6 Most Common Planting Design Mistakes Home Gardeners Make

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Planting Design Mistakes
Transforming your landscape into a vibrant tapestry of flowering plants requires thoughtful consideration and strategic planting choices. These are the most common mistakes I see new gardeners make when designing a garden bed.

In this video, I’ll also share some ways you can fix these errors to create a thriving and visually captivating garden that blooms in harmony across all seasons.

Mistake 6: Not Using the Garden Pyramid

Mistake 5: Not Planting Multiples of Each Plant

Mistake 4: Not Planting for 4 Seasons

Mistake 3: Lack of Color Scheme/Theme

Mistake 2: Garden Beds Too Small

Mistake 1: Incorrect Plant Spacing

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In this video I’m going to share the six most common planting design mistakes I see home gardeners make when designing a garden bed so planting design is designing inside of the garden beds and what your plants look like when they’re blooming together this is one of my

Favorite topics and I can’t wait to get into these six mistakes my name is Amy and over uppretty purled door.com I help home gardeners design Landscapes that are uniquely used so let’s get into these top six mistakes and how I would fix them mistake number six is not using

The garden pyramid for planting success if you don’t use this pyramid you’re likely going to end up with a visually unbalanced landscape that’s lacking depth and interest so the pyramid basically helps you make sure that you have a good mix of different plant types different heights and different shapes

So that your garden is beautiful and layered and it’ll even show you the different ratios of each type of plant you need to make sure that you’re creating a balanced and beautiful mixed border so the different layers of the pyramid are as follows the first layer is incorporating ornamental trees trees

Smaller trees into your landscape second is evergreen shrubs and other evergreen trees Layer Three is perennial deciduous shrubs and these are shrubs that will bloom or have interesting features about them but they may lose their leaves in the winter the next layer is perennial plants and flowers and this is where

Most people focus the majority of their landscape on and finally Ground Covers Vines and grasses which will add textural interest it will cover the ground so you don’t have as many weeds it will create vertical interest for you so that you have things up higher in the

Landscape so those are the layers and you can check out that pyramid I’ll leave a link to that in the description below if you want to dive deeper into creating a beautiful landscape that looks great in every single season you can check out my design your Four Season

Garden course in this course I walk you through the framework I use using this Garden pyramid to create magazine worthy spaces for Gardens of any size so you could use this and you can shrink it down and scale it up to work for a garden of any size or shape the next

Mistake I see homeowners make is not using enough of each plant so planting multiples of each plant and this is really common mistake it’s really fun to go to the garden center and pick lots of different plants but I would encourage you to choose multiples of each plant

That you’re planting to create a larger impact Landscapes are very large and planting beds are typically viewed from a distance so you need those multiple plants in order to create the impact that you’re looking for visually with the color and things like that so no

More onesie tws as I call it no we’re grabbing one or two of each plant try to grab a lot of the same plant to create that great interest I have a video on this channel you could check it out up here or up here somewhere and that will

Show you different ways to arrange these multiples of plants inside of garden beds so that’s a really great video to check out after you get through this tip one if you’re interested in creating groupings and drifts of plants mistake number four is not planting for four seasons of interest and this is super

Common when you’re not considering all of the different seasons where plants bloom BL you can end up with a garden that looks great in one season and then it sort of just falls off and looks kind of meth the rest of the year so most perennial plants and shrubs and things

That will come back each year they have Bloom times some of them will only bloom for two weeks or three weeks if you’re lucky you can get some that’ll do six or eight weeks long but unless you’re using annuals you’re going to have to do a

Little bit of planning for your space so that you have interest that’s continuing throughout each season this is such a common mistake that I actually feature it in my reg gardening Secrets training and this is an hourlong training where I cover really common mistakes that I see

Home gardeners make so check out that free training in the description below but basically the reason that this is a big problem is that most people will go to the garden center in the beginning of Spring and try to buy all the plants that they need to fill in their

Landscape and honestly this doesn’t really work unless it’s a very very large Nursery most nurseries will only have the plants out that are blooming at the time that you visit so when you’re trying to plant a landscape that will Bloom from spring through fall and you’re there in the spring you’re not

Going to get any summer blooming or fall blooming plants not to mention early spring mid spring late spring early summer Midsummer late summer on and on and on so there’s different plants that will bloom in different seasons and in order to get all of these you likely

Will need to create a plan or at the very least visit the garden center multiple times throughout the year so that you can get plants that are in bloom in different seasons of the landscape and this leads us to the next mistake mistake number three is lacking

A color scheme or a theme for your garden so when you’re choosing those plants in the different seasons and going back and forth to the garden center it’s important to have a theme or some sort of color scheme in mind so that you know which plants to pick and

Which plants are going to flow and work in the landscape design that you’re creating so when you’re new to color theory and design my best advice is to keep things simple this doesn’t mean it has to be super restrictive or boring though you can always add to your color

Scheme as you get more comfortable with color and how colors work together and there are so many different types of color schemes to choose from such as using cool and calm colors using vibrant and energizing colors using colors that support a theme like your favorite sports team or something like that or

Using colors that play off of each other’s strengths to make them look brighter so there’s so much that you can do with color and it’s definitely something that I highly recommend you look into before you start picking all of your plants so that you have that look and feel that you’re really going

For the first thing I would do before I select the color scheme is to collect some inspiration photos find photos of gardens that you like and start to piece together what you like about those Gardens and what’s interesting and do they have common colors do they all have

Purple in them are they all vibrant and energizing with Reds yellows and oranges in them and once you start collecting these photos into a folder or something you’ll start to see what you’re gravitating towards as far as color schemes you might like something monochromatic or you might like

Something with lots of different Wild colors in it it’s really a personal choice but knowing that color scheme ahead of time is going to help you a lot I’m going to leave a link in the description below to an article all about different color schemes you can

Use and again this is something that we go over in depth in my design your Four Season Garden course so you may want to check out that course too if you’re ready to start planting mistake number two when designing a garden bed is making your garden beds too small I

Always recommend that you make your garden beds deep enough to accommodate several rows of plants so if you want to simplify this down think about designing with three rows of plant plants in mind and if you have that many plants you’re going to need at least 6 to 8et of depth

And sometimes more than that uh the deeper the better is what I always say if you’re not restricted by sizing for other reasons like the border of your house or your property line or something like that always make them a little bit deeper than what you think you’re going

To need so just as an example if you have three rows of plants and the back row are shrubs that are five ft wide and then the middle row are smaller shrubs or perennials that are 3et wide and then you have a row of of two feet wide

Perennials in the front or annuals that’s 10t of depth already and that doesn’t even count um if you have to leave some space between your foundation of your house and the first row of plants so you may even need 12 feet of depth for that so I think this is a

Really common mistake if you want that Lush layered look to your landscape you have to accommodate at least three rows of plantings and those plantings when you start adding up the sizes it it will make it a lot deeper than you’re originally anticipating another tip that

You can use if you’re not exactly sure how deep you need the garden beds to be is to create a garden bed but use a temporary border like a half moon edger and just Edge out the garden bed so that way in the future if you realize that

You don’t have enough space you can always expand your beds out so before you start installing really high-end edging or having curbing poured in concrete or something like that just use a temporary border for a little while until your plants grow in and you can get a better feel for how deep those

Garden beds need to be and the number one mistake is incorrect plant spacing improper spacing between your plants can lead to overcrowding or different sparse areas in your landscape and it really can affect the visual balance of the landscape and sometimes even the health of your plants so as a

Rule thumb you have to space the plants according to their full grown size which is typically provided on the plant label most plant labels will also give you a recommended spacing size to go from so if you want a more natural or cottage style Garden you can usually plant these

Plants a little bit closer uh more tightly planted and if you want a more traditional or modern look you can space them a little further away from each other than what the plant spacing guidelines on the plant label will say so that’s just a rule of thumb and I’ve

Also created an entire video explaining plant spacing so you could watch that somewhere up here I’ll put a link to it and I think that people mess up the plant spacing so much because they’re not going by the full mature size of the plant so everything looks really spaced

Out and sparse in the beginning so you have a a tendency to plant a little closer and that’s totally okay I do that sometimes too in my own landscape where I’ll plant perennials and things a little bit closer to each other and then after two or three years I’ll divide

Those and spread them out as they grow the other thing that you can do to fill in that sparse area in between your plants is to supplement with annuals for the first few years as your plants are growing in and maturing you can just uh grow some annuals from seed or buy some

Packs of annuals at the Garden Center or nursery and you can fill in with those and that will give your landscape like a nice full look while the other plants are maturing and you don’t have to wait years for everything to fill in so that’s just another tip for you so I’d

Love to hear from you in the comments below if you have more tips to share about designing garden beds and planting design in general and I have lots more mistake videos that I’ve been sharing and I’ll leave a link to one right here so you could watch that and I’ll see you

Over in that video