Colonial gardens were functionable gardens composed of areas that raise food, create privacy, and create order in the landscape. While colonial gardens emphasized plants that were brought over from Europe, you can design a colonial garden that features a host of native plants.
Survey Your Present Landscape
The first thing to do when designing any garden is to take a site inventory. Record the plants that presently grow in your landscape. Be sure to record the size of the plants and how many hours of sunlight they get. If there are areas of the garden that are sheltered from the wind, mark them as well. Mark your house on the plans as well as service areas where cables and pipes enter your home and yard. If you have a play area for young children, such as a swing set or sand box, mark that.
Shapes
Colonial gardens tend to use square and rectangular beds around a center focal point such as a well, fountain, or statue. The beds are made so that you can reach the entire bed without stepping into the bed. This limits soil compaction and makes maintenance easier. Paths of stone, brick, or crushed gravel go through the garden and serve as borders for the beds. The landscape beds can be designed for part of the yard or all of it. Many people leave an area in grass for their children to play in and have landscaped beds around that area.
Build In Stages
Most gardens are fully designed but are built in stages. Few people can afford to completely revamp their landscape in one season. Establish the areas of lawn or groundcover first so you don't have problems with erosion. Building in stages also lets you learn from any mistakes you make at first and keeps you from getting overwhelmed. Decide what plants you want to replace and what plants, if any, you want to keep in each stage.
Enclose The Garden
Colonists raised all their own food so if an animal ate their plants, the colonist might run out of food. Gardens were enclosed with a hedge or fence to keep out deer. bear, and other large animals. Hedges also created privacy in town. If you have lots of small animals that eat your plants, you may need a tighter fence. A short fence around just the parts of your garden that are most often eaten, such as your vegetables, can help until your hedges grow together to keep herbivores out.
Kitchen Garden
While almost all of the colonial garden would be about growing food, many people divide their garden into beds for vegetables and herbs and beds for ornamentals. Place the garden beds with vegetables and herbs in them so that they are convenient to reach from the kitchen. You want to be able to go out and grab the herbs and produce you need to make tonight's dinner without having to hike for them. Use annual flowers to edge the kitchen beds. This draws pollinators to your vegetables and herbs and increases yields. Trellises for beans and other vining plants can be used as focal points in these beds.
Larger plants such as sage, rosemary, and bay leaf can flank the vegetables and herbs. Use them to provide shade for plants that need it. These shrubs can also serve as a transition zone for the move toward more ornamental parts of the garden.
Ornamental Beds
The ornamental beds are usually laid out with a focal plant in each one, such as a small tree or large shrub like Witch Hazel or Dogwood, surrounded by shorter plants. As you move to the edge of the bed, the plants should be shorter and shorter. For example, you could plant purple coneflower around the tree or shrub, then a ground cover such as creeping phlox.
Remember the plants will start out small and grow as they get older, so pick plants by their mature size, not the size they are now. Otherwise, you will have problems with crowding and the plants will not grow well or look good.
As you design these beds, picking native plants will reduce your fertilizer and pesticide use. As a bonus, you will attract butterflies, birds, and small mammals to nest and feed in your yard. Once established, you will not have to water native plants except during a drought.
Some cities and municipalities offer rebates for removing all or most of your lawn grass and replacing it with native plants. In the front yard, leaving a mower wide border of turfgrass around beds filled with wildflowers gives the landscape an intentional feel, as opposed to messy and unkept. Some cities allow you to designate your yard as a wildscape and exempt you from having to mow every time your yard gets a certain height.
Garden Focal Point
Colonial gardens were designed to have a focal point in the center, such as a well or fountain. There might also be a statue. Having a small pond or fountain as your focal point will draw wildlife to the water. Be sure to scrub the moss out of any water feature on a regular basis so it stays nice. Moving water will keep mosquitoes from laying eggs in the water and being a nuisance. A bench near the focal point lets you sit and enjoy the landscape when the weather is nice. Some people set up trail cameras around their water feature to see what wildlife comes to visit at night when you are not around.
We Can Help
The staff at Garden Delights Nursery are always ready to answer questions you might have about what plants are native to your area and suit your garden conditions. Give us a call at 931.692.7325 and start choosing your new plants.
