Design Shortcut for a Backyard Makeover: Yardenalities™ 2.0
Love a little formality? You can create any garden style with native plants.
Dear Avant Gardener, Native trees — especially oaks, hickories and white pines — are amazing, but there are very few native perennials that are attractive to my eyes. Love the ferns, oakleaf hydrangeas, tiarella, moss phlox. But, IMO, lots of work has to be done for those who don’t want their homes to look like a community garden. I read the Wave Hill book recently and their native garden has a formal look and the folks at Magazzino have created a really nice landscape using blue owl juniper and columnar oaks in their entryway. There is an opportunity for more tailored looks. I am trying to figure that out on my own with all the resources available, including your wonderful newsletter. — A., Hudson Valley, NY
Yes, yardens need design! Structure!!! I’d argue the community garden look you deplore is the result of bad design and lack of structure, not bad plants. But let’s not quibble. You can absolutely create a gorgeous formal garden with native plants — and without any perennials, if you like.
Naturalistic style vs. native plants
It's pretty much a coincidence that both native plants and informal, naturalistic garden styles are trendy right now. On the one hand, entomologist Doug Tallamy and others have given a wakeup call about the need to replace exotic plants with locally native ones in order to reverse the dramatic decline of native bees, butterflies and birds. On the other hand, Piet Oudolf and other mostly European naturalistic designers have been highlighting for a global audience the underappreciated beauty of American prairie plants.
Now many American designers are creating gorgeous gardens with native plants and the prairie aesthetic — and thoughtful design. Unfortunately, most DIYers who want to support bees and butterflies skip the design and go right to plants. They focus on perennial wildflowers rather than more structural shrubs and trees. And too often they plant one of this, one of that — not enough mass, too little repetition. The result often looks messy and feels uninviting, the community garden look you mention.
Style as a design shortcut
Formality, however, is stylistic, not fundamental to good design. In fact, I would say the Magazzino landscape you cite illustrates that — achieving its effectiveness in part through the juxtaposition of modern architecture with naturalistic design. I’d call the Magazzino landscape pastoral — what I call the "A Walk in the Park” Yardenality. This style features lots of structural plants and can be executed without perennials.
The landscape at Magazzino Italian Art presented a difficult challenge: bridging an existing Hudson River valley landscape with an abandoned bottling factory turned into a contemporary art museum. Native plants, wildflower meadows, groves of trees, a fruit orchard, and drifts of ornamental grasses married the original landscape with the new award-winning structure. — Svendsen and Keller
Picking a style — i.e., sets of design conventions — helps to create the sort of cohesive yarden you want — and most of us want subliminally. To help you find your style muse, I’ve outlined below five Yardenalities that reflect the major European landscape design traditions.
In addition, I recommend you visit a local Hudson Valley native nursery (list compiled by PollinateHV.org), where you’ll find many, many more gorgeous plants native to your area that will appeal to your taste.
— The Avant Gardener
P.S. I love design questions like this! Please send me your layout challenges, including pictures or lot plans.
Why, How, Wow!
Why?
As a reminder, the No. 1 reason I plant natives — and encourage you to do so — is to support biodiversity. We encourage our Transform Your Yard students to plant at least two thirds natives. This generally leaves plenty of room for exotic vegetables, flowers with legacy or personal meaning, and more. The “two-thirds for the birds” guideline is based on research by Doug Tallamy:
A study conducted across backyards in Washington, D.C., found that Carolina chickadees are not able to successfully raise enough young to maintain their population numbers in areas where less than 70% of the plants are native species. — National Wildlife Federation
Native plants are key to biodiversity because most native insects are specialists: They depend for survival on specific native plants they evolved with. And, according to Tallamy, “96 percent of terrestrial birds rear their young on insects,” and so on up the food chain.
Between 15% to 60% of the 4,000 North American native bee species are pollen specialists who can only feed their young the protein-rich pollen from 40% of native plants. — National Wildlife Federation
Over 90% of herbivorous or “leaf eating” insects specialize in one or a select few species of native plants to survive. — National Wildlife Federation
But once you know this — and learn about our gorgeous native plants — it’s hard to limit yourself to just two-thirds natives.
How — and Wow!
To create a glorious native garden that not only hosts a wide variety of native wildlife but where you, your friends and family want to spend time, I recommend finding a style muse. As a starting point, you might choose a Yardenality, one of five styles based on major European gardening traditions. Most of the contemporary examples below are executed with at least two thirds locally native plants.
For your current project, what’s your Yardenality?
Courtyard Chic: French medieval monasteries by way of Charleston
Courtyard Chic comes to us from French medieval monasteries by way of Paris, Charleston, South Carolina, and other historic cities. It is essentially French.
Courtyard Chic gardens are dominated by big-leaved evergreens, like boxwood. These are especially effective in temperate climates where much of the greenery dies back in the winter. I was surprised to see so many North American native big-leaved evergreens in Private Gardens of Paris, a book my daughter Lila gave me. The Paris gardens have hollies, magnolias, and rhododendrons, for example. But you can see the same stylistic elements as in the contemporary California garden below.
Other key Courtyard Chic style cues here are enclosure, hardscaping, symmetry, straight lines, and clipped hedges. This native garden in Sonoma by Lucas & Lucas illustrates all these style cues. Note especially the hedges in back, the straight lines of the hardscaping, and the symmetrical pairs of dish-shaped containers.
In Europe, Courtyard Chic harks back to French medieval monastery gardens like this 12th century Romanesque abbey in Provence, on the left below. But humans began creating walled gardens about 12,000 years ago in Sumeria and Mesopotamia. This walled garden style came to Europe during the Middle Ages, when the Moors established a kingdom in Granada, Spain. The garden on the right is such a “Paradise Garden” at the Alhambra in Granada.
In addition to enclosure, both the ancient gardens below illustrate another important stylistic element in Courtyard Chic gardens: parterres — symmetrical beds rimmed with low evergreen hedges and divided by paths.
Courtyard Chic Yardenality overview
Style cues: Lush evergreens, symmetry, enclosure, hardscaping, straight lines, parterres
Line: Straight; contrast between low horizontal beds and tall enclosure
Form: Square, sphere
Balance: Symmetry
Color: Deep green; white and cool blue
Plants: Big-leaved evergreens (magnolias, rhododendrons, hollies); topiary; vines scaling walls; white or cool-colored flowers
Furniture: Metal cafe chairs and tables, esp. black
Hardscaping: Trellis; iron gates; brick or stone walls; gravel, brick, or limestone paving; pairs of iron and stone planters; stone statuary
Typical architecture: Row house
Courtyard Chic transformation
Here’s my list: enclosure, hardscaping, straight lines, fountain in middle, low evergreen hedges, overall symmetry. Note especially the symmetrical repetition in the positions of the four small trees. Pea gravel is another typically French element; you’ll recall how the paths in the parks in Paris are all decomposed granite. Note how it lightens up this mostly green garden.
The modern style of the fountain is a departure, right? I think the designers were intentionally trying to shake up the very traditional style of the garden — and I think they succeeded. Do you see how the interior of the fountain picks up the color of the bluish foliage in the background?
Courtyard Chic pros and cons
Pros
Big impact in small spaces – front yards, side yards, enclosed backyards
Stylistic fit for many city homes, especially historic ones
Plentiful native plant options in most ecoregions
Looks great year-round
Easy to maintain, especially if dwarf shrubs are chosen to avoid clipping
Can easily outsource maintenance
Cons
Lack of interest? Restrained palette, seasonal changes are reduced by evergreens
Can appear pretentious — especially in larger properties (Versailles, anyone?)
Many eco-champions seek a more natural look
For those who enjoy gardening, little to do after establishment
California Dreamin’: Tuscan farmhouse by way of Sonoma Valley
Aromatic herbs with blue-gray foliage and gnarly trees — often with seating for a large group or family underneath — characterize the California Dreamin' style, inspired by Italian farm gardens. With roots in Italian farmhouse gardens, the style has been adapted to California, which has a Mediterranean climate.
This gorgeous garden below was transformed from a traditional lawn by Cummings Landscape in Berkeley. It introduces several California Dreamin’ style cues: gravel, long views, gnarled shade trees, and mounding or matting flowering shrubs. Remember that many Mediterranean — and California — plants are evergreen, so flowering shrubs are the primary floristic element. The warm floral palette — yellow, orange — is also characteristic.
In traditional Italian farmsteads, the house and outbuildings cluster together asymmetrically — often on a hillside or hilltop — with plants chosen and located for function. Outdoor eating areas are close to the kitchen, shaded by trees or a vine-covered pergola and surrounded by aromatic herbs. Traditionally, flowers are either herbs (think lavender) or placed prominently for maximum impact with minimal work or expense. The land surrounding the farmstead is highly cultivated, devoted to fruit trees, vines, and crops, arranged geometrically in rows for easy cultivation.
The history of Tuscan farmhouses can be traced back to the Etruscans, an ancient civilization that thrived in Tuscany over two thousand years ago. The Etruscans were skilled farmers who terraced the hillsides, cultivated vineyards, and tamed the land for generations. — Love From Tuscany
California Dreamin’ Yardenality overview
Style cues: Farmhouse table under an arbor; silvery and spiky foliage; terracing; views
Line: Naturalistic, straight
Form: Gnarly, mounding, spiky
Balance: Asymmetry
Color: Warm contrasts with silvery
Plants: Flowering shrubs, often mounding or matting; succulents; tall, skinny conifers; tawny grasses; gnarly trees for shade or in grove
Furniture: Rustic, weathered wood, concrete
Hardscaping: Gravel, natural stone, pergolas, stucco, terracotta
Typical architecture: Mediterranean
California Dreamin' transformation
Here’s my list: farmhouse table, pergola with vines, outdoor cooking, herbs in planters, asymmetry in the mis-matched chairs and varied heights of the lights.
California Dreamin' pros and cons
Pros
Very popular naturalistic look
Many appropriate native plant choices in California and Southwest
The available plants look great year-round in these areas
Designed for outdoor dining
Low water requirements
Easy maintenance
Cons
Palette more difficult to achieve with native plants of our temperate climates
A Walk in the Park: 18th century English estates by way of Hudson Valley
The yard above by Kelly Norris, who you see here, is an example of the Walk in the Park Yardenality. Style cues include asymmetry, naturalistic lines, and a contrast between the groundcover — the meadow here — and tall, deciduous trees.
The Walk in the Park Yardenality is inspired by Frederick Law Olmsted. Roughly 150 years ago, he designed Central and Prospect parks in New York City, the entire California State Parks system, and many estates, especially in the Hudson Valley. We have Olmsted to thank for the American suburban landscape — lots of lawn, open views, scattered trees — what he called “pastoral style.” Olmsted, in turn, had been inspired by the parks of English estates designed by Capability Brown about 100 years before.
Although they have become a cliche, Brown’s pastoral landscapes were a reaction against the overly ornate French style that preceded it — an extreme version of the Courtyard Chic Yardenality inspired by Versailles. In the late 1700s, Brown ripped out these ornate gardens and transformed them into a romanticized view of nature like the one above left at Chatsworth House in England.
Olmsted also embraced what he called the “picturesque style” like this bridge vignette he created at Prospect Park (above right) — profuse planting, especially with shrubs, creepers and ground cover, on steep and broken terrain, to convey the richness of nature, effects of light and shade and a sense of mystery. Olmsted leaned into this style at his own home toward the end of his life; he saw it as an antidote to increasing industrialization.
A Walk in the Park Yardenality overview
Style cues: Picturesque woodlands and romanticized pastures; deciduous trees; curving paths; exaggerated natural features (ponds, boulders)
Line: Sweeping, curvy, naturalistic
Form: Horizontal vs. vertical
Balance: Asymmetry
Colors: Deep or kelly green dominates; many other colors from foliage and flowers
Plants: Deciduous trees and shrubs; expanses of groundcover: moss, sedge, fern, grass, and wildflowers; grass or wood-chip paths
Furniture: Cedar or teak, Adirondack chairs
Hardscaping: Drystone walls, wood fences, stylized use of local, natural materials
Typical architecture: Baronial
A Walk in the Park transformation
It’s relatively easy to transform a traditional American yard into A Walk in the Park, as you can see from this beautiful before and after example from Philadelphia’s Refugia Design.
Style cues include large areas of wildflowers punctuated by occasional trees and asymmetric, curving paths and patches of turf. You can just see some remaining turf in the mid-ground in the picture on the right. Privacy is created by the surrounding forest, a luxury of a large property. The rustic, weathered wood fence is another style cue.
A Walk in the Park Yardenality pros and cons
Pros
High ecological function with familiar aesthetic
Changes with the seasons; most dramatic in fall
Can create rooms with plantings or naturalistic features
Easy transformation from traditional yard, especially for large properties with a lot of lawn
Lower maintenance than traditional yard
Cons
Can look messy when too naturalistic
Requires light maintenance by ecological gardener
May be difficult to outsource maintenance
Blooming Romantic: English cottage gardens as imagined by the Arts & Crafts movement
Color — curated color — is the main style cue of the Blooming Romantic style, which generally means lots of flowers. Wave Hill in the Bronx, which my reader mentioned (pictured below), is an example of the Blooming Romanic Yardenality. Other Blooming Romantic style cues you see here are the straight paths, arbor of classical columns, and background of clipped hedges and, behind, trees.
The considered use of color is a hallmark of the Arts and Crafts gardening style, and in this garden, each planting bed features its own subtle color theme. — Wave Hill
In the first half of the 20th century, garden designer Gertrude Jekyll introduced what I’m calling the Blooming Romantic style. She had studied art and was the first to use the color wheel in garden design. She was a major figure in the Arts & Crafts movement, which began in Britain as a reaction to the loss of craftsmanship that accompanied mass production, and incorporated hand-crafted elements into gardens, too.
Vita Sackville-West’s garden at Sissinghurst Castle, started in 1930 at a half-ruined castle in Kent, strikingly illustrates Jekyll’s color wheel approach. She created dramatically different color themes in a series of garden rooms laid out by her husband, Harold Nicholson.
On the left, you see the all-white garden at Sissinghurst, also called a Midnight or Moonlight garden. With the profusion of flowers and the arch, it’s more romantic than all-white Courtyard Chic gardens, although they share many other elements, like rooms, symmetry, and straight paths.
On the right is Sissinghurst’s sunset garden — another analogous color combination — red, yellow, and orange, three neighbors on the color wheel. Notice that the path is a mix of bricks and irregular flagstones, a handiwork example typical of Arts & Crafts designs.
Blooming Romantic Yardenality overview
Style cues: Profusions of flowers barely contained by orderly beds; series of stylistically unique rooms connected by paths, each with a focal point; hedgerow dividers
Line: Curved, straight, naturalistic
Form: Exploding, draping, round, oval, square
Balance: Symmetry
Color: Composed, e.g., monocolor, complementary colors, analogous colors
Plants: Shrubs (sometimes clipped) and small trees for structure; lots of flowers of various species to provide blooms throughout the season
Furniture: Stone, metal, or teak benches
Hardscaping: Brick, stone, or pea gravel patios and paths; brick walls; pairs of planters; stone sculpture; arched gates and pergolas
Typical architecture: Victorian
Blooming Romantic transformation
The South Garden at Mt. Cuba Center is an example of a Blooming Romantic style.
Blooming Romantic pros and cons
Pros
Sophisticated color and plant combinations create a lot of interest
Structure can attractively integrate many features in a small urban or suburban yard
Shrubs and small trees provide provide privacy and multi-layered interest
Avoids messy look
Cons
Cottage formula can become kitsch
Too much structure can seem pretentious
High maintenance: best for gardeners
Prairie Modern: Midwestern prairie by way of the Netherlands
Finally, the last Yardenality is Prairie Modern. As the name suggests, Prairie Modern’s style cues are prairie (or meadow) perennials and grasses juxtaposed with modern architecture and hardscaping. The fragmented lines of this Massachusetts native garden by Adam Woodruff represents this style.
This is the first Yardenality with roots in North America — the American prairie. The image on the left below is the Nine-Mile Prairie at the University of Nebraska, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as one of the last virgin tallgrass prairies in America, with more than 390 plant species, almost all wildflowers and grasses. Without a tree or shrub in sight, the prairie ecosystem is very different from forest ecosystems that dominate the eastern US, although many species are native to both the prairie and eastern forest ecosystems.
With so many species, prairies are a randomized mix of lots of colors — though purple and yellow (complementary colors) often dominate.
The garden on the right below is, of course, the Highline in New York City, which made this characteristic American ecosystem stylish back home when it opened in 2009. The Highline garden, designed by Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf, dramatically illustrates the juxtaposition of wild prairie plants with modern architecture.
Forty years ago, Oudolf began searching the world for perennials and grasses to create a “naturalistic” look and came to love many American native plants. He was most interested in how these plants change over the course of the year, finding their dead seed heads as beautiful as their flowers.
Prairie Modern Yardenality overview
Style cues: Prairie grasses and perennials juxtaposed against urban or modern buildings; trees and shrubs are small or in background
Line: Geometric, fragmented, linear
Form: Feathery
Balance: Asymmetry
Color: Lots & ever-changing
Plants: Dramatic, feathery grasses and long-lasting, structural flowering perennials with interesting seed heads; small, open trees – e.g., birches, quaking aspens
Furniture: Modern, bright colors in metal or plastic
Hardscaping: Pea gravel; wood or stone planks in modern geometrics or fragmented arrangements
Typical architecture: Modern
Prairie Modern transformation
This Prairie Modern transformation is by Ben Vogt, a leading American writer, horticulturalist, garden designer, and biodiversity advocate. In fact, it’s his home in prairie country — Nebraska. It started as a typical American yard: turf grass, a few foundation shrubs, and a lone specimen tree.
Here are some Prairie Modern cues in this garden: boxlike contemporary houses, prairie wildflowers in a matrix of prairie grasses, and uniform, light-colored cement sidewalks, driveways, and sweeping roads. In other words, this new suburb also illustrates the contrast between prairie and modern development. Vogt emphasizes the intentionality of this contrast by keeping the hellstrip and a path through the middle neatly mown.
Prairie Modern Pros and Cons
Pros
Very popular naturalistic look
Great for pollinators
Least expensive plant palette
Constantly changing, with four-season interest if well designed
Works especially well in constrained environments or large meadows
Low water requirements
Easy care once established
Cons
Lack of structure means results look messy when gardeners underestimate time, density, repetition, and design required
Modern hardscaping look (even wood) is expensive to execute
Test your style knowledge
One assignment in Transform Your Yard is to sketch layouts for your yard using at least two Yardenalities. To illustrate how you can apply Yardenalities to create different designs, I created four designs based on one actual narrow, urban yard in London by Stefano Marinaz.
Like Marinaz, I repeated style elements in all my variations on his original; repetition is a key to making a small garden look designed — in a good way. Notice how three repeated sections of groundcover, rustic log walls, and amelanchier trees (North American Natives, BTW) break up the space into two garden rooms.
The winding path is a style cue. Espaliered pear trees add height and privacy — an urban interpretation of surrounding woods, another style cue. The path gently varies in width, widening by the dining and lounge areas — a naturalistic, asymmetric design. But there is also a lot of repetition, which is super important to express style and create unity.
Given all these style cues, see if you can identify the Yardenality of Marinaz's garden design, below?Then see if you can identify the Yardenality of each of my variations on the same garden? [Answers at the end.]
Answers: Marinaz's design is A Walk in the Park. Variation 1 is Blooming Romantic. Variation 2 is Prairie Modern. Variation 3 is Courtyard Chic. Variation 4 is California Dreamin'.
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Great article! I'm going to hold onto it as a reference. I love the challenge of creating particular design style from native plants. Also, I find that identifying a style up front really helps the process by providing guidance and narrowing the otherwise overwhelming range of choices.
Man, do I relate to the reader who wrote in! I want a more "cultivated" look to my yard makeover, something I find beautiful and that anyone passing by would see and go, "Wait, those are all native plants?" (I think a picturesque Walk in the Park is the ticket. 🙂) Heather, I appreciate your acknowledgement that the prevailing aesthetic trend for native plantings is naturalistic/prairie. I don't see that discussed in these ecological gardening circles. It's important that people know their plant palette and their yard's aesthetics are two different things. As it stands, I can envision lots of folks venturing into native plant gardening, finding lots and lots of front yard meadows or "messy" yards as examples, and going, "Oh, is that how these yards look? I can't get on board with that." The more diversity we see in designs/aesthetics in the ecological gardening space, the better the chances of attracting the greatest number of people possible to rethink how they garden. So thank you so much for talking about design and the concepts of paths and destinations! The Yardenalities video and the video "Create a Healthier Yard: Garden Design Workshop for Beginners" have been invaluable to me as a gardening rookie with my first house. So looking forward to the new book!