ABSTRACT
Planting that is primarily structural will nonetheless endow the landscape with the detailed visual qualities of colour, texture, pattern and so on. This chapter examines how to combine the characteristics of form, line, pattern, texture and colour to achieve successful visual composition. The idea of visual energy helps to explain why too many saturated colours in one place or too much bold texture and diagonal line creates a composition that can be chaotic and overbearing. Much horticulturally based planting, including current design modes with perennials, is concerned primarily with pictorial effects and does not adequately address the design of the site as a whole. The chapter introduces planting for a specifically ornamental role, in order to provide aesthetic highlights and special details. A garden within a hedged enclosure or courtyard is good examples of this, and for such ornamental planting it is the detailed, visual properties of the species that are the key to their success.
