single day, no matter the season. And we actually have a couple more windows in the living room that look out into the space. So, I need something um evergreen here or more evergreen interest, especially in the winter which is coming up. So, I’m going to switch this view into the winter mode. And that is actually one of the reasons I like garden puzzle because you can shift it to the seasonal view so you don’t miss anything. And one of the evergreens that I absolutely love for our area is mountain laurel. Mountain laurel is a beautiful understory evergreen native here and normally it gets quite large. Uh I have one it’s about 12 feet tall and that is a kind of wild variety. There are newer cultivars that get to about four to five maximum 8t tall. So there are different different options for that. And the one that I found is Carol. Um, and I’m going to put three kind of under this window. Um, they don’t get taller than about four 4 and 1/2 ft tall, which is perfect. And they are evergreen and they also bloom in the spring with those beautiful flowers. I have three right there. Um, I will put another one maybe on the other side and behind the oak so you can’t quite see it to kind of balance things out. Um, this is pretty good. I have the American pillar. I have the mountain laurels. I would like to have another evergreen more in the forefront but a shorter one. And there are a lot of different options, but I’m going to go with another mountain laurel. There is um Mount Laurel called Kalia Angustapoglia. They only get to about 18 in 2 feet tall and just see right here. They’re kind of like a spreading shrub. Uh and they do love acidic soil which we do have here in New Jersey. So that is ideal for us here. Okay. This is already a lot more interesting in the winter, which again remember this is kind of half of the year here in northern New Jersey. So this is what I will be looking at most of the time. And um it’s also important because it’s providing structure for the garden. Um, I also wanted to have uh red twig dogwood because not only it is absolutely beautiful. I actually use red twig dogwoods for my Christmas decor all the time and I have to buy them and I’d rather have shrubs in my own garden. Now, there is one that is called Arctic Fire by Proven Winners. It is a lot shorter than you know the giant um red twig dog woods. They get they can get quite big. So I will kind of disperse them all throughout this space. So there is a connection and um just this beautiful beautiful color. And if it snows again here in New Jersey with that snow and that evergreen interest and the red twigs um that will be just gorgeous. This is a really good structural foundation, but I would like to go further and add some blooming plants like haoris which are wonderful wonderful evergreen flowers and they are um they have very long season of interest. There is haoris niger that said buds already. I checked mine yesterday and they are about to bloom. They will bloom in um sometime in November and definitely by Christmas. So I will add some of those here kind of um disperse them all throughout the garden. And they come in so many different colors. There’s so many different beautiful varieties and they u can do very well in dry shade and um planted around other shrubs. So, there is some winter interest going on here already. I love it. Okay, so I think we have a great foundation and let’s move into the spring season. There you go. Beautiful color. But we definitely can take spring to a next level. And this is when I start to refer to the spreadsheet a lot because I want to see what is going on in March time and April and May. And what’s going on are a lot of bulbs. So what I’m going to add are daffodils, which by the way I already have a lot of in this space. So we can kind of have them everywhere. Those beautiful spring flowers, fragrant, deer resistant. If you have deer, just have drifts. And there’s so many different varieties of them. Oops. Okay, that looks good for now. And I will move things around as we go. Um, I also have some lodiums here. I can add some friileras which are beautiful spring bulbs. They’re many different types. I like the ones that are um darker blooming. Those are also um deer resistant and v um mice resistant. They’re they’re not very pleasant smelling, so nobody likes to eat them. So, I’m going to add some more fertilarious. Then you can add some ccases, some snow drops. So, beautiful, beautiful uh spring display there. Uh I will add a couple of tulips in here. Now, for tulips, again, this is fenced. I I’m so sorry for you guys if you don’t have fenced garden and um you have deer situation, but this is a perfect opportunity for me to enjoy my tulips. Um I will go with some of the pink varieties, but also darker varieties like let’s say um Queen of Night. And here is a huge tip um to take away from this. When you start combining plants, um it can be very um intimidating, but there’s some helpful things that you can do is walk around the garden at the time when everything is blooming and kind of see what looks good together. literally grab um one of the daffodils, just pick it and then walk around and see if it looks good with this particular plant or that particular plant. I do that a lot because even those uh subtleties really make a big difference. Another thing that is very helpful is to pick bouquets out of your garden. It’s not only so enjoyable, but also when you see all of that in kind of one space, you can imagine, oh, but what if I have one space combined with all of these different plants? And um I find that really inspirational. So, this is actually inspired by one of the bouquets that I gathered this spring. All right. So, the spring looks really good, but let’s switch to summer and see what’s happening there. Nothing nothing is happening. And this is a lot of times what happens in regular gardens. They’re very heavy in the spring planting because that’s when people tend to go to the garden centers and everything is blooming. They’re buying the shrubs and the plants and the bulbs and then it’s all green in the summer, which there’s nothing wrong with green, but we would like to have some color. So, once again, I go back to my spreadsheet going through that funnel, going through the site conditions, coming up with the plants and seeing what does well in the summer and what blooms a very long time and looks good together. Uh, one of my top plants for situation like this, this is part shade. However, echynas do very well for me in those situations. They actually kind of do better in part shade for me. So, I’m going to include some echanis here. Okay. So, we’re already starting to see some color. I’m really conflicted about the this water feature whether I wanted to screen it a little bit or just plant couple of shorter things around it. We’ll see. But here I’ll kind of disperse bunch of echanious here. Okay. And this is this type. There’s another type here which is a lot brighter, but I kind of want things subtle here. Maybe I should have a few of these. We’ll see. We’ll see. And another thing that I have going on here are flocks. Again, I am sorry if you have deer because um they will eat flocks. I want to have like a drift of this is Stalinifra. It’s a native flock. Really pretty and blue just the way I like it. And I have this one plant here that I highly recommend which is geranium roan. It blooms for such a long long time. right here. Has this purplish flowers, just gorgeous. And I’m going to plant it um along the walkway everywhere. Kind of dot it around. Maybe not as much. And I’m going to incorporate other hardy geraniums as well. I probably will plant three different types. I’m uh been I’ve been kind of obsessed with hardy geraniums lately because they are workh horses. They are deer resistant and um they bloom for a very long time and some of the geraniums like the big root geraniums um are evergreen so they kind of provide that beautiful carpet in the winter as well. Okay, so I think I have a lot of little blooming flowers which I love. I love that um kind of fluffy texture, but I would like to add some boldness to this. And what other plant to add boldness um than not than a a hydranger? So, I’m going to add some uh smooth hydras here. There are a lot of different varieties. Now, I probably wouldn’t go with Annabelle or Incredible. I want something a little bit more subtle, maybe like a flowerful. Uh they are um they have really strong stems, but what I love is that bold bold flower that lasts for a very long time in the garden as well. So, even when they dry, um they look absolutely beautiful. So, I’m going to have a few here and there. And um what’s great about them as this garden will start to become more shaded, they’re very tolerant of that. So, I have that going on for the summer. Um I do have a Oakleaf hydranger actually here already. Uh there’s an oakleaf queen of hearts right here behind. Oops. Make it bigger. It’s kind of like it will be behind that mountain laurel but also has beautiful flowers. And another couple of things that I would love to include are grasses. Grasses provide so much texture. So let’s find some grasses. They are uh different cares of different sizes and heights. Um I can also include some dischia says ptosa which has beautiful seed heads. So here we can add Oops. Add some more. Um and as you build your garden you kind of see those little pockets where you can add some more shrubs, some perennials. Right. I think this is enough with a summer color. It is very full and colorful just the way I like it. But um let’s see what it looks like in the fall and if we have an overlap with the fall interest as well. Beautiful, beautiful fall color with hardy geraniums. Surprise, surprise. Hardy geraniums have amazing fall color and uh those dog woods and also the red buds have that beautiful golden color. But there is no flowers. So you could see absolutely no flowers. So what do I have here for the flowers? Of course, I have anemmones. So, let’s include some anemmones. And I actually almost don’t want to have too many flowers because of that fall color is so overwhelming. And look at these beautiful anemmones. There are many different varieties that you can have. You can do a drift of them. Um, and the great thing about anemmones is that the rosette is kind of small, so you don’t really see them during the summer and then bam, there’s a big surprise in the fall with their gorgeous, gorgeous flowers. This here, some in the forefront. Oh, I think this is lovely. Uh, let me see if I can add some more things. You know what? I actually don’t want to overdo it. I think I’m pretty happy with the diversity of plants that I have here. I could add some of the fall blooming crocuses or culticums, which is kind of an unusual surprise when you’re walking through your fall garden to see um, bulbs blooming like that. But I am really happy with what this looks like. So let’s go back to the winter again and see what’s going on. All right. So that’s great. We got some shrub layer. We got some evergreens and uh some blooming haoris. In the spring, lots of beautiful color. In the summer it changes, but also beautiful color. fall with uh lots of fall color. Quick note about the native versus non-native ratio. My personal quota is 50%. In this space, um I am kind of using it as for d for the diversity is 50%, it’s actually more than 50% natives. But because I have this pin oak here um and these two red buds, if you plant a native tree, the uh coefficient of that native biomass is a lot larger than planting perennials. I know it sounds very complicated and I actually have a specific formulas for that as to how to count native versus non-native biomass. If you’re interested in that, I can compile an Excel spreadsheet for you so you can see how to calculate that. But uh we’re definitely uh good here as for the native biomass and also diversity. Um and I think overall this is um a very beautiful garden. So the next step for me is to find the source for the stone and start building the path and replanting some of the plants. and see how much I can do in the following couple of months before the end of the year. This is it for today’s video. I hope you guys enjoyed this process and learned something new. Let me know in the description down below uh what other plants that I can include in this area that are okay with these sight conditions or what are your favorite plants. And uh thank you so much for watching today’s video and I will see you in the next one.