A good place to start when choosing plants for your garden is to make sure that they like the climate you got in your garden. If you choose suitable plants for your area you can have a stunning garden that requires a lot less work than a garden with less suitable plants.
If you for instance live in a hot and arid part of the world, try going for plants that are adapted to such conditions. If you live in a dry area you can as an example seek inspiration from classical mediterranean gardens. A common mistake among gardeners is to assume that just because you live in a warm part of the world, any kind of tropical flowers will thrive there. This is however a misconception, since tropical flowers hailing from the rainforest will have a hard time coping with dry air (often regardless of how much money you spend on lavishing their roots with water) while tropical flowers used to more arid conditions easily succumb to fungal infections or simply rot away when planted in humid parts of the world.
You need to consider at as many factors as possible when choosing plants. You will also need to decide how much work you want to put into the garden, do you for example want to change the conditions of your garden. Do you need new dirt, e.g. by adjusting its nutritional content or tampering with how fast it drains? Do you want high trees that provide shade to the garden? How much money and work do you want the maintenance of the garden to require? Do you wish to build a green house to accommodate for certain plants?
One of many advantages of having a “natural garden”, i.e a garden based around plants that actually likes the prevailing conditions, is that you will have more time left to spend on a few darling plants that may not be as though as the others. By choosing hardy plants for the base of your garden you can spend more time on a few special projects e.g. a wetland plant that needs a lot of extra watering or a delicate flower that require constant protection against parasites.
One way of going about when choosing garden plants it to visit gardens in your local area and talk to the gardeners. Which plants need constant tending to survive and which ones love the conditions so much they are almost turning into weeds? Which type of soil are they growing in? Do they prefer sun or shadow? You can normally get a wealth of information by chatting with local garden keepers; gardeners who are familiar with local conditions and know what will work in the long run.
Another way of choosing garden plants it to be inspired by other parts of the world with a similar climate and soil conditions. There are for instance parts of New Zeeland and Australia that are surprisingly similar to the Mediterranean, while numerous plants native to the slopes of Himalaya have proven highly suitable for gardens in Scandinavia, Canada and parts of Russia. Be careful however, because certain non-native plants have the potential of wrecking havoc with local ecosystems. Make sure you don’t import plants illegally.
