Planting your own French floral tapestry

05/01/2003
Planting your own French floral tapestry

If the article on French floral tapestries whetted your appetite, here are the basics on how to plant your own, well, shall we say, Franco-American tapestry? In this article, I'm going to borrow liberally from the fantastic book L'Art du Tapis de Fleurs (unfortunately only available in French) by the masters of the floral tapestry, Eric Ossart, Jean-Paul Collaert, and Arnaud Maurières. It is one of my dreams to be able to translate this book--an artfully conceived workbook folder of three individual booklets--into English one day and get it published in the U.S.

First, the masters lay down 4 Major Principles of executing the floral tapestry.

1) Choose an area in full sun, well away from encroaching trees and shrubs. Choose a larger rather than smaller area--around two square yards minimum--for best effect.

2) In order that your tapestry bloom over an extended period of time, choose a mixture of early, mid-season, and late-blooming plants. Usually the former will be shorter in stature than the latter.

3) To obtain the best approximation of a natural flowering meadow, with its random arrangement, use a repeating sequence of your chosen plants. This is analagous to a weaver setting up the warp on her loom to determine the pattern. More about this later, as it is very important.

4) After preparing the ground thoroughly, plant all your plants on the same day. Weed carefully one month later. After that, all you need to do is admire your handiwork (watering, deadheading, and occasional staking will make it more admirable).



Of course, choosing the composition of your floral tapestry is at once the most challenging and the most fun part. If you're timid, you can start with a simple combo. The photo at right consists of just Cosmos sulphureus and Verbena bonariensis with a few white cosmos here and there. The effect is very pretty, while a bit naive. In the Masters' book, there's a wonderful photo of a tapestry consisting solely of white petunias and Pennisetum villosum, planted in a sequence of 1,2,1,1,2,1,1,2,11... The effect is at once very soft and extremely contemporary. Another effective 2-plant mix combines deep pink Agastache cana and pale lavender heliotrope (Verbena venosa could also be used) with a simple sequence of 1,2,1,2,1,2,1...



Whether you use two plants or fifteen, their selection depends on several factors. As already mentioned, you need an extended period of flowering, with some late-bloomers as well as early ones. You need plants of varying heights, to give depth to the tapestry. You also need plants of contrasting foliage and flower forms. You'll almost always get the best effect by combining bold forms with light, lacy, airy ones, and spikey flowers with daisies or flat umbels. At least, make sure there's some contrast. Excellent plants for lightness include bronze fennel, Queen Anne's lace, Ammi majus, Cosmos bipinnatus, cleome, pennisetums, and Trachelium coeruleum. The fennel is fantastic because it is great with both hot and pastel color schemes. Good old silver mound is another reliable element of lightness.



Boldness often as not comes from foliage as well as bloom forms. Tuscan black kale (photo at right--that's right, it's a vegetable!) is a great one, as are the large leaves and assertive flower spikes of Nicotiana sylvestris. Or try the dramatic silver spiky leaves of cardoon.

Of course, the big variable is color, and here's where a great deal of the fun begins. You have lots of approaches to choose from. Monochromes are always safe, and can be very beautiful. These can be either truly monochromatic, such as a tapestry of white cactus-flowered dahlias (1), white cosmos (2) and white cleome (3). (Add a bit of Verbena bonariensis (4) for contrast interest. Sequence: 14234,14234,14234...)



Variations on a single color make for what the French call a camaieu, for which the English translation of "monochrome" is inadequate. In the photo at left, these variations are on red, and include hot pinks and orange reds (in the form of penstemons and salvias) as well as purples. Of course, pastel shades, such as pinks and purples can also be used. Just remember to mix in a surprise element to keep your camaieux from becoming boring. This can be a touch of a contrasting color, or a dramatic foliage plant.

Colors from opposite sides of the color wheel are complementary and excitingly contrasting. Just be careful not to overdo it or the effect can be jarring. However, I'm a great lover of yellows and purple, for instance (one of the reasons I love bronze fennel, which wraps up both these colors in one plant), but always find that some silver foliage leavens the combination.

Color in a floral tapestry can be a source of immense creativity and satisfaction for you. Try creating a tapestry to echo a color experience you may have had that moved you. For instance, I can imagine creating a tapestry to echo a spice market I saw in Bali last summer. Build a tapestry from the colors in a bowl of citrus fruit. Or the pot of ratatouille you're cooking tonight. The possibilities are endless.



You can use color in a floral tapestry to complement or underline the colors of other elements of your landscape as well. Not that I imagine you have two giant breasts in your yard (Ha ha! That photo's from the Erotic Gardens exhibition at Chaumont-sur-Loire last summer.)

Now, back to that sequence question. In the wonderful book I've mentioned, the authors give you umpteen "recipes" for tapestries, with plant selections and associated sequences. But there's no absolute correct formula. The important thing is to have a sort of randomized sequence of your plants that is repeated throughout the planting.

To create your sequence, assign a number to each plant. Then play around with random sequences, such as 122344455, until you find one that is pleasing. You can either move the plants around to picture your sequence, or use a set of colored pencils to simulate the effect of different sequences. Also, bear in mind that with the sequence, you also determines the frequency of each plant in your tapestry. For instance, you might want to include only one instance of a very bold plant in your sequence, but two or three instances of "weaver" plants that form its color/texture background.

Whatever sequence you decide on, make sure to repeat your sequence "phrase" throughout the planting. In this example, it would be 122344455,122344455...

Plant your sequence in rows. When you come to the end of a row, start the next row without missing a beat in the sequence. That is, in the above example, if the end of the row was 12234445, start the row below with 5122344455,1223....

Leave adequate space between plants. Eighteen to twenty inches is good for most mixes. This will allow you to get in there (carefully) and weed at the 30-day mark, while also allowing your tapestry to fill in nicely without getting choked.


Annuals form the bulwark of most floral tapestries, but don't be shy about experimenting with other categories of plants. Vegetables, herbs, grasses, bulbs, tender perennials--all are fare game and grist for your creative mill. In the photo at left, an eclectic mix of shrubs, herbs, annuals, and mediterranean plants was used to express the anguish of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Notice lots of thorny plants contrasting with fragile umbels... At below right, on the other hand, is a tapestry composed solely of various varieties of sedum. This tapestry is unique in being effective in a very small area.




Plan your tapestry during the winter, because unless you have a really extraordinary plant nursery nearby, you'll probably have to grow the plants you want from seed in flats yourself. Once you're ready to plant, arrange mixed flats of your plants in the prescribed sequence. Then you can just pick up your flats and go plant without worrying about remembering your sequence.

As you experiment with floral tapestries, above all don't be afraid to try new things. You'll find that this is a sort of planting that will get your creative juices flowing. Try new color combos--even unorthodox ones! That's half the fun. And remember, if you don't like it, you can always try something entirely different next year. That's part of the beauty of the tapis fleuri.

P.S. You'll have scads of great cut flowers...

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Products of Interest:
Vase "Mur-mur"
Sisal veil vase
Contemporary rock vase
French wildflower seed mix--'Fleurs des Champs'