We have all visited those awe-inspiring gardens that seem to be designed to perfection. Season after season, they offer beauty, layers upon layers of color, texture, form and interest. While it’s easy to see that those gardens are lovely, figuring out how to create such beauty in your own yard is another, much more challenging matter.
Garden designer David L. Culp uses an approach called layered gardening, which is “a design process by which I try to maximize the beauty and interest from each planted space, by combining complementary plants that either grow and bloom together or follow each other in succession.”
In this new book, The Layered Garden, written with Adam Levine and photographed by Rob Cardillo, Culp takes gardeners through his design process and explains how to apply it to your own garden. He shows how beds relate to each other and to the garden as a whole, how groundcovers, mid-sized plants, vines, trees and screening plants are used to define layers within the garden and how techniques such as repeating plants and colors, even plants within the same genus that have different bloom times, can add impact to the garden.
His workshop for both creating and explaining layered gardening is his 2-acre property, Brandywine Cottage, located near the fringe of a suburban development (though you would never know that because of the garden design.) The concepts of layering are visible in the stunning color photographs throughout the book. Especially helpful are shots of the same area in different moments, such as two photos of a rock-edged hillside taken three weeks apart in spring. One shows lots of bare earth with swaths of white daffodils in bloom. In the later photograph, hostas, heucheras and other plants have emerged and lilacs are now in bloom well behind the daffodils, which have finished their blooming.
If you are faced with a blank-slate property, Culp offers many suggestions for slowly developing a garden, giving the land a chance to reveal itself as you figure out what the best garden for you will be. If you are planning to design or redesign a space next spring and summer, this is a wonderful guide to choose.
Would you like a copy of The Layered Garden? Leave a comment below about your favorite plant combinations and we’ll enter your name in the drawing. The winner will be announced Dec. 26.
My favorite plant combo is our dwarf blue spruce with the white swan coneflower right next to it. The blue and white is a fantastic combination.
I love that new hosta varieties are more light tolerant. I would like information on using them. This book sounds wonderful.
I am in the middle of a garden design project in my backyard at this time. It has been a two summer process so far and I expect it to be another two summers of work at least. This book would be a great help to inspire more design in the completion of my project.
I saw this at Olbrich Botanical Gardens…. So the credit goes to them but in a small grove of tress (can’t remember if they were gray birch or aspen) but in that grove they had tall lady ferns (Athyrium filix-femina) then there was wild ginger (Asarum canadense) growing under all the ferns. In my opinion a very dramatic layering of beautiful native plants.
Olbrich gardens is full of ideas — I also love the way they use groundcovers and ferns!
Favorite combinations: pretty simple…wildflowers interspersed with iris…or, the other way around.
Tiger eyes sumac with various hosta planted under them
i’d LOVE this book…i love to garden in layers!
I’m a complete novice to gardening so I don’t have a favorite combination. But this spring we are purchasing a house with amazing potential for a lush garden and I would love the extra guidance from a book like this!
Exciting!
Amazing
I have been working on a layered landscape for years. Always interested in more ideas as how to have interest at all times during the year. My favorite combinations are plants such as huecheras, ferns, etc. that showcase the hosta collection. This book looks interesting.
i love pink, yellow and blue. any plants will do, love them all.
I like planting Colocasia (elephant ears) near bamboo. This year an unexpected combo that worked really well was Datura inoxia and purple fountain grass. So nice!
Looks like a great book!
I planted a big 40′ x 30′ at our family cabin the past two summers. A ton of work but it’s beautiful. The stone path meandering through was the finishing touch. I love the karl forester grasses, cone flowers and black eyed susan’s together there.
Love the variety that a layered garden can offer. Can’t wait to read it.
Right now I’m loving anything that my Grevillea juniperina ‘Molonglo’ surrounds, including Opuntia and Nassella tenuissima.
Creating a garden for all seasons. Sounds like a wonderful garden book
I love gardening books! Especially the ones with lots of photos, and that create naturalistic (rather than formal) landscaping.
Just in time for my garden renovations!
My favorite combination is one that I got by accident – deep blue Veronica and pink Dianthus.
Sounds great!
Layering up is a great concept.
favorite combinations are different varieties of the same plant: coral bells and hosta especially!
Layering is the way to go! Looks like a great book.
I know it may be cliche but I love roses, hydrangea and hollyhocks. I also like to incorporate ferns and other greenery to blend them together. I would love to have the book because I am starting a garden for disabled and homeless veterans.
Last year I began to add low-growing plants to edge flowerbeds, using alot of cransebills which are a favorite for that purpose. This looks like a wonderful “dreaming” book!
I’ve been trying to figure that question out for ever. I’ve move my plants looking for that perfect combination. I want the beauty of cottage garden only more contained.
I am still learning about flowers but I like simple combinations with a lot of colorr