To understand the core underpinning contemporary planting

Bramdean House, UK, traditional mirror bordersTo understand the core underpinning contemporary planting designs one must understand that the emphasis now rests upon ideas rather than visual impact; colour borders are out and concept borders are in. Plants are not used simply for their physical attributes but because they in some way communicate an idea - the lost prairies of  our homeland, the vanishing European wildflower meadows, our childhood memories of foreign holidays or our concerns for nature, plants and the animals that we yearn to conserve.
Big ideas seem to need large scale borders to make their point. Looking at the landmark schemes of the last ten years or so, few have been made in small domestic scale gardens. Rather, today's gardening magazines are awash with horizon-filling schemes that have transformed the atmosphere of public parks and extensive private estates - naturalistic is the key word. Those of us with smaller gardens may well be inspired to embrace the new styles we admire but find it difficult to adapt the examples we encounter to the confines of our less generous plots. All too often I have seen such attempts fail and have myself been responsible for some wooly attempts, but once you understand the underlying principles it does become possible to adapt the new approach to even the smallest of garden spaces; however, some compromises along the way are inevitable.
Once one understands that the key is in creating an overall image rather than concentrating on finer detailing, progress becomes possible, but it does need the plant collector within us to show restraint. If one word characterises new, so-called, naturalistic perennial plantings it is repetition. The same plants are repeated throughout a planting scheme to both emphasise the idea that a plant represents, but also to strengthen its visual impact - a few red flowered clovers (Trifolium rubens) are pretty, but you may need fifty or more plants across a field of deschampsia grasses to communicate the idea of an open meadow. The corollary here is that the more you repeat a plant the less room remains available to introduce other different plants to the scheme.