Updated on January 8th, 2026 Posted In: Beautiful Borders
Author: Alexandra Campbell

Brilliant garden border inspiration – how to choose colours, shapes & structure

If you want your best-ever garden borders — whether you’re revamping an old one or starting from scratch — this post brings together the most gorgeous borders I’ve seen when visiting gardens for The Middlesized Garden.

From the starting point to layout, colour themes and the importance of structure, these examples show what works in real life.

And there are also essential garden border from the garden designers and head gardeners who created these borders, so you can adapt their ideas to your own garden.

This show garden border at RHS Chelsea by Jo Thompson shows how structure is important to pretty planting – the multi-stemmed silver birch and the purple beech topiary ball anchor the soft pinks and reds of the flowers.

See these beautiful borders in video

Should You Remove All the Existing Plants or Work Around Some of Them?

This depends, up to a point, on what you have in your border.

But all the gardening experts told me that ideally you should clear the border completely.

As I said in ‘how to revamp your borders’, this is surprisingly difficult to do. You keep thinking ‘that plant seems so happy, I hate to dig it up.’

But if you leave too many plants in, then you’ll be wedging plants in around them rather than completely re-designing your garden border.

However, you can keep a few key plants, such as shrubs or trees. They take years to get established, and their roots go deep.

You can also move some shrubs and trees. It’s best to do this in winter when plants are barely growing. And the older the shrub or tree, the less likely it is that moving will be successful. In the first few years, most shrubs and trees can be moved. They will usually need extra irrigation in the summer after being moved.

Most perennials benefit from being lifted and moved every 3-5 years, so this will give you a good chance to revitalise plants such as irises, asters, persicaria and more. Dig them up, divide them, keeping the healthiest sections and put them temporarily in pots until you can re-plant the border.

See The Honest Truth About How To Divide Perennials.

The top photo is a border at Gravetye Manor Hotel & Gardens and the photo below it shows Steve Edney and Lou Dowle’s 100 metre border. If you make your borders wider, you can create a very narrow path beind them so that you can reach into the back for maintenance.

How Wide or Deep Should A Garden Border Be?

If you’re re-designing your border, then this is an ideal opportunity to decide whether it is the right size and shape.

There is no exact formula for the size of a border because so much depends on your surroundings.

But garden designers tell me that one of the most common mistakes amateurs make is to make their garden borders too small or narrow.

It’s really difficult to plant up  a narrow border – you simply can’t get enough plants in to create colour, fullness or good seasonal succession.

Award-winning plant grower Steve Edney of the No Name Nursery says that you should consider proportions and listen to your instinct. He and his partner Louise Dowle have a 100 metre long perennial border. It’s in front of a line of tall trees that act as a windbreak. Their border is around 10m deep.

‘We need a deep border to balance the tallness of those trees,’ he says. ‘But if you had a small garden with a low fence or hedge, you wouldn’t necessarily want to fill the whole garden with the border.’

It’s a myth that a bigger border will be too much work. If you plant a big border densely with plants, weeds will struggle to survive. You can also fill it with lower maintenance grasses, shrubs and perennials.

See How To Create a Stunning Perennial Border.

If you have a long, narrow garden then consider having a wide border on one side rather than two narrow borders on either side. Or make your border or borders run across the garden.

Top garden designer Charlotte Rowe says that one big border will always look better than two smaller ones.

See: 5 Top Garden Design Tips and 2 Mistakes to Avoid.

And garden designer Posy Gentles says that a border close to the house brings the garden closer. You may want to extend your border across so that you can see it from windows or glass doors. This is particularly important if you have a shallow, wide garden.

See How to Turn a Wide Shallow Backyard Into the Perfect Garden.

Another factor to consider is that if you make your garden border deeper, you may get more full sun or partial shade planting space. The back of a border, near your boundaries, with a fence, wall, hedge or trees, is likely to be shady. But if the border is deep, even north-facing borders may have some access to overhead sunlight at the front.

Should Garden Borders be Straight or Curved?

The answer to this is that it depends on the size of your garden. It is very difficult to make curved borders work in small gardens.  Garden designer Tomoko Kawauchi says that town gardens suit straight lines, but larger country gardens suit bigger curving borders.

If you are creating curved borders, make sure you have the space to keep the curve flowing naturally.

If you try to put curves or circles in a small town garden, you’re likely to get ‘pinch points’. These are points where the curve means there is very little planting space – perhaps no room even for one plant. And any plant you put there will have to be quite small or it will outgrow the space. You’ll ‘lose’ the curve anyway.

If you prefer softer lines but have a small garden, then go for straight lines with planting that spills over into pathways and terraces.

See The Garden Design Details That Make A Town Garden Feel Bigger and More Beautiful.

When I looked back at the many gardens I’ve visited over the 12 years of the Middlesized Garden, I realised that most had borders in straight lines, including the larger country ones. The softness comes from the planting not the border shape. So I think we can safely say that garden design experts and head gardeners think straight borders are usually better.

When I was looking for photographs of gardens I’ve visited, I found very few curving borders. The top photo is a show garden at RHS Hampton Court and is a simple circle with plenty of planting space and no pinch points. The photo below it shows Paul Seaborne’s garden – the border is straight but it is softened by planting.

How Do I Add Height and Structure to a Garden Border?

Grower, designer and broadcaster Jamie Butterworth has worked with some of the best-known people in gardening. He’s created everything from a show garden with Monty Don to a small domestic garden. And he starts every garden or border with the structure.

‘When I was starting out, garden designer James Alexander Sinclair told me that every border needed ‘form and fluff.’ Form is the structure – the trees, topiary and shrubs. Jamie would also consider ornamental grasses to be ‘form’. He suggests starting with a multi-stem tree or trees.

The ‘fluff’ is the flowers and perennials.

And at the famous Cloudehill gardens in Australia, owner Jeremy Francis also says that he always starts his borders with structure. He includes chunky topiary shrubs, large pots and arches. ‘Everything that remains when the garden dies back for winter is structure,’ he says.

It makes a huge difference – imagine the borders in the photo below without their shrubs, pots or arches. It would be ‘too much fluff!’

Imagine how much less impact these borders would have if you took away the yew columns, the arch, the obelisk and the box ball! Structure is also the best way of creating year-round interest in a garden.

See more of Jamie’s advice in 6 Easy Planting Tips for Beginners.

See Jeremy’s tips on structure for garden borders in Garden Structure – the Surprising Reason Why Some Borders Look Brilliant and Others Don’t.

Practical Planting Details

• Soak the root ball of trees, shrubs and perennials in a bucket of water for 10-15 minutes before planting.
• Plant perennials shoulder-width apart or 5 to a square metre.
• Plant in large blocks if you can – 7,9,13 or 15 plants. A few large clumps will look better than plants dotted around in ones or twos.
• If you want graded heights, Steve Edney recommends going down by one-third in height as you plant nearer the front.
• Plant in autumn – if you can – to give plants time to establish before winter
• Plant tender plants in spring.
• Buy plants that grow well in your conditions. However most will still need watering in their first summer. After that, you shouldn’t have to water them.
• For long-flowering summer plants see 6 Perennial Flowers That Bloom All Summer.
• For long flowering autumn plants, see 12 Autumn Flowering Perennials For Sun and Shade.
• See How to Plant a Border Like a Pro.

What Colours Work Together?

Before you start thinking about colour, there is one important factor that will shape your choices. That is how sunny or shady your border is.

All gardens have a mix of sun, shade and partial shade but the way the mix works will be individual to your garden. There are other factors, such as soil type, but Jamie Butterworth says that you can keep plant choice simple by narrowing down it down to how much sun each border gets.

‘Just ask yourself – is this spot sunny or shady?’ Then choose the right plants accordingly, he advises.

A sunny border has 6+ hours of direct sun a day. Partial shade means 3-6 hours of direct sun. And full shade means less than 3 hours of shade.

Shady borders are easy to plant and maintain, but garden centres sell more plants that need full sun than shade-loving plants.

See Shade Gardening – How to Choose Perfect Shade Garden Plants.

Yellow in Borders – Love It or Loathe It?

Some gardeners – in the UK, at least – don’t want yellow flowers in their borders. But yellow can look stunning. I particularly love the yellow anthemis tinctoria in the Sunk Garden borders at Doddington Place, photographed in mid to high summer (see below).

And at Borde Hill Gardens, anthemis tinctoria also provides a splash of yellow to contrast with blue campanula and geraniums in a long border designed by Chris Beardshaw. This photo is in mid summer, but I visited the gardens two months later and it was still in flower.

The top photo is one of the borders at Doddington Place Gardens, featuring Anthemis tinctoria (Golden marguerites). Anthemis also features in the borders in the picture below it, in a border designed by Chris Beardshaw at Borde Hill Gardens.

Yellow adds light to the rich, late season colours in the top photo at Great Comp Gardens in Sussex. The photo below it shows marigolds in a border at Great Dixter.

A White Garden Border – Cool and Classical

Ever since Vita Sackville West designed the White Garden at Sissinghurst, there’s been a kind of magic about white borders. If you combine good evergreen structure, such as topiary and beautifully shaped trees and shrubs, with white flowers, you have a garden that looks good all year round. And you can find white flowers for any time of year, from snowdrops and tulips through to roses, dahlias and chrysanthemums.

This show garden for the charity Perennial majors on white flowers with evergreen structure. It’s designed by Richard Miers and it won the People’s Choice Award at Chelsea last year. That’s because so many people loved its classical simplicity.

But I have two words of warning about white.

Firstly, not all plants labelled as ‘white’ turn out to have white flowers. So you may have other colours popping up. That can be nice – Richard Miers has added splashes of red to this garden.

Secondly, I went to a talk by gardening guru Sarah Raven. She says that if you combine white with other colours, you need to be careful. Whites mix well with pastels, because the pastels have lots of white in them.

But if you add white flowers to a border full of richer, darker colours, the white has all the light. This makes the other colours can look dull and dark in contrast instead of rich and glowing.

I realised that was partly what was wrong with my border.  The parts where reds, pinks and oranges mixed was more vibrant than the part where one white flower had been dropped in.

White + Other Colours – Smart and Stylish

Several friends  of mine have a garden border where white is partnered with another colour or two colours. At Karori, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law have a ‘red, white and silver’ border, which looks good for months on end. The ‘silver’ comes from grey foliage, which adds so much to any border.

The top photo shows ‘Noble Series’ lupins and Allium ‘Mount Everest’ at Hardy’s Cottage Garden plants. The picture below it shows a red, white and silver border scheme in a private garden.

The contrasting red and white in a show border at Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants in Dorset also works very well. The company has 24 Gold medals at RHS Chelsea Flower Show for their plant displays and this one shows the advantage of contrasting plant shapes as well as plant colours. It’s a Band of Noble Lupin with Allium ‘Everest’. Rosy Hardy has some good tips on choosing perennials here.

And I also love the blue, white and silver ‘Ghost border’ at Doddington Place Gardens. I’ve seen this look equally good with white tulips and daffodils as with blue delphiniums in summer. In my post about English Country Style, podcaster and gardener Joff Elphick says that ‘blue delphiniums are key to the English country garden look.’

The ‘Ghost’ border at Doddington Place Gardens in spring (lower pic) and summer (top). The colours are blue, grey and silver.

Soft Blues, Lavender and Pink – a Very Pretty Garden Border

One of my favourite colour scheme combinations is the soft blue/pink/lavender one. I find that it’s very good for early to mid summer before the hotter colours take over in late summer.

We visited West Dean Gardens to talk to head gardener Tom Brown about how to create stunning garden borders.

A section of the mid-summer borders at West Dean Gardens. Note the foliage shape with the grey stachys in the foreground and the sharp leaves of the irises. These contrasts are as important as flower colour.

It was mid-summer and there were lovely soft blues and pinks in the two long borders. Tom’s advice is to plant in large clumps.

He suggests planting groups of 5,7 or 9 plants rather than the usual 3 that are recommended. The reason is that if you plant three and one dies, you’re not left with much of a clump. Looking at the borders, you can also see how important it is to contrast leaf shape and colour. Many people think irises are just for their flowers, but their sword-like leaves add real punctuation to this border.

And there are more soft pinks and reds in the 100ft long border at No Name Plants. Steve Edney and Lou Dowle have a strong sense of colour . Although the borders are full of life and movement, the colour range is quite disciplined. You can hear a fascinating discussion between them on whether a dark red persicaria belongs in the border in this video (it’s at around 14 minutes).

A superb use of reds and pinks, with a graded height planting, at the No Name Nursery in Kent.

Steve prefers the classical ‘graded heights’ system of planting in a herbaceous border. He suggests you move the heights up or down by a third. There’s more of his advice in how to create a stunning perennial border.

And I love this pretty English country border at Doddington Place Gardens, with its soft pinks and purples, too.

Soft pinks and purples at Doddington Place Gardens in Kent.

Hot Borders – Orange, Red and Gold

Some grand gardens have ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ borders. But I also think you can have a border that is cool with blues and pinks in summer, then turns ‘hot’ in autumn. One of the most stunning hot borders is the autumn border at Gravetye Manor Hotel.

Autumn borders at Gravetye Manor Hotel. The grasses create movement and add a golden accent.

Think About Shape Instead of Colour

When I interviewed garden designer, Michael McCoy, he said that most gardeners get too obsessed with colour in their garden border. But they should be thinking about plant shape instead.

He advises combining vertical spires with rounded shapes and horizontal layers. He’s done this in this new perennial garden, with great success. He says that if the plant shape works, then colour can be almost irrelevant. Like Tom Brown, he plants in very large groups. That’s also key to the look. See more of Michael’s advice in Naturalistic planting design here.

This dramatic planting by Michael McCoy is based on plant shape, not colour. There’s an effective contrast of rounded, vertical spires and horizontal planting.

Frances and Paul Moskovits also find they get better results by ignoring colour schemes. However, they have a different reason. In how to make a flower border look amazing, Frances says that she prioritises healthy plants that flourish in their area. A full border looks best and it also has fewer weeds, she explains. She found she had more failures when she got too obsessed with choosing flowers for their colour.

Use ornamental grasses to add structure, light and movement into your borders. Paul Seaborne plants grasses first when he’s starting a border from scratch. See his recommendations for 7 brilliant ornamental grasses for your border.

And the stunning new Piet Oudolf borders at RHS Wisley also use structure, along with a combination of block and matrix planting to achieve their effect. See 5 lessons in planting style from the new Oudolf borders at RHS Wisley.

New border rules: add ornamental grasses for structure and plant in big blocks of colour. Top is the Oudolf Landscape at RHS Wisley and the photo below it is Paul Seaborne’s garden at Pelham Plants in Sussex.

What’s the Cheapest Way to Fill a Garden Border?

Completely filling a border from scratch can be expensive. You can find lots of ‘cheap hacks’ on the internet, but many don’t work, are more difficult than they sound or won’t give you a beautiful effect.

So I’ve broken down eight tried-and-trusted ways to keep the costs down in how to Create A Garden Border on a Budget.

The three top money saving tips are:

• Buy plants that do well in your climate. They will grow well, die less often and won’t need replacing.
• Plant perennials and grasses instead of annuals. Annuals have to be replaced every year, so they work out more expensive than perennials in the long run.
• Buy plants in 9cm pots if you can. These smaller plants are not only cheaper. They also establish more quickly and will need less watering.

See more views of the gardens in video

You can see more of the borders I’ve mentioned in this video Brilliant Herbaceous Border Inspiration.

An Easy Way of Listing Plants for a Garden Border

When I was planning the re-vamp of our garden border, I realised there were lots of factors to consider. As well as colour, size and shape, there is also season, wildlife-friendliness and more. So I’ve created a Beautiful Borders Planning List. I can write down the plants I want, and can see where gaps are appearing by looking down the columns.

The Beautiful Borders Planning Checklist is free to download here.

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