We started the design process in August with a client who had recently moved to Charlotte from New York. She's an avid gardener and native plant enthusiast but new to the Southeast.

Her goal was a native plant pollinator garden that incorporated a raised bed for herbs. The main layout challenge was balancing the square raised bed with the organic, rounded shapes that work best in naturalistic plantings. I also wanted to include a pathway to allow easy access from the house. The solution was to envelope the raised bed within the pollinator garden, with pathways leading to it from both sides. This created easy kitchen access while allowing the raised bed to rise from the surrounding flowers like a sculpture—a deliberate contrast between geometric structure and the organic movement of grasses and blooms.

The design also needed to incorporate bare root trees she'd ordered for fall delivery and flowers she'd purchased from a local nursery. She'd picked up a few of several species, so we increased quantities and grouped them in drifts to create rhythm and a more natural appearance. In naturalistic planting, single specimens tend to look spotty and disconnected; grouping the same species together—even in small clusters of three to five—creates visual flow and mimics how plants grow in the wild. We added more of what she'd selected—butterfly weed, liatris, and sweet joe pye weed—then incorporated our favorites like columbine, aromatic aster, iron butterfly ironweed, and narrow leaf mountain mint. To provide a better transition between the back of the garden and the fence, we used fothergilla, serviceberry, and spicebush as a structural layer.

For site preparation, the main issues were compaction and poor drainage. To remedy this, we amended with a 50/50 mix of leaf compost and pine bark fines and worked it in with a broadfork to break up compaction.

Excited to watch this garden mature.