When you move into a new house with no garden, the place to start with your planting is the so called “bones of it”. The structural plants help the design process flow.

Weather you buy more mature specimens or smaller ones can depend on the; budget, what type of plant it is, time of year and if you need many plants for example for a hedge, weather they are bare rooted or in containers. Often plants establish better when they have a less mature but well developed root system. This is where at the garden centre, you tip the plant out of it’s pot to have a good look at what’s hiding in there. Make sure the roots are firm to the touch and not rotten and that the plan isn’t root bound.

When planting in the Autumn, it is best to do it before the weather turns cold, so the plant can start growing and utilise the available moisture rather than sit in the wet and cold soil and rot.

Spring planted trees and shrubs may require more watering to get them through their first year.

But once the structure is in place, you can than start filling with good amounts of softer, non woody plants, called “fillers”.

In this image, the main plants providing the framework are the: (from left to right) Prunus cerasifera, Phormium tenax and Thuja occidentalis.