This is part 8 of The Garden Guide — the studio's field manual for building a native garden from bare ground in Canberra and the Southern Tablelands. Start at the overview if you've just arrived.
How many, and in what arrangement. Density is a budget decision; pattern is an aesthetic one.
Density and pattern
At nine plants per square metre — my standard — set them out evenly spaced in a three-by-three grid within each square metre, 333mm apart. At five per square metre, alternate: a five-dice pattern in one square, then a cross in the next, like a chequerboard — spacing then stays even where squares meet instead of clumping at the join.
Four ways to arrange
| Pattern | Reads as | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Random | Wild, natural | Don't plant anything together deliberately. Walk through with one species, drop a few in scattered holes, swap species, walk again. |
| Random + key plants | Wild, with structure | Place the screening or structural plants first, and deliberately. Everything else goes in random around them. |
| Clustered | Harmonious, composed | Big clumps of each species — five to ten of this, ten to fifteen of that — with the occasional single plant dropped in for variance. Fiona Brockhoff works this way. |
| Mass | Bold, designerly | Large single-species blocks. Impressive effect, less diversity, fewer micro-communities. |
Random gives the most micro-communities per square metre, but can read as mess at small scale. Random with a handful of intentional plants is the one I reach for most — a few placed on purpose gives the whole thing order. Mass is a big, calm, impressive effect — and the least diverse of the four: fewer micro-communities, fewer insects, less resilience.
The palette was chosen so the plants work together. Set them out at random and it will still look good. That's the point of a considered palette — it removes the pressure to compose. If you want to plan how textures and foliage will contrast as things mature, do; but you don't have to.
Prepare before you plant
- Dig all the holes first, at the start of the day. It's repetitive, but batching is what makes volume possible.
- Set up a staging area in the shade for the plants. Out of their pots and in the sun, roots dry out and die in minutes.
- Big buckets of water with a few good glugs of Seasol. Soak each plant about 10 minutes before it goes in.
- Only set out as many plants as you can put in within the next hour or two — less in direct sun.
Start small. Do a cluster of about ten square metres first and get the rhythm of it before you try to do too much at once. Once the process is in your hands you can plant a great deal, very quickly.
Which plants go where
Order of placement:
- Biggest and most structural first — trees and shrubs. Stand them in their holes; don't plant yet.
- Specific-effect plants next — anything you want in the foreground or close to where you sit.
- Fussy plants next — anything with real siting requirements: the sun-lovers in a mostly shady garden, the ones that need drainage or moisture.
- Everything else — most plants are adaptable. Fill the remaining holes to your chosen pattern.
This is where the light and moisture observation pays off. You're pairing what you noticed with what the plants need.
This series comes from the Garden Guide I give my design clients. I write one letter a week on spatial design, craft and technology — and subscribers read the full guides first.
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