Daring design tips for tall plants
It’s easy to forget the importance of height, especially in a small garden, but it instantly adds energy and drama. It can bring a border to life with undulating highs and lows. Vertical exclamation marks proclaim design confidence and tall plants can have serious garden presence.
With height comes structure, helping planting fit the space and appear mature and finished. Straight lines, such as the top of fences, are blurred, reducing the sense of being hemmed in. Tall plants act as a screen for everything from telegraph poles to unsightly nearby buildings, and work the other way around too, providing privacy from overlooking neighbours.
In garden design – as in wedding photography – the taller chaps are usually sited at the back as a foil to shorter protagonists in front. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Weaving taller plants through the border can work well – think Verbascum olympicum, Actaea racemosa (formerly cimicifuga) or bee-magnet Liatris spicata.
Unified taller specimens can draw the eye in a particular direction. Juicy 1.5m (5ft) clumps of hemerocallis ‘High Tor’ or cannas ‘Wyoming’ or ‘Striata’, reaching 2.3m (7ft 6in) and 1.9m (6ft) respectively, are effective. And don’t forget the wooshing verticals of bamboo and grasses such as Stipa gigantea, miscanthus and even that star of ‘70s cool, pampas grass.
Phormium tenax is a corker with great, spidery clumps and rocketing flower spikes – a bold, no mess solution for a small front garden. And in a damp-ish spot, consider Arundo donax, Spanish cane, whose feathered canes can reach 8m (26ft) when happy.
Why look up at them when you can look through them? Use black bamboo to screen windows. And the idea of Verbena bonariensis as a wiry barrier can be upsized with mighty sea kale, Crambe cordifolia, whose cabbagy leaves are topped with long stems of loose floral candyfloss, creating seclusion without blocking light.