Discover Your Garden Personality to Create Your Perfect Outdoor Space

Garden designer Ryan McEnaney shares his insights and tips on finding your outside style, based on your garden personality.

Until about a decade ago, Ryan McEnaney spent his days handling publicity for famous clientele such as Jude Law, Ridley Scott, and Ryan Murphy. Now he's a publicist for 'Berry White', a diva of a hydrangea, 'Standing Ovation', a stellar serviceberry, and a slate of other gorgeous plants.

McEnaney's time in Hollywood has given him a unique perspective on what influences trends and style in the garden world, which helps inform his work as the Marketing and Communications Manager for Bailey Nurseries, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The award-winning, 118-year-old, family-owned nursery is known for plant innovations such as the Endless Summer hydrangea, and McEnaney is charged with elevating each plant to star status.

"I am a fifth generation family member so I started working at the nursery growing up," says McEnaney. "It's been a lifelong passion."

McEnaney is also passionate about helping people transform their yards into the garden of their dreams. To that end, he's just written a book, Field Guide to Outside Style, packed with his insights and relatable tips aimed at beginner gardeners. Published in December 2022, the book details McEnaney's process for designing landscapes for friends and family, as well as his own garden.

Garden Design for Everyone

While promoting Field Guide to Outside Style across the country, McEnaney says the book has been a hit with "people that are just starting out and have an idea of what their dream garden or their outdoor space might look like and aren't really sure where to start. It can be really confusing and intimidating. That's really where the foundation of the book came from, to help that person,” says McEnaney. “I wrote it as what I would have needed 10 years ago when I came into the business, to take some of that intimidation away and make it really fun and accessible.” McEnaney also says that master gardeners have approached him saying that they learned something new from his book about landscaping style and care.

Related: 5 of the Biggest Garden Design Mistakes You Might Be Making

Which Garden Personality Are You?

Categorizing the personality types of gardeners is one of the most appealing and clever concepts that McEnaney focuses on in his book. Martha, he explains, is the classic gardener. Then there's Tommy the modernist, and Kelly the naturalist. He then goes deep into each personality, describing each aesthetic and offering ideas on how to execute them.

For the Martha personality, they are the ones who are drawn to classic cottage gardens, relying on a mix of annuals, perennials, edibles, and shrubs. Think hydrangeas in deco pots and blooming bulbs like tulips, daffodils, and snowdrops everywhere. They are definitely the kind of gardeners to have an edible garden, or at least edibles mixed into the landscape, like using strawberries as a groundcover.

Tommy is more focused on clean lines with a little less plant material. This type of gardener does not gear towards dense planting, but rather uses plants as an extension of architecture. They would also use tulips, but the colors would be less bright, perhaps using blood red and white tulips instead of an eclectic mix. Tommy would use sheared boxwood hedges to create a clean, precise look.

As for Kelly, they are all about dense, textured, and colorful plantings. These gardeners use native plants to “bring that prairie to life at home” and replace turf grass lawns with pollinator gardens. Kelly’s garden puts on an especially stunning show in summer and fall, using plants like Joe Pye weed, oakleaf hydrangea, and black-eyed Susan to create lush texture throughout the seasons.

Style Inspiration

When researching for the book, McEnaney says that he was inspired by ideas from well-known horticulturists such as Michael Dirr, Kelly Norris, and Piet Oudolf, who focus heavily on the ecology and phenology of individual plants. He also takes inspiration from fashion and art to conceptualize and execute his landscaping ideas. For instance, seeing actor Dan Levy wearing a kilt suit made him realize he likes boldness in design. When talking about inspiration, McEnaney encourages readers to think outside the box and pull from personal taste in order to start planning their landscape.

“Take a step back and think, ‘What do I really like about the buildings that I see, the furniture that I buy, the clothes that I see people wearing on a red carpet versus what I wear every day?' Use that as inspiration to help jumpstart your idea of what you would then want to translate into your landscape. I think it's just a little bit of a different approach,” McEnaney says.

In his own garden, McEnaney plans to add floating concrete steps with lighting underneath to his “really big slope” in the backyard going to the main part of his lawn. Like the Tommy persona, McEnaney is drawn to clean, sharp lines and, like the Kelly persona, he also likes dense, textural planting. Next to the steps, he plans on adding ornamental grasses to soften the lines a bit.

“Having that [planting] and the juxtaposition of that really sharp architectural concrete that has some lighting underneath each step, it looks like the concrete is sort of floating down the hill. I love that sharp difference between the lushness of nature and the intensity of that hardscaping.”

While focusing on the details of pulling off your style is important, McEnaney points out that you shouldn't lose sight of the big picture. “At the end of the day, this is a very personal thing and it's easy to get caught up in being nervous about picking the right plants. Is it the right color? Is it the right size? All of that is true, all of that is valid. But you’ve got to have fun along the way. You're getting to create something that is really beautiful and long lasting. And that should be a really exciting experience.”

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