Yesterday’s gallery that featured Mariana’s Swedish country garden got me thinking even more about this particular style of garden.  Swedish gardens are required to deal with the harshest and shortest of seasons, but yet every single one I see has this beautiful lush wildness that really appeals to me. There are some good lessons about right plants, right place here….

There are lots of plants that you might use to achieve this look, but I have pulled together this palette as an easy reference for those of you who might want to replicate this style.

Swedes call this type of garden a ‘grandma garden’ because is recalls the casual place that so many grandma’s used to or still tend. They tend to be tightly packed with a variety of plants and flowers. The soil tends to be sandy and not terribly good so the hardy plants that live there have to put up with these less than pleasant conditions. It is all a bit wild and rampant, like a slightly more controlled and brightly colored version of the of the wilderness beyond, and lots of things can be left to self seed in order to fill in the space and choke out weeds.

Does this style appeal to you?  Have you tried and loved or hated any of these plants?

Click through the gallery for a full plant list.

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