MASSING

Alliums massed 

I’ve just come in from the garden where I’ve been moving plants around to mass them together. I love the effect of massing plants – large swathes of color, form and texture bundled together strategically to create drama and excitement. The most excitement is when they are in bloom, but even when not, massed foliage makes a statement. I attempt to use massing to move the  eye though the landscape, its fun to plot how I want people to experience the garden. The hardscaping is set in stone, literally, but with strategic massing I can imitate movement and make the plant flow directional, which leads the eye. It’s a fun game of manipulation visitors don’t even realize is happening. I used to think I massed plants because I was a lazy gardener, and it seemed easier to me to put blocks of plants together. I realize now that I like massing because I have always preferred strong visual graphics. Massing creates strong dramatic scenes in the garden. I have massed peonies, geraniums, daylillies, astrantia, astilbe, azaleas, anemones, veronicastrum, veronicas, geums, dianthus, lambs ear, camassia, salvia, asters, sedums, hellebores….I like to mass! Of course, there are vignettes in my garden which are petit and graceful, and they will force me to stop me in my tracks to admire them. They mostly occur in the garden by accident, the geums nestled next to geranium sanguine stratum huddled beneath a Miss Kim lilac, entwined with some rogue Sweet Woodruff – none of this vignette was planned, Mother Nature made it happen. These vignettes are the details in the larger canvas of my mostly massed garden. I can’t decide which method I prefer, but I do choose which method I plant, and I choose massing. I’m kinda of an in your face kinda gal.