> Next: Trees and Shrubs in Containers
Form, Texture, Shape,
and Color in Gardens
Plan your home tree-and-shrub landscapes with varied forms, unique textures, mixed foliage and flower colors, and unusual shapes.
Understanding Texture
The texture of a plant, is often smooth to touch or rough, glossy or dull, fuzzy or prickly.
While fine-textured plants have a delicate appearance, coarse-textured plants have a bolder look; medium-textured plants fall somewhere between the two.
Needle-leaved evergreens such as hemlock and small-leaved shrubs such as heavenly bamboo have fine-textured foliage. It gives them a smooth and uniform appearance.
They contrast with plants that bear large leaves, such as southern magnolia and Japanese fatsia. Both are considered coarse textured and they appear patterned in most landscapes.
Textures Fool the Eye
It is also possible to create optical illusions with foliage textures. Coarse textures appear fool the eye and appear closer than they really are when viewed against a field of fine-textured plantings.
Use this phenomenon to make a small backyard appear more expansive by planting coarsely textured plants in the foreground and gradually tapering to very finely textured shrubs at the property’s edge or fence line. Accentuate the contrasting texture of a bold-leaved shrub by planting it near or within a group of delicate ferns.
Another tip is using plants of several different shapes to make your garden visually satisfying. Select from rounded or columnar, fountainlike or spreading, billowing or bunched. Playing tall and short shapes off one another create striking contrasts and holds the eye’s interest.
Prepare to plant by trying different placements of your shrubs and trees while they still are in their nursery containers. Always imagine how they will look when they grow into your landscape and reach their final size.
View your arrangement from all angles in the garden as well as from vantage points on the street. Remember to look at it from within the windows in your home.
Move the plants around as necessary to get just the arrangement you want while considering the wind, sunlight and shade each will receive in each season. Avoid planting them too close together, too near structures, or under utility lines to avoid future care problems.
Interesting Textures and Deciduous Trees
Examples of foliage textures: The delicate filigree of Japanese maple leaves in a group pattern; sharp, distinctive, individual leaves found on American holly; exfoliating bark on the papery sheath of madrone; and shield-like and patterned bark of sycamore.