Simple gardening

New gardeners, non-gardeners and cranky gardeners need help. They are told they can open a can of wildflower seeds and have an instant meadow. Magazines depict perennial borders long enough to land the Concorde, with a secession of colour from April to November. On television gardens are hastily made over in a day with rickety trellises, stepping stones that look like feet, and yards of mulch. It's confusing, overwhelming and disheartening for budding gardeners. My advice if you're a new or uncommitted gardener start simple and keep it serene.

Remember the last time you painted your living room? The job is finished, the walls are crisp and fresh and most importantly the room is stripped of clutter. Magically the bones of the room sparkle and adornment seem superfluous.

Some of this stripping down of the garden will happen automatically when winter turns it into a blank slate. Take that time to scheme and dream about your garden and how to give it a tailored look.

Think of the garden as an empty room. You need something good on the floor (ground cover), something to sit on (a bench), sturdy walls (shrubs), and of course a ceiling (trees). Later, when and if you become a passionate gardener you can add art, lighting, artifacts and collectibles - those of course would be annuals, perennials, and garden accessories.

It feels comfy to have a tree create a ceiling in your garden. If you have a honey locust tree, the ceiling is light, and feathery and moves with the wind. If you have an oak or a maple the ceiling is heavy and solid like you're sitting in the paneled lounge of a university faculty club. A saucer magnolia makes a majestic canopy that invites reflection and daydreaming.

Congratulations if you already have desirable trees in your garden. But don't forget to groom them. Limb them up if they make your garden dark as a cave. Restore their dignified profile by pruning out suckers and removing dead wood.

In a new garden, tree selection will be the most important decision you make. Look at what's available in garden centres now, go to parks and botanical gardens in the next few weeks and take pictures of the fall colour. When the leaves are gone go back and take note of the trees winter silhouette. Is it as pretty as a Wordsworth poem?

Over the winter, when your world is crusted with ice, look at books. Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs published by Timber press is full of wonderful pictures and opinionated text about the merits of scores of trees. The Year in Trees by Kim Tripp and J.C. Raulston, Timber Press, makes trees come alive with loving descriptions, and Trees in Canada by John Laird Farrar published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside (available from Federal Publications) is flush with information about habitats, distribution, twigs, bark and fruit.

The walls of your garden room are built of shrubs and ornamental grasses. These living walls do so many things, they give you privacy, they stop drafts, they may in time provide a backdrop for your art (perennials) and like all good walls they hide things. In our gardens it is becoming essential to hide things, to screen views. It may be the shocking blue tarp over your neighbors above ground pool, or the school bus parked across the street, perhaps it's the rusty barbecue straight from Trailer Park Boys, or the megawatt urban lights suitable for landing an F-18 on an aircraft carrier.

Plant a happy little grove of shrubs to banish encroaching ugliness. The doublefile viburnum, the leatherleaf viburnum, alternate leaf dogwood, hydrangeas, smokebush and Korean lilacs would be fine selections. If you need a thicket, the sumacs, both staghorn and cutleaf and the hazelnuts can be pressed into service.

While shrubs provide the woody spine of your walls, the ornamental grasses can be used like graceful, decorative screens. There are few things prettier than a swishing clump of maidenhair grass Miscanthus sinensis, or the smoky, burgundy ribbons of switch grass Panicum virgatum. If you plant ornamental grasses boldly, you quickly create vignettes evocative of other places, the Cape Cod seashore with maidenhair grass, or the tall grass prairie with switch grass.

Examples of these serene gardens are everywhere - borrow them. I loved a planting I saw of feather reed grass Calamagrostis x acutiflora and the stunning tree called the dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides. The dawn redwood is an evergreen with soft feathery branches that look like ferns. The branches bolt right out of the trunk of the tree, like some fantastic creation from the Wizard of Oz. With potential growth of two to three feet a year, understand that the dawn redwood will take up a lot of vertical real estate in the garden. If you have the room, consider it.

For dazzling inspiration about using ornamental grasses, visit the Music Garden at the foot of Spadina in Toronto. Designed by Julie Moir Mersservy, it manages to be both restrained and exuberant. Messervy is shared her expertise in garden design in two sessions at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington called Beyond Colour.

So, start with the ceiling (trees) add the walls (shrubs-grasses), put in the chair (a garden bench), and then tie it all together with a carpet of ground cover. Think of it as a calming, muted tapestry. Plant two or three ground covers, and watch them knit together. For years our front garden limped along with a frail planting of periwinkle. Last year I added some ivy, this year I added some sweet woodruff. Now there is texture, contrasting leaf shape, and a range of green tones like farm fields seen from the air. As my art teacher always says, "make something interesting."

And finally, look to nature for glimpses of the serene garden. Borrow from the groves, thickets, and glades that are so restful. Keep it simple and say no to knick-knacks.