Learn three styles of landscaping you can apply to any home. Using unique plants and layouts, Rachael Freitas demonstrates how to create a Mediterranean-inspired bed, a bed showcasing modern influences and one in the cottage tradition.
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Hey y’all it’s Rachel frus and if you know me you know that I love Landscaping I love its ability to transform a space to elevate your home and to even let you play with different styles today I am going to show you how to style one landscape bed in three different ways
The top three requests that I get are California Mediterranean modern and traditional Cottage so by using this formula we’re going to be able to pair plants to achieve three completely Unique Designs first California Mediterranean that landscape from the Southern California area that has lots of soft textures but also some more like strong structured pieces to sort of offset it all right so we are going to start our California Mediterranean bed with our tallest plant it’s going to be in the
Back this is a white cloud mule grass the reason why I chose this is it gives that soft movement but it also when it blooms it’s got this beautiful white feather that comes out of it and I think that’s going to add to giving us a
Little pop of color so I’m going to go ahead and plant that here in the back we’ve got our White Cloud mule grass in the ground from here we are moving into gar pink Cloud so this plant it feels specifically California Mediterranean to me because it’s got these small delicate
Flowers and it’s got that movement that kind of keeps the softness that I feel like California Mediterranean is so known for I love how this mixes in you almost think that it’s part of the grasses all right we’ve planted this we’re moving on to the Evergreen mid plant I went with a
Dilium vintage Jade because of its similarities um of the leaf shape to a little Olive shrub which of course is a California Mediterranean Staple okay we’ve got our mid planting done now we’re going to move into an unexpected moment Agave are huge in Southern California Landscapes I just love the structure that they provide in the midst of things that are more flowy I love how they can appear to be yellow and then blue Green okay our unexpected moment is in it is time to move on to ground cover we are using Sedum Angelina now now this is a succulent type ground cover that is also found in Southern California so the fact that it can exist here too is a
Huge win for us it’s just going to continue growing out and spreading and just give that really nice under story to our landscape bed all right so here we are we have our California Mediterranean bed we’ve got our soft grasses in back with our sweet little flowers that kind of give that
Extra soft touch’ got this strong Evergreen moment that will give us yearr round coverage and then of course a succulent underst story with our unexpected moment of agave so next up I’m going to show you how to do a modern landscape bed modern is very clean simple nothing too fussy
The idea that gets conjured up in your head when you think about modern is probably a gravel bed with plants spaced even distances apart while that is a great option I want to show you that there are other ways that you can still achieve a modern landscape I choose to
Do this by mass planting which is grouping the same plants together in a line and by keeping a really monochrome palette I think we’re going to get that perfect modern landscape that we’re going for all right so today I am going with two plants because with modern less is
More and I’m following the same formula I’m going to go ahead and plant my taller plant in back we’ve got some great Maiden grass here this is going to give almost year round coverage and that really nice sweet movement in the back of our landscape bed Mass planting creates almost a ribbon of
Continuity okay we’ve got our backdrop planted now we’re going for our mid plant I went with a lcoa so what I love about this plant is it’s got some fun movement to it but also as the leaves mature they turn to this deeper green which is going to match our green grass
In the back almost Perfectly so the only place that I’ve veered off from my usual formula here is that I’m not doing a ground cover under planting the reason why is I just wanted to keep things Super Simple and Clean so as we move into our unexpected moment in a lot of modern Landscapes you’ll see
Really sculptural elements and so I decided to make one by creating these concrete spheres I love the Jos of the soft greens against the concrete okay so that is the exact strong sculptural element that I was going for in our modern bed all right and now I’m going to show
You how to do a landscape bed in the traditional cottage style traditional Cottage should plure up the idea of nicely trimmed boxwoods or overflowing blooming plants we want to really capture that softness with a lot of blooms so for our tall plant we are going with a beautiful hydrangea
It’s a star you can’t help but look at it it makes for a great cut flower centerpiece and it just makes for a really pretty moment in your Yard While I am keeping the formula pretty similar in this one the biggest change is that I’m going to do more clusters than layering so I will still be planting the taller plant the hydrangea behind our evergreen shrub but I’m going to do it more like little mini cluster
Moments than long lines like I did with the previous two when you think of traditional Cottage I’m willing to that that boxwoods fall somewhere on the line so as these boxwoods continue to mature we’re going to be able to shape them into really beautiful round Globes and
We’re going to set them up against other sizes so they can actually form a cloud Shape we have our last one now hopefully this makes a little bit more sense now as to what I meant by cloud formation basically as these mature we be able to really trim them into that perfect Globe shape and they all look like they’re sort of related to one another and so
I’m going to do a couple more moments of that and then we’ll get into our under planting so for this ground cover I’m going with a creeping flock it’s an evergreen and it will continue to grow out and spread and also it’s a prolific Bloomer in the spring and summer months
So it’s going to be really beautiful for the home to play against the Hy ranges so let’s get it in there We did it it is complete I love this traditional Cottage design because it fits so seamlessly with this area and this house I couldn’t be more pleased with how this turned Out I think creating a landscape bed in front of your home is an opportunity to invite people in it’s a moment of rest before you hit the front door it adds curb appeal but it also just adds a sense of home so in this Workshop I
Showed you how to choose plants and how to arrange them to achieve certain distinct landscape Styles California Mediterranean modern and traditional Cottage I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit with me I can’t wait to see what you come up with in your own Space