Hello, my name is Thomas Lowe and I"m a landscape designer in Atlanta, Georgia. You can view more of my landscape designs at eHow.com/thomaslowe or go to Facebook Thomas Lowe Landscape Designs. Today, I will be telling you about landscape designs for tiered areas. First of all when you're planting on a slope or a tier, if you put the taller plants in the back and the smaller plants in the front it creates more of a stair step or layered effect so you can view all of the plants as in this landscape design. If you did the reversal of that, you know, you could certainly hide things in the back, and you could do that. But to create more of a picturesque type of design you would want to do the small plants in the front, medium in the middle, tall in the back. Also if you did an evergreen backdrop it creates some privacy and some structure to the overall design concept here in this landscape bed. Also if you did an evergreen foreground planting then that creates some structure on the front. And you could do more of your deciduous plants, deciduous meaning the plants that die back or drop their leaves in the winter. You could do more of your deciduous plants in the middle, as shown here. This, in particular, plant is an evergreen diantus and it will stay green even in the winter and then it will flower real heavy in the spring and then slowly go out of flower as the fall progresses. Also in your small, medium, and tall stair step effect planting, or layered planting, you may want to choose plants that will flower at different times of the year. These plants, this ground cover diantus flowers spring until fall, the roses, they haven't quite opened up yet, but these will open up and these will be more of your summer plants. And more roses here for summer. This evergreen shrub in the back, that is a sasanqua camilia and it will flower more in the fall. And the sasanqua's as the background plant will also flower in the fall as well. And also right behind me this is a lace leaf Japanese maple. And the lace leaf Japanese maple, the actual leaf, as you can see will give a nice red color that contrasts with the green. So you don't always have to choose a flowering plant to lend color in your landscape design. You can use colorful leaves as shown here. Also there's a few other perennials, there's a gaura perennial, that's right behind this dwarf rosebush. That will flower more towards mid to late summer. And therefore you create some flowering sequences starting in the spring, in the summer, and then also in the winter time as well. So when you're planning on tiered or on a slope just remember if you don't want to hid the slope then you would want to put your small plants in the front, medium in the middle, taller in the back. And choose each different type of plant to flower in different times of the year. Just to give you a longer blooming period for your overall tier garden. Thank you very much. My name is Thomas Lowe and I'm a landscape designer in Atlanta, Georgia.
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