I AM a great believer in bending the rules when you can and never more so in the gardening world, writes Tom Attwood. I was speaking last week to a gardening club on the subject of ‘reinterpreting the herbaceous border.’ The crux of the talk was centred around avoiding being bogged down by what is traditional and conventional in an attempt to liberate your approach, ideas and plant choices. This is something I attempt to do as much as I can where it’s appropriate to do so. There is of course a time and a place for everything and while a spontaneous, unshackled approach is great fun, there are some bedrock principles that cannot be ignored. Aside from getting the soil conditions right and selecting a suitable range of plants that are going to thrive in your garden, the rule of using odd numbers is one that works brilliantly. When you’re working on a new border however small or large it’s often most effective to use a smaller range of plants and repeat them. Placing two of the same plants side by side never looks as good as three or even one single specimen. The same would apply to shrubs or trees in a lawned area unless of course you had two sentinels either side of a gate, path or doorway. These same rules can be found in many of the creative arts. If you get drawn into watching the extensive coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show, make a concerted effort when the presenters are analysing what qualities they like about a particular design to take a look at the planting. You’ll notice that in 98 per cent of cases the planting is comprised of a relatively small number of plants but used repeatedly sometime en mass. This doesn’t mean having to buy hundreds of plants to use repeatedly. Select plants that split and divide very easily and in a short space of time a single plant can provide you with masses of useable material.

Next week: growing climbers through trees

Abi and Tom's Garden Plants at Halecat
Halecat, Witherslack