Garden Design 101 - How to Use Shrubs in Your Formal Landscaping Designs

It always seems like spring brings out the gardener in all of us. Maybe it's being surrounded by all that new growth, or maybe it's just all that beautiful sunshine, but whatever it is, everyone here feels the same: spring is the time to dive right into your garden! If you're a brand-new gardener, you'll find everything you need to know for your garden project from design ideas to some of the best shrubs and bushes you can use for your chosen (or developing) design style. We'll cover two popular formal garden styles and then in the following post, we'll go over some garden and landscape design basics so you can develop your own personal style of garden. If you're an old hand at gardening, these posts will hopefully give you some new ideas - and inspire you to get out there and get your hands dirty! Enjoy!

Formal Garden Shrubs

The English Garden


The traditional English garden is one of the European classics that has some staying power - many people enjoy the wide sweeping lawns and stately hedgerows. There are a number of non-plant features generally included in the garden, such as neoclassical (read: Greek and/or Roman-style) stone or brass sculptures as well as various water features, which usually take the form of ponds or fountains. Generally, they combine a formal, geometric elegance in the shrubbery choices with carefully manicured lawns and pathways, in addition to a small, functional herb garden close to the house.

Some great shrubs for your English garden landscaping project include cedars and hydrangeas, both of which we've discussed in their own articles. Cedars can be formed into excellent hedgerows with proper maintenance and pruning, and they can also be shaped fairly well due to their dense foliage, allowing you to use them as feature shrubs. Try pruning them into simple geometric shapes such as spheres and cones and rectangles - just try your best to keep them in check in the shapes you desire, and you're closer than ever to your very own English garden.

Color may not be the first thing you think of when you think of an English shrub garden, but hydrangeas add a beautiful touch of color to the landscape, and are available in many hues from bright pink to deep blue - check with your local nursery for the available varieties. They provide a beautiful design counterpoint to the strict geometry of your hedges and have truly huge blooms which last for a good long time.

Finally, no English garden would be complete without rose bushes. While there's a large following of avid rose gardeners who might make growing them seem like a difficult job to the newcomer, they can actually be quite easy to grow, provided you choose a hardy variety. Depending on your hardiness zone, check with your local nursery to see which would be best for your location, or stay tuned for our upcoming post about the Zone system in North America.

Not many people have a country estate to work with, but you can make a smaller version of this garden style work with the space that you have available, whether it's a backyard or just a small patio, as long as you follow these basic guidelines.


The Zen Garden


Gardens in this style are a HUGE contrast from the English gardens we discussed above. Usually, they do not feature any grass or lawn areas at all, with the possible exception of some small containers of ornamental grasses kept carefully and neatly in check - no unplanned seedlings should be allowed! These gardens also use interesting rocks as feature pieces, combined with large quantities of raked sand or gravel instead of water features. The idea is that these gardens help bring relaxation and calm from the pressures of daily life, allowing the monks who originally developed the style to aid their meditation and prayer. Water is always in motion, but sand and gravel can display a frozen snapshot of waves, capturing the same beauty in stillness.

Since shrubs are what you're here for though, don't be afraid, there's a great role for them here! Feature shrubs (in other words, shrubs that stand out as featured or 'accent' garden elements) are major part of a zen garden, despite what the heavy use of rocks might suggest. Bonsai and topiaries would work perfectly here as design elements, usually of coniferous shrubs, although Japanese maples are also an excellent choice to add a splash of color with the subtle deep red of their leaves, which also provide a different foliage texture.

If you're looking for some great shrubs to prune into bonsai-style forms, there are several good choices that grow well in North America, including yew and dwarf pines. With some careful pruning and a few years of growth, they can eventually grow to resemble bonsai (although for proper bonsai, you have to do a lot more, which we won't cover here today). If you decide to go the topiary route, our favorites the cedar family will be great candidates. The key, as with the bonsai, is careful pruning - go for simple geometric shapes to get the best effect, although there is something to be said for giving the appearance of old, gnarled dwarf specimens. In a zen garden, every element must be precisely and carefully maintained to capture the formality of this style.

Of course, you can adapt these styles to make them your own, but we'll get more into that later on when we discuss garden design techniques. Be sure to stay tuned for our next post in this series, where we'll talk all about how to use shrubs to help you in developing your own personal landscaping design style - just in case traditional formality isn't your thing!


Happy Gardening!