An Afternoon in the Garden: Annalise Fosbery on winter shadows and the importance of a focal point

Before you read on, this week marks the winter solstice and it is an important milestone in garden design. Take a good look at how long the shadows are in your garden because the solstice is the furthest north the sun will go in the year. From now on the sun will travel back south and my heavily shaded garden bed under the fence will start to see more sun. If I was super-keen, I might even take my tape measure out and measure how high shrubs will need to grow to reach the winter sun. But let’s re-focus on the topic of eye-catching features in the garden. Where is the focal point in your garden? The focal point is the location that your eyes are readily drawn to. It may even pull you towards it, beckoning you to explore. A focal point in your garden might be an object such as a sculpture, collection of feature pots, a bird bath or a pool. Or it could be a feature plant, a flowering bush or tree, a deciduous specimen that loses leaves to create a winter sculpture, or a shade tree with a tangle of thick branches. Today I’d like to discuss how to create a focal point and next month we’ll cover how you might enhance a focal point you may already have. Firstly, to create a focal point you might think about where you most often look at your garden from. Your key view may be from a breakfast bar, outdoor setting, or lounge. Placing an eye-catching element at the furthest point in your garden and in the centre of that view will immediately bring attention to your garden. If you are inclined toward a feature plant consider something with leaf or flower colour or an unusual shape such as a flowering eucalyptus tree. Eucalyptus torquata (Coral gum) is a Mid West local with an umbrella shape and delicate pink-orange flowers that attract small birds. Other options might be a purple orchid tree, Bauhinia purpurea, or an Illawarra flame tree, Brachychiton acerifolius. Alternatively your eye-catcher might be a cluster of pots with a stand-out display of seasonal interest. When grouping pots try use different sizes and to do this in threes. This means that one pot is tucked in front of the others and creates visual depth. Pots might contain long or short-term planting. You may have a small tree in one, a medium sized shrub in another and then the third pot overflowing with flowering annuals. This will give you ongoing visual interest while the annuals are growing and blooming. Edibles are great in pots too, small citrus will tolerate big free-draining pots. Olives and tomatoes are also easy to grow in pots and your family can enjoy the colourful harvest. It’s worth researching which varieties tolerate having a smaller root zone. I recently purchased a dwarf variety of fruiting fig for a very big pot as I don’t want to be re-potting it too often. It is under-planted with strawberries so we will reap the rewards of two fruit harvests! This afternoon in my garden I’m planning the position of a cubby house. It will be the focal point for a number of years, so it needs to be carefully considered. It will influence how other parts of the garden are developed too because it will create a handy wind break and complementary planting will enhance its position in my garden. You may be lucky to have an existing focal point in your garden and I’ll offer some tips to enrich it in my next instalment. Some practical tasks Annalise Fosbery is a landscape architect who has recently moved back to her hometown of Geraldton