Design A New Garden Using Bubble Diagrams 

During the cold and snowy winters in the North, I make good use of my time by planning out new garden beds using bubble diagrams. Even if you’re a poor artist like me, you can use a simple sketch to get an idea of which kinds of gardens and plants you want to grow and where they would best be situated.

 Drawing a Bubble Diagram

The easiest way to start is by making a simple sketch that I call a bubble diagram. You can see the one I’ve drawn for my own yard, pictured here. Bubble diagrams aren’t formal designs that are drawn to scale. Rather, they are general indicators of which kinds of garden beds will work best in your sun and soil conditions so you can choose the right plants.

To make a bubble diagram, take a blank sheet of paper and sketch out all the hardscape elements in your yard. These are things like your house, driveway, electrical or underground utility lines, outbuildings, patios, decks and walls, plus natural features such as large trees and boulders. Any prominent, immovable features should be included in your sketch. Remember to include pathways and lawn areas. You can use different colored pencils to better identify each bubble.

Next, make a list of the kinds of garden beds you want to install such as a perennial border, vegetable garden, pollinator garden or native shrub area. Draw a bubble for each one where you think it will get enough light and where the soil and air flow is conducive for growing the types of plants in each bed.

For example, you would want to site a vegetable garden in a full sun location close to the house and grow a native shrub garden where birds can easily and safely access it. Think about the relationship of each type of bed to each other as you fill the page with bubbles. Move them around in various iterations until you feel comfortable with the overall design and flow. Then, start selecting plants that match the conditions of each garden bed.

Let’s take a closer look at two kinds of beds I’ve drawn here: a native shrub bed in a wet area and a full sun perennial garden. 

Hardy Native Shrubs for Wet Areas

In the top left corner of my bubble diagram, you’ll see I have designated space for native shrubs in a low, wet area that gets part sun. Four native shrubs I recommend for those conditions in northern climates are summersweet, chokeberry, shrubby dogwood and buttonbush.

Vanilla Spice^® summersweet (Clethra) blooms in midsummer with fragrant, vanilla colored flower spikes that attract butterflies. It is shade tolerant but blooms better with at least some sun. It grows 3 to 6 feet tall and tolerates damp soils where hardy in zones 4-9.

Berry Scape^® chokeberry (Aronia) is an earlier bloomer with white flowers that attract pollinating bees in the spring. The flowers turn into berries
that start out yellow and turn vibrant red by fall. They are beautiful with the brilliant red fall foliage. It grows 4 to 5 feet tall in part sun to full sun and
is hardy in zones 4-9.

Sgt. Pepper^® shrubby dogwood (Cornus) is another carefree native shrub that thrives in both part shade and full sun in the North. Its variegated green, cream and pink leaves add color to the summer garden, and the deep red stems continue the interest through winter. Most shrubby dogwoods can grow quite large, but this one stays a little smaller at 4 to 6 feet tall. It’s hardy in zones 3-7.

Sugar Shack^® buttonbush (Cephalanthus) is a tough native shrub that grows in boggy to moist soils in zones 4-10. This one is smaller than the native species, topping out around 4 to 5 feet, so it’s easier to fit into home landscapes. Interesting looking, round, white flowers bloom in midsummer. Their fragrance is a draw for pollinators.

Hardy Perennials for Full Sun and Sandy Soil
As I pull into my driveway and visitors walk the path to my front door, I want the view to be of a beautiful but low maintenance perennial garden. That area is in full sun and it’s hot because of the surrounding pavement. My soil is sandy and well-drained, so I have to be selective about what I plant there. Three hardy perennials I recommend for such sites are Russian sage, yarrow and stonecrop.

‘Sage Advice’ Russian sage (Perovskia) is well-adapted to my conditions because it is sun, heat, drought and salt tolerant. It starts blooming later in the summer with deep lavender purple flowers and lasts into fall. This variety grows 32 to 36 inches tall in zones 4-9.

Firefly series of yarrow (Achillea) including ‘Firefly Peach Sky’  is also drought and salt tolerant and loves the sun. These are taller yarrows that grow upright to about three feet tall, and bees and butterflies love them. If I cut the spent flower stalks down, the plant sends up more in their place so I can have flowers over much of the summer.

Along the edge of the bed next to the pavement, low growing stonecrops (Sedum) like the Rock ‘N Low^® series are a good fit because they thrive in hot, dry conditions and are salt tolerant. Rock ‘N Low^® ‘Yellow Brick Road’ is a short 6 to 8 inch tall edger with bright yellow flowers that don’t need to be deadheaded. It is hardy in zones 3-9.