As you lay out your gardens, you must decide on style — either informal or formal. While most style decisions are matters of personal preference, here are a few points to consider.
First, look at the style of the house and select the type of garden that will compliment it best. It makes little sense to build perfectly square formal flower beds around an informal, asymmetrical house. Equally out of place would be a meandering cottage garden in a formalized setting.
Informal design follows the terrain with curved, flowing lines. It creates balance without being symmetrical and highlights existing and future plant specimens. It never requires matching plants exactly.
Formal designs use straight lines to outline the shape of the bed. It uses symmetry to match both sides of the garden. The angular planting shape repeats other architectural elements. These can include the house, a garden pool, a symmetrical lawn or a patio.
The difficulty of formal design is that it is hard to maintain, and the flowers have to be forced into their position. If one flower grows larger than another, if one dies or gets broken off or if one is the wrong color, you have to intervene to change the flower to fit the design. This creates a less natural look to your garden.
If your property has no outstanding natural features and is relatively flat, you can use either style. Use an informal design if your yard is irregularly shaped with slopes, hills, rock outcroppings or mature asymmetrically placed trees and shrubs.
Informal does not mean haphazard. If fact, informal beds are actually harder to design because you don't match one side to the other. Every garden bed needs sense of definition, so create a strong line that sets the bed apart from the rest of the garden.
Straight lines work well, but curved lines are preferable. Design with gentle curves, not wiggly lines. Smooth sweeping curves — or even clean straight lines — makes a more elegant flower-garden design than a wavy pattern snaking around the yard.
Add to the natural, informal look by planting masses of blooms. In a well-planned garden, use drifts of the same plant in groupings of three, five, seven — or more. A garden of one of this and one of that looks jumbled.
Stagger the groupings so they are not right across from each other. Consider balancing the design without the symmetry of a formal garden layout. For example, plant the same flowers asymmetrically on both sides of a gate or path. Three smaller flowers on one side of a path balance the visual weight of a tall, upright flower on the other side.
Check how tall plants will get. Divide plants into edgers for the front of the beds, fillers for the middle of the beds and backdrop plants. Plant the taller perennials toward the back of the beds. Occasionally break the height grouping by letting taller plants drift into the middle or the edge of the bed.
Place some tall airy and see-through plants near the front. Use ornamental grasses or crambe gypsophylia or similar plants to get this informality. Give individual plants enough space. Place plants as far apart as each plant's ultimate spread.
In English gardens you can see a great difference between the formal royal gardens that follow the French or European designs and those that came later that followed the less formal English design.
What that means is that if you have an entourage of servants, select the formal style. That way they can take care of the planting and upkeep. If you are planting and caring for your own beds, informal designs are much easier.
Larry Sagers is the horticulture specialist at Utah State University Extension Thanksgiving Point.