Over the next three weeks, starting with how to create a shady urban plot, we will be publishing a series of complete garden plans – including planting recipes, preparation and maintenance, and a plant ingredients list – from Garden Magic, each of which can be replicated precisely – literally planting by numbers. But this approach is also designed to initiate ideas, as well as dictating specific planting plans, and as such can be used as a springboard for your own, unique creative process Happy gardening!. Dashing plants, with an emphasis on fresh greens, transform a gloomy garden into an enthusiast’s paradise. Choose shade-loving species, many with pale flowers to stand out in the low light. This is interesting in all seasons, with evergreens for winter colour, hellebores and bergenia, whose blooms connect winter to spring, and climbers to decorate the overhanging foliage in summertime

OCTOBER IS the optimum month for planting in this sheltered garden, and will give plants a few weeks in which to establish their root systems before lower soil temperatures edge them into dormancy. Plants with bright berries or interesting seed heads will be looking superb right now, especially if they have been congregated to make a bold display, perhaps positioned so that they catch early morning sunshine.Whatever your preferences, this is the season to get cracking. Colour changes can be engineered, running from bright yellow in spring, perhaps, through summer pinks and purples to blue, or back to gold for autumn.

You could meddle with scale, positioning extra-large plants, for example, smack in the front of a border, to jolt the senses, or even to create a visual joke (no one says laughter is forbidden in a creative garden). Trees and shrubs, especially evergreens, are useful, making focal points in winter but becoming leafy backgrounds to the summer display. Their shapes can be as architectural as buildings, be they tall and columnar, rounded, conical or tiered.Outline plants will preside over an understorey of lower-growing species,which may be less shapely, but provide the garden with much of its character. It is with this that you can have the most fun, arranging contrasting foliage types – fussy ferns with bold hostas, maybe – and where you can build up your colour schemes. By experimenting, you can develop different moods, from brassy, flower-strewn displays in bright sunlight to quiet, restful hues in shade.The possibilities are limitless.

Styles can be formal, with plants neatly spaced, or as naturalistic as a genuine wild landscape. Even Gertrude Jekyll, originator of 20th-century planting styles, fine-tuned her borders for 40 years, and derived enormous pleasure from the constantly changing picture. Creative planting is a plastic art form, even in the most rigid of designs; once hooked you will want to go on trying different combinations. Furthermore, you will often find that the most ravishing mixtures happen quite by accident.On the practical front, this is the time of year to give your garden a horticultural MOT.

Is your soil in good heart? If the tilth isn’t crumbly, and if there are compacted patches that do not drain properly, now is the time to put things right by digging in organic matter. Home-made garden compost is useful for opening up soil structure, or spent mushroom com- post or leafmould. If you have a problem with perennial weeds, consider digging out their roots now, but leave any fertiliser applications until next spring.Autumn is the optimum season for planting, before the soil has cooled down to winter temperatures. As the leaves fall, and summer growth dies back, you are left with an almost clean canvas, making it easy to see how the three main elements of good planting can fall into place.

First of these is to create a well-planned, boldly stated backbone or profile – especially important when the lushness of summer vegetation has withered away and left little to soften the outline of the man-made elements. If you live on chalk, don’t bother with rhododendrons; if your garden is frosty, learn to live without subtropical palms Secondly, grow only the plants that you enjoy. If haughty-cultural friends scorn your beloved dahlias, or your French marigolds, let them. And however trendy euphorbias may be, leave them out if you hate them.Finally – and this is the trickiest one – the plants must be combined to achieve the most pleasing associations, not only of colour, but of shape, texture, outline and character Don’t worry about getting it right first time – no one does. Every garden needs architecture so that the allotted space is put to optimum aesthetic and practical use, but good planting will always be a prerequisite for that special pleasure which is generated by a constantly changing pattern, month by month, season by season.Ground rules for good planting are pretty straightforward.