Native Plants For Formal Gardens
Native plants are often dismissed as too wild or unkempt for gardeners seeking a polished, formal aesthetic. However, non-native plants frequently found in traditional formal gardens can be just as unruly—anyone who has grown invasive plants like bugleweed or pachysandra knows this all too well. The reality is that creating a formal landscape is less about whether a plant is native or non-native and more about thoughtful plant selection and strategic design techniques.
In this article, we’ll explore key design principles that allow native plants to work in formal garden settings to bring their ecological benefits to every landscape.
How to Use Native Plants In Formal Garden Design:
Understand Plant Mannerism
The spreading habit, or behavior, of a plant has significant influence on whether or not it will be suitable in a formal garden setting. Choosing plants that spread too prolifically for a formal garden will result in a weedy, neglectful aesthetic while creating a lot of frustration for the gardener.
All plants can be roughly be categorized into one of the following four categories: Clumpers, light spreaders, medium spreaders and prolific spreaders. Its important to note that the mannerism of a plant is greatly influenced by external pressures such as growing conditions and planting density and may fit in to more than one ranking.
Here is an overview of the Plant Mannerism Scale:
1. Clumpers - These plants retain a clumping habit and expand their crown slowly each year. They typically don’t self-seed prolifically therefore seedlings are unlikely to dominate a garden. Many tap-rooted plants fall into this category.
2. Light Spreaders - These plants spread faster than the clumpers, but not aggressively, by rhizomes to form small colonies. They may freely self seed in open soil but won’t dominate a space.
3. Medium Spreaders - These plants will spread quickly by rhizomes, runners or seeds to form colonies across the landscape. The best way to keep them in check is to plant your garden densely so the seedlings have no place to germinate. These plants typically produce many viable seeds.
4. Prolific Spreaders - In ideal conditions, these plants will spread prolifically by seeds and/or rhizomes and can easily dominate a garden within 2 or 3 years of establishment if not weeded out or used in a context that warrants such traits.
It's crucial to develop an intimate understanding of its traits and characteristics of each plant so you can use it appropriately in your specific context. This familiarity is acquired through trial, error, and extensive research on the plants’ root system, reproduction strategies, lifecycle, preferred growing conditions, etc..
Generally, the smaller and more formal the garden is, the lower you want your plants to be on the mannerism scale. For beginners, I recommend focusing on plants ranked #1-3 (using #3 sparingly) because they are more “user-friendly” and less likely to take over your design and cause complications along your garden design journey.
2. Keep a Uniform Height
It is good practice to keep a general uniformity of height among plants when designing in a space which needs to be kept extra “neat” such as a formal yard.
It is well documented that humans inherently like landscapes where they can have a long view of the space. Keeping all plants within a certain height limit not only makes the space look more intentional and organized, but also makes it possible for onlookers to view the whole garden without tall plants hiding parts of it or flopping over onto sidewalks which looks especially messy.
When designing a formal native plant garden, stick to plants 3ft in height and lower with the odd exception for 4ft tall architectural plants, if you have the space.
The traditional design strategy of placing taller plants towards the middle or back of the garden will prove to be useful if you decide to incorporate tall plants.
3. Garden By Plant Community
In nature, plants don’t grow separated from each other. They grow as part of diverse, interwoven communities of compatible plants, known as plant communities. Plant communities are made up of a diverse array of compatible plants who are collectively adapted to thrive together.
This is why specific plants are expected to be found in specific plant communities such as prairies, wetlands, meadows, forests - you get the idea.
This means that there are certain plants that are going to inherently grow well together because they are used to growing together and, conversely, other plants that simply won’t grow well together because they are not compatible. This doesn’t only apply to how well plants grow together, but also how good they look together.
Landscapes designed with plants from the same plant community are more aesthetically appealing than a hodge-podge of plants that have never seen each other before. Plants from the same plant community work harmoniously together, creating visual harmony and a profound sense of place, resonating emotionally with the viewer.
For instance, if your garden resembles the growing conditions of meadow plant community, then focus your plant selection of plants that grow in a meadow setting. A well-designed meadow garden can make us feel like we are in a genuine wild meadow even amidst suburban surroundings. The unity in growth and aesthetics among the plants amplifies the garden's connection to its native ecoregion and helps human visitors better connect with it.
Download our free guide to choosing plants based on your plant community.
4. Use Signs Of Intent
Natural gardens are often misunderstood as messy or overgrown, especially when proper design principles aren’t applied. While plants like common milkweed or Canada goldenrod have high wildlife value, their aggressive growth can contribute to a neglectful appearance, particularly in small or visible areas like front yards. This unkempt look can deter neighbors, by-law officers, and mainstream acceptance of natural garden design.
To bridge the gap between nature's needs and human preferences, designers must integrate “signs of intent”—obvious cues that show the garden is intentionally designed and taken care of. These include features like formal pathways (see picture), neat edges, benches, arbors, statues or signage that align the garden with cultural and aesthetic norms while promoting its ecological benefits. Creating wide grass or paved pathways through or around your garden is a great way to create a more formal aesthetic by framing it with a more manicured landscape.
By making natural gardens relatable and intentional looking, especially in high-visibility areas like boulevard gardens, we can foster greater appreciation for native plant gardening, paving the way for broader changes in landscaping traditions.
5. Plant Densely
Planting our gardens densely (I’m talking 1 plant per square foot or more!) enough to cover all exposed ground can help us achieve a formal garden aesthetic in a few ways:
First, some native plants have a hard time fitting into a more formal context because they retain more wild characteristics compared to their cultivated counterparts. For example, many native aster species will lose their lower leaves by late summer, creating a lanky appearance. This does not equate well to a formal garden setting where plants are surrounded by wood mulch and their lanky bases stick out like a sore thumb. A densely planted garden will fix this problem by hiding the base with other, lower growing plants.
Second, its no surprise that a prevalence of weeds will make any garden look messy whether its native, non-native, natural or a traditional design. Typically, formal landscapes are characterized by sparsely spaced plants separated by a sea of wood mulch. This just creates an ideal opportunity for weeds to grow because nature is always working to fill in bare ground with plants (mulch counts as bare ground to nature). Dense plantings filled with desirable, carefully chosen plants will prevent weeds from establishing and help foster a more formal look in your garden.
Finally, dense plantings prevent floppy plants. If there is too much space between plants and root and resource competition is too low, plants can outgrow themselves and become floppy as they no longer have any competition to restrain them. In natural plant communities like prairies or meadows, native plants grow side by side with a high density of plants per square foot, promoting healthy root competition as they are meant to experience. In a garden setting, floppy plants create a weedy, messy and unkempt look - not something that fits in well with any garden design, never mind a formal design! Plant densely, stop your plants from flopping.
6. Create Bloom succession
Bloom succession is a term used to describe the change in flower composition in your garden over time. You must plan to always have something in bloom starting from the first spring flower and ending with the last fall flower.
Here is why this is important:
A consistent flow of blooms makes a landscape look intentional, formal and neat. Lets be honest - a garden full of blooms is going to look much more intentional that a garden with sparse blooms, therefore gaining much more positive attention from visitors. This positive attention is going to go a long way in having your native plant garden accepted by neighbors who would rather you had a lawn out front.
A rule of thumb when planning for bloom succession is to have 3-5 different plant species blooming during each growing season from spring to fall. You can adjust this number according to the size of your garden but don’t overdo it. Unless you’re working with a large landscape, too many flowers blooming at once will create a messy or wild look - this is not something we are going for here.
7. Embrace Nativars
There is a lot of controversy surrounding the wildlife value of native plant cultivars (nativars) in native plant gardens - we won’t dive too deep into that here. However, a study by Annie White shows that while many pollinators prefer to forage on native species over nativars, this is not always the case and some nativars may be comparable or even slightly better than their native counterparts. With this in mind, we should evaluate the use of cultivars on a case by case basis and if they make sense to use in your context, then use them.
For example, in formal native landscape design, nativars can sometimes be more appropriate than straight native species due to their refined traits. For instance, while New England Aster supports numerous pollinators, its tall, leggy growth may appear unkempt in small, formal gardens. A cultivar like 'Purple Dome' offers a more compact, bushy alternative and remains under 2ft tall, maintaining ecological benefits while fitting better into formal native plant gardens. At first it might seem like nativars are potentially compromising on wildlife value but realistically, a cultivar of a native plant is more beneficial than a manicured lawn so don’t eschew them completely from your garden design.
