Dilemma: Do I replace the big shrubs that succumbed to severe weather with more of the same, or go with something different?

I’m not really a garden gambler; the scientist in me understands that ongoing world-wide climate changes affect local weather patterns, and who knows what that may trend. And though I do experiment a bit, I’m cautious about investing money, effort, time, and hope on iffy plants, making me think twice about what I shove into my garden’s dirt.

Luckily, I don’t worry at all about matching existing plants anyway, because through the encouragement of landscape architect friend Rick Griffin, and influenced by gardeners in my part-time English village for fourteen years, my garden is a mixed-plant cottage style so nearly anything I go with usually works just fine.

That’s a powerful design approach for visual security in case something goes amiss. I know that lots of landscapers prefer simple lines to help create a sense of calm in a disorderly world, but trust me, any time anyone plants a row or hedge of identical plants, they are inviting trouble when one or more inevitably develops a serious problem, leaving an obvious gap.

Besides, even the most formal garden can be made more interesting by mixing stuff up a bit. As the late Neal Odenwald, a Mississippi native who retired as Professor Emeritus of LSU’s landscape architecture school, taught, “Herbaceous material often runs together. But adding contrasting plants can draw your eye into the composition, hold you in the garden experience.”

You may have noticed yourself how glossy magnolia foliage really shines when set off by emerald-green arborvitae or the narrow leaves of pines or junipers. Think heart-shaped leaves of redbud, and feathery bald cypress needles, contrasted by large, coarse fans of cold-hardy palms.

Other words, throw off the same old, same old idea of uniform hedges and tightly-pruned shrubs running along the house; most of which disappears into the hard lines of roofs, walls, fences, street curb, and walks. Adding something different isn’t coloring outside the lines, it’s just a way to capture attention by briefly throwing off our visual timing.

Garden design or style aside, it is entirely possible to have a good-looking monochromatic garden of “only” green, if plants are mixed in combinations of different height, width, and geometry (narrow, pyramidal, teardrop, round), or having some shrubs pruned tightly and leaving others more informal and natural. It’s hard to create too strong a clash.

And this is without even a hint of the unending possibilities of foliage colors, hues, and variegations, or seasonal flowers coming and going, swirling through the seasons like holiday lights. Weave a mélange of trees, shrubs, and vines combined in diverse sizes, shapes, textures, and colors, lace a deciduous plant with winter-bare stems set against evergreens, and you will have some sorta year-round show!

By the way, no matter what I plant, there will be extra wide holes, loosened roots, lots of mulch, light feedings, and only occasional deep soakings. And I know from experience that smaller plants will get established faster and actually outgrow larger ones of the same species, so I rarely set out expensive big plants.

All this in mind, I have gravitated in my own garden away from what I call “uniformality.” Rather than chance weather trends by replacing my big dead plants with more of the same, I am thoughtfully subbing them with totally different contrasting choices, providing visual insurance in case things go awry.

I’m not going wild; like going back for seconds at a horticultural buffet, I’m changing up what I put where on my plate.