Planting design in ancient gardens was often a mix of herbs for medicinal use, vegetables for consumption and flowers for decoration. Purely aesthetic planting layouts seem to have developed after the Renaissance - and Late Renaissance paintings and plans show geometric garden designs with plants used to form patterns.
In the East, naturalistic plant design originated as early as around 200 B.C. in China. In the West, the arrangement of plants in informal groups developed as part of the landscape garden style and was strongly influenced by the Picturesque.
Modern Planting Styles include:
Traditional herbaceous border Large wide borders with spectacular summer flowering perennials and a permanent backbone of shrubs and climbers. Very high maintenance and often leaves quite a bare skeleton in winter.
Mixed Borders
Modified herbaceous border with more emphasis on shrubs and evergreens. Inter-planted with perennials, bulbs and bedding plants to create year round interest through a constantly changing display of plants. Some maintenance required.
Cottage garden style planting
Traditional informal style that mixes perennials, self seeding annuals and edible plants. This is a very pretty and often reasonably low maintenance style characterised by billowing borders, traditional plants such as roses and hollyhocks.
Matrix planting
Block planting using one variety of plant (often an ornamental grass) interlaced with a series of simple, spectacular and seasonal accents
Prairie planting Informal drifts of perennials are punctuated by ornamental grasses and intersected by gravel or bark paths in a prairie garden. This style of planting is often very low maintenance and naturalistic and places a strong emphasis on plant form, long seasons of flower and structural seedheads.
