Our garden editor's perfect planting scheme for spring borders | House & Garden

Putting plants together is the most creative and joyful part of making a garden. With colour, shape and texture, you can conjure up a living work of art, something that not only gives you sensory pleasure but also benefits wildlife and the environment. But with so many options available to us, where do we start? I always think back to the plantswoman Beth Chatto and her mantra ‘right plant, right place’ when conceiving a plan, because there is no point in rushing to place your favourite sun-loving flowers in a shady spot at the back of a north-facing house. ‘Plants, like people, have their preferences and don’t like being thrust into the nearest available hole,’ she observed.

Spend some time looking at where the sun or shadows fall, working out whether a spot is sheltered or exposed and finding out what your soil is like. Think about your local climate and microclimates, and research how much rainfall you are likely to expect, or what the lowest and highest temperatures might be. Once you have mustered this essential information, you will be in a much better position to start putting together a list of possibilities.

The combination I focus on here is found in my front garden in a sunny, south-west-facing spot with a fertile, well-worked clay soil that is reasonably well drained. Anchored by domed shrubs, including Hebe rakaiensis, H. salicifolia and Teucrium fruticans, the planting is soft and flowery in a traditional cottage-garden style, featuring a mixture of perennials, biennials, annuals and bulbs for maximum biodiversity.

In a series of six brick-edged beds, the same plants repeat throughout the space in different laces to create continuity – but not in a symmetrical or ordered fashion. There are very few colour