Prairie garden design and ideas

What makes a prairie garden

A prairie style garden borrows its look from the wild grasslands of North America: ornamental grasses and tough, long-flowering perennials set in loose drifts, with the same few plants repeated so the whole garden reads as one sweep. It is part of the naturalistic planting style that the Dutch designer Piet Oudolf made famous, often called new perennial planting, where the shape of a plant counts as much as its flower and the seed heads stay standing through winter.

Making a prairie garden work in the UK

Most of these plants come from open grassland, so give them the sunniest part of the garden. Ordinary garden soil suits them as long as it does not sit wet all winter; on heavy clay, lean on the plants that cope with it, such as heleniums, asters and molinia. Plant small, in groups of three, five or seven, close enough that the leaves meet within a season. Leave the stems and seed heads standing for the frost and the birds, and cut them down in late winter before the new growth comes.

Full sun border plants →Clay soil plants →

How to lay out a prairie garden

Start with what stays: the house, the fences, the trees and the seat you already use. Then run a path through the planting, of stepping stones, gravel or a mown strip, so you walk among the plants rather than past them. Put the tallest grasses at the back, but bring a few see-through ones such as stipa and verbena bonariensis right to the front. A prairie border planting plan follows the same idea: a short list of plants, each repeated every metre or so along the fence. Prairie planting in a small garden needs even fewer kinds, three or four perennials and one grass, as in the narrow gardens above.

Prairie plant combinations

A few pairings carry most of the gardens above: pink coneflowers with the fine, pale heads of Mexican feather grass; orange heleniums and golden rudbeckia against the upright stems of feather reed grass; purple salvias with the flat plates of achillea; and sedums and asters with molinia to carry the colour into autumn. Pick one grass and two or three flowers and repeat them. Plant the grass densely enough to fill every gap between the flowers and you have matrix planting.

Hot colour border ideas →Long flowering border plants →

See it on your own garden first

Garden Design App builds the design around your actual garden. It reads a photo of your space, keeps your trees and fences where they are, and redesigns the planting into drifts of grasses and flowers you could genuinely grow.

From an idea to a plan you can plant

When one of the designs clicks, the Pro and Max plans turn it into a prairie planting plan: every plant named, how big each grows and where each goes, with a month by month flowering calendar that runs from the first flowers of early summer to the seed heads of winter.