Anne & Ray Brewer Garden

R & R for a Sonoma Garden

Rhythm and Repetition enhance garden design

By Barbara Kirbach, Sonoma County Master Gardener

Looking for a little more R & R in your garden? Master Gardener Anne Brewer utilizes the design principles of rhythm and repetition to create an harmonious and complementary relationship among her home, garden and nearby landscape. These seemingly simple concepts can make a big difference in your garden, too.

Anne’s project began seven years ago when she and her husband Ray built a Mediterranean-style home in the rural foothills just east of the City of Sonoma.Their first challenge was how to repeat the colors of their home’s burnt orange walls, moss green windows, cedar trim and clay tile roof in the surrounding garden. They also wanted to create a rhythmic flow between the home’s interiors and the exterior plantings, which were visible through large picture windows that faced west and mirrored the rays of the setting sun.

“I decided to repeat the sunset and twilight colors from our western exposure in
flowers, shrubs, trees and their foliage to complement the colors of the house,” Anne explained. “For example, I planted Euphorbia ‘Ascot Rainbow’ with its pale yellows, salmons and warm greens throughout the garden to reinforce the color theme.”

She also chose perennials such as Heuchera ‘Caramel,’ Sedum ‘Coppertone,’ and Coreopsis ‘Sienna Sunset’ and interspersed them with Coprosma and Achillea ‘Terra Cotta.’To cool things down a bit, she wove in blue salvias, perovskias and lavenders. For structure, she planted Phormium ‘Sundowner’ and Berberis ‘Limeglow.’


“Repetition creates order, which is calming to the eye,” Anne said. “I tried to use color for repetition to create patterns and sequences which give the eye a place to rest in regular intervals. I think of repetition as the glue that holds the whole design together.”

She accomplished this by repeating the same flower or foliage color in a series of beds along winding garden pathways. She also utilized similar textures, forms, containers and hardscapes to provide unity and continuity. An even more subtle use of repetition was to repeat shapes occurring in the surrounding areas with elements in the garden.

While a lack of repetition can perhaps lead to chaos, too much repetition can equal monotony. So Anne introduced plants with brown and olive green foliage into the warm color palette. These were punctuated with dark red, purple and brown leaved shrubs and trees.

As in music, rhythm in garden design provides a steady beat. It can be expressed in form as well as in color. It uses the repetition of design elements to lead the eye to various places in the garden, from side to side or from the foreground to the background. Thus in Anne’s garden, the flowers, shrubs and trees are planted in regular measures and flow in a definite direction.

The design principles of rhythm and repetition are even more enhanced by Anne’s adherence to the sound horticultural practices she was taught as a Master Gardener. Before planting, she and her husband amended the soil with large portions of compost and finished with a deep coating of mulch, to insure that their large garden could be mostly self-maintained and sustained.

They laid down drip irrigation lines throughout, to effectively ration the area’s precious water supply. They chose plants for their ability to survive the Sonoma Valley’s hot afternoon sun and frequent winter frosts, as well as for their beauty and compatibility.  They established raised vegetable beds and planted orchards and vineyards to further increase the land’s bounty.

Anne’s garden today is a testament to what Thomas Church, the father of the California style of design, once said, “Style is a matter of taste, design a matter of principles.”