Add Texture – Add Interest

Whatever the size of your garden, even if you are creating a small garden design, adding texture to a garden has a really important part to play. Adding different materials can create interest and becomes a talking point within the garden. Taking a traditional ground surface along the ground or up a wall puts texture in a different context. The combination of soft and hard, spiky and round shines through in different textures.

Add something industrial like a gabion or rusty steel reinforcing mesh next to a fern or flowering perineal and you immediately create a great juxtaposition for opposition of texture. This trick of adding interest in any space can be done on the most subtle of levels. Think how a soft fluffy cushion on a leather sofa works.

You can translate this through hard landscaping and planting. Adding an aggregate, such as cobbles or pebbles in between paving slabs also creates an exciting other material within the landscape. There are a great for adding texture and because they are tactile, it makes you want to stroke them and handle them. By adding this dimension to any garden you are upping your game by stimulating the sense to touch. Adding different textures also facilitates the option of adding different colours, even if it is across a neutral palette. One of the easiest ways to add a variety of textures into any garden design is by using something like a gabion. You are able to put different materials into each square cage allowing for a myriad of rough and smooth, round and square, sharp and soft. Grasses are great plants to use to mix textures up in the garden. If you add grass into your planting scheme it instantly creates movement and offers a whole different texture against other plants. Mixing Buxus with Lavender for example creates great results. Give it a go, see what a difference it makes to your garden!