Designing a Garden That Lasts: How to Choose Plants and Place Them Thoughtfully

As summer begins to fade into fall, our gardens begin to shift in color, texture, and mood. This change of seasons is the perfect moment to reflect on your garden design and think about how to make it thrive year-round. Thoughtful landscape design isn’t just about what plants you choose—it’s about how they work together across the seasons to create beauty, balance, and purpose. Helpful if you prefer to see colorful and lush plants year round and dread the end of the summer blooms. At Ahronian Landscaping & Design, we believe gardens are living works of art, carefully planned to bring joy not just for one season, but for many years to come.

Start With a Vision

Before planting a single flower, step back and ask yourself: What do you want your garden to achieve? Is it a serene woodland retreat, a colorful burst of seasonal blooms, or a layered design that enhances the entrance to your home? Defining the purpose and feeling of the space will guide every decision that follows, from choosing plants to placement.

Tips for Choosing and Placing Plants

A truly successful garden design balances beauty with functionality. Here are some guiding principles we use when designing outdoor spaces:

• Exposure Matters: Sun-loving peonies and irises thrive in open areas, while shade garden ideas like astilbe, pulmonaria, and Japanese forest grass bring vibrancy to low-light spaces. Even in shaded corners, it’s possible to create color and texture for a beautiful woodland feel.

• Think in Layers: Mature gardens, like the ones we’ve designed with peonies, geraniums, and irises, achieves depth and dimension by layering heights. Tall plants provide structure in the back, medium plants fill the middle, and low growers soften the edges.

• Color Through the Seasons: By choosing plants with different bloom times, your garden evolves gracefully from spring to fall. Early-blooming bulbs give way to summer perennials, while fall asters and ornamental grasses keep the garden glowing into the cooler months.

• Texture & Contrast: Pair bold foliage with delicate blooms to create visual interest. For example, feathery astilbe flowers contrast beautifully with the broad leaves of pulmonaria.

• Balance & Flow: Gardens should feel harmonious, not overcrowded. Repetition of key plants ties the design together, while pathways, garden stones, or symmetrical arrangements create natural flow.

• Scale & Spacing: Allow room for plants to reach their mature size. Crowding can lead to unhealthy growth and constant maintenance, while thoughtful spacing ensures longevity.

Designing for All Seasons

A seasonal garden shouldn’t peak only once a year. With careful planning, your yard can feel alive in every season.

• Spring: Early blooms and fresh foliage bring energy after winter’s rest.

• Summer: Full color displays from perennials and annuals highlight the height of the growing season.

• Fall: Fiery foliage, ornamental grasses, and late bloomers extend beauty into cooler months.

• Winter: Evergreens, sculptural branches, and stone elements add interest even when flowers are gone.

By mixing plants with overlapping bloom times, varying heights, and contrasting textures, you can create multi-season landscaping that remains attractive long after the first frost.

A Garden That Reflects You

Every garden tells a story. Whether it’s a layered border that welcomes guests along a driveway, or a shady woodland corner filled with unexpected color, your garden design should reflect your personality and lifestyle. Some homeowners love a low-maintenance design with hardy perennials, while others enjoy tending to more complex arrangements. Whatever your preference, thoughtful landscape design will result in a garden that nurtures you as much as you nurture it.

The Benefits of Planting Trees

One of the best ways I can think of to connect to your beautiful environment is to plant trees. Planting trees is not just an act of adding greenery to your yard; it’s a key component of thoughtful landscape design that enhances the aesthetic appeal and functionality of your outdoor space. They bring us many benefits that easily come to mind and others that become apparent along the way through the experiences they bring us in their new locations within our yards. It is a positive feeling, a contribution to something larger, and the beginning of an unfolding story.

Aesthetics

Trees are one of the most beautiful and striking elements of a landscape. Many species of trees offer conspicuous flowers of a variety of sizes, colors, and shapes. When I think of the prolific show of delicate pink flowers that a cherry tree boasts in the very beginning of regrowth in the spring, I am moved by the vitality of the plant world. Trees also provide the interest of texture through their variety of leaf shapes and arrangements. Some even have showy bark that peels and gives way to multiple shades of silver, red, yellow, or brown. In addition to the beauty they offer as individual specimens, trees offer a structural element to a yard. One thing they can accomplish is framing the architectural features of a house by directing the eye in pleasing directions and softening the straight lines of rigid structures. Trees can offer a layering effect for a diversity of heights that is attractive and offers an element of maturity to the design. Each tree type and form can offer a different benefit. Larger trees can create the opportunity for a shade garden below, while small ornamental trees can be positioned in the lawn and still allow enough sunlight to reach the grass. Later in the season, as we know in New England, it is hard to miss the stunning shades of yellow, orange, and red that wash over our canopy. Sweater weather is better against an autumn backdrop, and trees are the canvas for picturesque fall events. Fall planting is an ideal time to introduce new trees to your landscape, allowing them to establish strong roots before winter. It is hard to quantify the seemingly limitless ways trees add beauty to our landscape.

Function

Trees also serve numerous functions in our yards. This time of year, we are all aware that shade from trees keeps yards safe for children to play with reprieve from direct sunlight. Shade is also beneficial for adults who wish to relax and unwind outside. There’s nothing more rejuvenating than taking a seat in the shade, listening to the wind rustling through leaves or the afternoon songs of happy birds. Trees can also insulate and block wind from your home, reducing energy demand. Trees effortlessly create environments for our play, relaxation, and comfort.

Stewardship

Planting trees is a powerful opportunity to be stewards of the environment at large. Trees are a natural force of carbon sequestration in a climate that could use some moderating. The decisions we make in our yards have a collective impact. Further, the structural diversity and habitats that trees provide allow for biodiversity to increase in your yards and overall. Birds, chipmunks, and many other types of fauna find shelter and resources in the trees in our yards. Importantly, trees, especially our native oaks, are among the best supporters of pollinators, offering shelter, pollen, and leaf-nesting opportunities. Other beneficial species include Redbuds, Dogwoods, Crabapples, Beeches, Birches, Willows, and Cherries/Plums. Planting trees gives a wonderful feeling and provides a benefit for everyone. By integrating trees into your landscape design, you’re investing in both the beauty and sustainability of your environment for years to come.

Connection

One less touted but also important feature of trees is the connection and history they create and represent. A tree can be a sentimental place, marking a spot of meaning for an individual or a whole family. There is something special about how literally and figuratively rooted a tree is in our lives and surroundings. It connects us to nature in a very real way. The trees we plant are part of our legacy. They are a positive change we have made that may live on for decades.

For these and many reasons, planting trees is a rewarding and beneficial activity. We encourage you to see for yourself, and we are happy to help. Fall is a great time for planting.