Design turns a random collection of plants and stuff into a little landscape or scene.
A lot of gardeners freeze when they think about design: “Design is for professionals, not for me!” Designing a garden (large or small) is less complicated than it seems. Once you learn a few basic tips, you’ll feel like a pro in no time. You’ll also find yourself looking at gardens differently—noticing elements of design and learning things that you can apply to your own projects.
But wait—do you really need to understand design to plant a miniature garden? Yes, you really do. If you don’t, you’ll end up with a big mess in a small pot without any structure or interest (not that anyone’s going to be judging your creation). You’ll be happier with it if you think about the plantings. Remember, we’re going for small-scale landscapes here. You’ll use houseplants, annuals, and perennials as “trees,” “shrubs,” and “groundcovers” to create a miniature landscape into which you can place accessories that turn the landscape into a true miniature world.
The principles you’re going to learn come straight from “regular” gardening and landscaping. We’re just going to apply them to smaller-scale landscapes.
More important than almost anything else in miniature garden design, the idea of scale is what creates the miniature world. In miniature gardening, scale is the relationship of the plants to each other and to the accessories, in terms of size. A “tree” in the miniature garden landscape is only a tree because it is as tall, in proportion, to the fairy house or garden bench as a large tree would be to a regular-sized house or garden bench.
You’ve probably heard the term scale model, which refers to a copy of something (a building, an airplane, a model train) in which details on the copy are reproduced in the same relative proportions as they appear on the original. Scientific and architectural scale models have fixed proportions such as 1:8, 1:16, or 1:64. In a 1:8 model, 1 inch on the model equals 64 inches on the object being copied.
In miniature gardening, you’re gardening to scale, so you want the plants, trees, and accessories to be in proportion to one another, but you don’t necessarily have to measure to a precise scale like you would for a model train set or architectural model. You can, for the most part, eyeball it. You’ll know if something looks “off.”
In this large miniature garden, a small ficus plant serves as the “tree” next to the fairy house. A Hosta ‘Blue Mouse Ears’ is a large shrub. Ferns also grow along the side of the house as “shrubs.” The groundcover is Pilea ‘Aquamarine’.
You can find miniature gardening accessories everywhere (particularly online) and in all shapes, sizes, and styles. After you choose a style (more on that in Chapter 3), you can start finding accessories to use together. The example pictures were created with accessories for a fairly ornate Victorian-style garden: wrought-iron chairs, concrete benches, large garden containers, a fountain, and a pergola. But just because the style of the accessories matches doesn’t mean that the scale matches. Take a look.
This photo shows a concrete bench and a fountain. The fountain is much too small to be paired with the bench, unless the fountain was supposed to be a tabletop fountain. In that case, the container and rest of the landscape are too small to accommodate both accessories. (You’d also need a table to put that tabletop fountain on.)
This picture shows the same concrete bench with a “large” planting urn. (It’s large in the sense that it looks “in proportion” to the bench, functioning as a big accent planter.)
Here, the bench is paired with the pergola, and it looks kind of ridiculous. The bench is much too large to complement the scale of the pergola.
In this picture, the too-large bench has been replaced with a smaller chair that fits with the size of the pergola. You could fit two of the smaller chairs in the pergola. To make the same pergola look even bigger, you could accessorize with two even smaller chairs.
In this miniature garden, the large(er) seashells at the base of the screw pine “tree” are used more for accents. They’re not meant to be in-scale with the garden. You could pretend that they’re big hermit crabs or horseshoe crabs washed ashore. The little shells in the bucket, however, are to scale. The shells fit in the bucket, and the bucket looks like it matches the chair, in terms of size. You wouldn’t be surprised to be walking along the beach, happening upon this little scene. Now, if the bucket was the size of the chair that would look odd. A child’s fantasy, maybe: a beach bucket the size of a tent. You don’t see that every day.
The magic with miniature gardens happens in the relationship between plants and accessories. You can play all kinds of tricks of perspective when you pair the same plants with different sizes of accessories. It isn’t necessarily possible to end up with the wrong scale of plants, unless you use a plant that doesn’t perform the function you want it to. That function is created by the difference in size between the plant and the accessory.
In these two miniature gardens (bottom photos), the bistro table and chairs are used for different effects when the plants are changed. The garden in the blue container with the American flag, bicycle, and birdhouse is planted with a large plant serving as a “tree,” providing shade for the table and chairs. Polka dot plants (pink and green and white and green) and a fern serve as smaller “shrubs.” An oak-leaved ficus is a groundcover. The garden has a more casual feel, with the addition of the “tree.” The scene depicts what could be a front yard or backyard in a small town.
The garden without the large tree, in the orange terra cotta pot, has a more formal and ornate feel. The plants are smaller, and without a large specimen tree, the focus remains squarely on the furniture. Because the furniture is larger in relation to the plants in the terra cotta pot, the garden or “scene” looks smaller. This garden depicts more of a patio scene set for tea than a whole backyard as shown in the blue container on the right.
The gardens are about the same size, as is the furniture. Illusions! The same furniture looks smaller when placed next to bigger plants. That’s one way that scale works in the miniature garden.
The dinosaur in this terrarium illustrates the same principle of accessory size to plant size.
In this photo (above), the dinosaur is only about 2 1/2 inches long from nose to tail and about 3/4 inch tall. Nestled in among small ferns and a croton, it looks like it’s tromping through a jungle of plants. If you swapped this dinosaur for one that was two or three times as big (something you might see at a toy store), all of a sudden the plants would look smaller and the dinosaur would look like he’s out for a casual stroll on the prehistoric plain instead of walking through the rainforest.
A small screw pine becomes a large “tree” in this beach garden. Sempervivum (behind the beach chair) stand in for the yuccas you often see growing at the beach. Haworthia plants (on the right side of the garden) imitate large agaves that grow along beach dunes.
What makes this perennial border at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, so beautiful? The contrast. There are contrasting textures (ferny leaves contrast with large, thick leaves), contrasting colors (pink and purple, chartreuse and burgundy), and contrasting forms (mounded plants and spiky plants).
The next most important aspect of miniature garden design to master after scale is the idea of contrast: differences between the elements in the garden. This applies to regular full-sized landscaping as well as miniature gardening. In fact, you can learn a lot about contrast from looking at “big plants” and applying your observations when you pick out the “little plants.”
It’s possible that contrast is even more important in a miniature garden than in a full-sized landscape because everything in it is so small. If it all looks the same—is the same color, same shape, has the same-sized leaves—the miniature garden will just look like a blob.
You can create contrast in the garden when you concentrate on selecting plants with differing color, form, and texture.
If design makes people nervous, color is probably the part people worry about the most. The main thing about color combinations is that if you like the way two plants look side by side, that’s all that matters. Don’t be afraid to try something unusual. That’s what will make your plantings really stand out.
Creating Contrast
Try these contrasting combinations:
• Big leaves with small leaves
• Textured leaves with smooth leaves
• Cool-colored foliage with warm-colored foliage
• Round leaves (hosta) with lance-shaped or long, skinny leaves (mondo grass)
• Light-colored leaves with dark-colored leaves
• Light-colored furniture with dark-colored plants
• Light-colored plants with dark-colored furniture
The main contrast in this miniature garden is the bright white furniture against dark green plant leaves.
It’s not just plants you have to think about when creating contrast in the garden. Accessories should contrast with their backgrounds (in this case, a brown cat on gray gravel) if you want the accessories to stand out.
I like this color combination because a bit of the purple from the Angelonia flowers also appears in the stems of the chartreuse-leafed coleus. Purple and chartreuse are a surefire contrasting color scheme for the garden.
This color combination is pretty, if fairly standard. All three plants are “warm colors” (shades of red, orange, and yellow).
In this grouping, the rust-colored coleus from the previous grouping has been switched with a silver-colored Plectranthus. POW! It really pops. The silver is a cool color that contrasts with the warmer colors of the ornamental grass and petunias.
Sometimes miniature garden color contrasts are more subdued, simply because you’ll find yourself working more with foliage plants than flowers.
In this garden (above), the purple and chartreuse contrast is achieved with Ajuga ‘Chocolate Chips’ (below the chair on the right) and Laurentia (the light-colored groundcover plant). I didn’t plant the Ajuga next to the dark-green-leafed mondo grass, as it would have just disappeared and blended with the similarly dark-leafed mondo grass. Contrast is what allows you to see different plants growing in such a small space.
The most common variegation is two-toned green-and-white plants. The white is due to lack of chlorophyll (pigment that reflects green light, among other things) in certain areas of the plant. When you use these plants, you have built-in contrast.
Many miniature garden plants, particularly houseplants, are available in variegated forms.
Contrasting form can be one of the trickiest design elements to achieve in miniature garden design because many of the plants (especially small houseplants and terrarium plants) have a similar form: Many are mounding in habit. To add interest to the garden, look for plants with long, thin leaves and a vertical growth habit, or a plant with a trailing growth habit, instead of a “roundy-moundy” habit.
This garden shows Penstemon (back) and lady’s mantle (front). The Penstemon has a strong vertical growth habit, while the lady’s mantle has a lower, mounding growth form.
This picture shows two different plants for the miniature garden with different growth forms. Hosta ‘Blue Mouse Ears’ (left) has a compact, mounding form. Euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost’ (right) has a rambling, flopping, reaching growth form.
It’s easy to confuse form with texture. They’re not the same thing. Leaf shapes and characteristics are what offer texture in most miniature garden plants.
This “regular-sized” garden combination Hakonechloa (ornamental grass on the left) and hosta (right) shows two plants with similar forms (mounding), but different textures. (They also have good contrasting colors in their leaves.) The skinny leaves of the grass contrast nicely with the wide leaves of the hosta.
In full-sized gardens, hosta and ferns are often planted together for contrast. They also both have mounding habits. The ferns have highly dissected (incised) leaves, which contrast with the large, smooth hosta leaves.
Here’s an example of texture contrast in miniature garden plants. Both of these ferns have relatively upright growing habits. The one on the right has smaller, more ruffled leaves that contrast with the larger, smoother leaves of the fern on the left.
The Tennis Court garden at Chanticleer Gardens in Wayne, Pennsylvania, is one of the most beautiful gardens I’ve ever seen. They have the color, form, and texture contrast concept down pat. It’s a textbook example of how to use those design concepts to create an interesting garden that encourages you to keep looking, rather than settling in one fixed spot.
If you look closely at this picture, though, you’ll notice something else: repetition. Colors, forms, and textures are repeated throughout the garden. The color chartreuse is a motif in this garden. It winds through the beds like a river. To repeat something like color, you don’t have to use the same plants everywhere (though in a miniature garden, that is the easiest way to do it without cluttering up the container). You can see that they’ve used at least three different plants with chartreuse leaves to keep the color going throughout the garden. Silver is another color that’s repeated, though in different plants with differing heights, textures, or growth forms.
How do you use repetition in the mini-garden? There are three easy ways to do it.
That means plants that have a similar color or colors running through each of the plants. Here’s an example of that in a “large” container garden (following image).
You could also achieve this effect with texture by using a large plant and a small plant or plants, each with grassy-type leaves.
Burgundy or chartreuse appear in each of the plants in this large container planting. The repetition between plants unifies the look.
Here’s an example with “mini” plants. Chartreuse green is present in the Selaginella (top left) and croton (bottom center). Dark green is present in the leaves of the croton and the polka dot plant (top right).
Can’t find enough color in the plants? Select accessories that will repeat one of your accent colors. In this miniature garden, the red watering can and red wheelbarrow repeat the red of the zinnias.
It’s easiest to repeat groundcovers or “shrubs,” simply because they’re small. In this miniature garden, the white polka dot plant hops over the patio and is planted on the other side of the dining set to encourage a viewer’s eye to move around and not just settle on one group of plants.
If you’ve ever planted a container garden, you’ve probably heard about using “thrillers, fillers, and spillers.” A thriller is the biggest, most interesting plant specimen in the container. Usually, unless it is a really large container (think parking lot—sized urn), you only have one thriller. The spillers trail over the edge of the pot, and the filler fills in and unifies the space between the thriller and the spiller. In a sense, the thriller is the focal point of the container, the plant you notice the most.
Use the same idea with a miniature garden. One really spectacular plant or accessory is usually enough. The beach garden is a good example of this. The screw pine is the focal point. All of the other plants and accessories are smaller and play supporting roles. In the Victorian garden, the table and chairs are the focal point, or dominant item, in the garden. If you have too many large plants or accessories in one container there’s no point for the eye to rest on.
But wait: Didn’t I just say that repetition keeps the eye from fixing on a specific point and staying there? Yes, but it’s okay to give the eyes a break. Repetition in smaller accessories or plants and repetition in colors can actually unify the garden. Too many big objects in a small garden is just messy, though. Repetition helps the garden become more than just a collection of plants. It turns the garden into a designed landscape.
Larger gardens can handle more than one focal point. In a bigger miniature garden you can create even smaller scenes within the mini-garden. In this outdoor miniature garden (top right), the fairy house is the main focal point, but there’s also a little garden bench catty-corner to the house (bottom right), a secondary “scene.” A birdbath and a rabbit complete the vignette.
Focal Point: Fairy’s-Eye
When placing accessories, kneel down and look at the garden from a fairy’s-eye view. What would they see if they sat in the little chairs or perched on one of the branches, or walked out the door of their little fairy house? This gazing ball, when moved to the end of the pathway opposite the table and chairs, provides a nice focal point from the fairy’s point of view.
The small bench is a secondary focal point within the same garden.
A garden’s theme will influence plant, container, and accessory choices—all of which are elaborated upon in subsequent chapters. Theme is part of design because without a theme, a miniature garden can look like a bunch of random trinkets dropped into a container garden. There’s no landscape to provide a backdrop for accessories. Without contrasting color, form, and texture, or the application of the principle of scale, you can’t carry through a theme and make it look realistic.
Most of the projects in this book have a theme. There’s a beach garden, Grandma’s Garden, a Wild Wild West Garden, and a woodland garden, among others. The accessories are what carry most themes to their full realization, but plants also influence how successful a theme is. Succulents look ridiculous in woodland gardens, and a hosta would be completely out of place in an “under the sea” garden.
Accessories inspired the theme for the Wild Wild West Garden. The turquoise blue patio set looks right at home among Tillandsia “sagebrush,” aloes, hens and chickens, and jade plants.
Plants provided the inspiration for this garden’s theme. The miniature conifers were too cute to pass up. Paired with “concrete” and “marble” statues, they look like majestic full-sized specimens in a botanical garden—one that fits on an outdoor table.
A succulent dish garden has been finished with some blue tumbled glass mulch. Even without accessories, it’s complete.
A succulent dish garden with some Asian-themed accessories. The accessories turn this creation into a miniature landscape.
Sometimes plants are the theme. Miniature water gardens and succulent dish gardens are mini-gardens that look 100 percent complete without extra furniture or accessories.
Understanding the basics of design will help you select the right plants, containers, and accessories to achieve the look you’re going for, whether its an under-the-sea scuba setting or a woodland hideaway.
