ColorBlock Garden Design Cards

Looking for a fun and easy way to design your garden beds by sun conditions? I’ve developed an original and effective design method for new and experienced gardeners alike. With a shuffling of these easy-to-understand plant cards, you can deal yourself a dream garden! Applying an artist’s color block method to plants that work well together in the garden, each of Elizabeth’s plant cards are “color boxed” for playing with companion plant options. Your final designs are tailored to your color palette preferences, and can be redesigned for fresh and new ideas with each card shuffle.

All plant selections shown on the cards are field tested and curated by Elizabeth to be reliable performers in a New England garden.

Choose between two decks of cards

Colorblock Garden Design Cards (New England Perennials: Zones 3-8) includes one box of 150 business card-size plant cards featuring 50 field-tested perennials. Three copies of each plant are offered to facilitate complete garden planning.

Native Plants Colorblock Garden Design Cards (Native Perennials and Native Shrubs: Zones 2-9) includes 165 Native Plant cards inside. 55 hardy plants for sun, shade and part shade. Three cards of each plant to facilitate garden planning.

How to Use Colorblock Garden Design Cards

Here you find an explanation of all of the information included on each card and a model of how to layout the cards using the Colorblock design method.

Step 1. What are your garden’s light conditions — sun, part-shade, shade? Or perhaps your selected spot extends to include all three exposures? No matter — you can place adjacent plant cards to reflect the changing conditions. how do you design by sequential or concurrent blooms?

Step 2. How big is your garden? Get an approximate space measurement in terms of width and length of your proposed garden. All of the information you need to fit your garden space is on your cards along with more details such as soil preferences.

Step 3. Find some plants that appeal to you and meet your sunlight requirements. Check the Colorboxes on the cards to find companion plant colors that make the collection sing!

Step 4. Arrange the plants by height into front-to-back rows following the details provided on the cards. Choose the number of plants you will need to fill your allotted space. Each card has generalized size labels to help you place the plants in the front, middle or back of your borders, in addition to width and height in feet and inches. Place the wider plants further apart to reflect accurate spacing.

Step 5. Take a snapshot to record your plan and go find your plants!