Seaside Garden Ideas

A garden cultivated by the seaside can be a real chore. Salt air, harsh weather, rapid changes in climate, and sandy soil are just a few things to contend with. It requires greater precaution, forethought and planning ahead in order to get your seaside garden exactly as you envision it. Not all plants are cut out to flourish in such environments, but you still have plenty of options in the layout, style and color of your garden.

Natural Theme

Any seaside garden will be subjected to extremes of sunlight, cold, saltwater, salt air, torrential winds, and rain. The theme which jibes well with these conditions is an all-natural naturescape. Spend a little time at the beach and look out across the dunes. You'll see that it's far from barren. There are beach elder, sea grape, dune panic grass, sea oats, sandspur, and plenty of others to give your garden a green, lush, fleshy appearance. Likewise, dune sunflower, beach morning glory, firewheel, and railroad vine will give a good degree of groundcover and some much-needed color. With a naturally-themed seaside garden, there are no barriers or lines of demarcation. Ideally your garden is an extension of the surrounding sand and dunes, rolling, flowing, uneven, and seamless from the real thing.

Nautical Theme

A nautical theme might be more appropriate for seashores and coastlines in temperate and moderate climates as it primarily uses cool weather plants that are salt-resistant but not always found in coastal regions. Rather than appearing natural, the nautical theme is well ordered with clearly defined barriers and a single level rather than tiers. The barriers of the garden could be comprised of trees and shrubs which will act as a windbreak to shield the more fragile plants found in the interior. Cypress, ceonothus, pine, firethorn, sumac, and bayberry will all do the job admirably. Blues and grays resembling the sky and sea of New England are the primary colors. Sunken boats, lighthouses, weather vanes, brass bells, blocks and tackles, fishing nets, life preservers, and other similar decorative pieces could be mounted on pier piles sunken into the ground. Surrounding or interspersed with these decorative pieces could be rosemary, winterberry holly, dusty miller, flowering jasmine, bougainvillea and lilyturf, as they all produce cool winter colors that would match the rest of the garden. Use gravel or sand for ground coverings. For a change of pace, use black volcanic sand instead of the usual white.

Undersea Theme

A really radical idea is to use polished river rocks to cover the ground. Add to that broken Doric columns, crumbling blocks of faux marble or limestone, coral and anchors to give the garden an appearance of a submerged seabed or parts of a sunken city. Utilizing one or more tier-like stair-steps would create the regimented appearance often seen and associated with Greco-Roman architecture. Pair this with plants such as poor man's pepper, rabbit-foot clover, sandwort, beach amaranth, and bluestem grass. They are all quite similar in appearance to standing seaweed and kelp, enhancing the illusion.