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We learn artistic concepts in art class and from books on painting and drawing.  Most of us don’t think about the concepts of composition when we’re not in the studio but they are an important visual part of our daily lives.  As Sylvia Bowers, a WAAL member and retired art teacher used to say to her students, “Imagine what it would be like if everything in the grocery store was black and white?”  The artistic design of products and advertising affects our preferences, everything from food to clothing to cars to book covers.

Often those compositional concepts are applied to non-artistic parts of our lives without realizing it.  I was confronted with this recently and it caused me to reflect on how I apply art lessons in everyday life.

The 2026 international convention of the American Hosta Society was in Dublin, OH this June.  Having a collection of 500 hostas, I was asked to put my garden on the tour.  I was surprised to hear speculation from many of the 250 visitors about whether I had hired a professional garden designer.  I guess it’s a compliment, but in the moment, it felt like I wasn’t getting credit for my own work.

A few seconds later, it hit me that my fellow hosta collectors might not know much about design.  (Often the hosta gardens I have visited are a disorganized jumble or have the plants laid out in rows.)  I started sharing with the visitors the compositional concepts that were evident in my garden beds.  I explained the ways that focal points (emphasis), movement and leading lines, unity and variety, rhythm and repetition, proportion and scale were working in my garden.  The epiphany for me was that I had employed those concepts unconsciously and didn’t realize it until I started explaining it.

This is what I discovered when I examined my own gardens with an eye to composition.

Focal Points: Lighter and larger objects tend to draw attention first.  The blue hostas and boxwoods are the dark contrast and balance for the lighter yellows and lime greens.   

Movement & Leading Lines:  In this bed, the lime/yellow hostas guide the eye up toward the top of the retaining wall. At the top, the weeping larch follows a diagonal line down through the blue hostas down to the container garden and the back of the bed like a waterfall.

Texture:  The retaining wall, the stone steps, the mulch, and the boxwoods at the back provide texture. 

Unity & Rhythm & Repetition:  Unity is easy in a hosta collection as hostas are roughly the same shape and all of them are some mix of of blue, green, and yellow.  Intermittently placing variegated hostas helps create a rhythm.

Variety:  Variety begins with leaf shapes.  They can be round, heat-shaped, or long and narrow.  Some are wavy or corregated.  Leaf centers and edges are every combination of white, yellow, lime, or blue.  

Proportion & Scale:  Plant size has a lot to do with balance.  I makes sense to graduate a group of hostas with the large ones at the center with mid-size and smaller plants toward the front.  This was all of the plants can be seen.  Even so, you can do some balancing tricks , as in the photo.  A group of small/miniature hostas and containers balance sthe visual wight of larger plants.

From the deck you can see the quilt-like pattern of the variegated and solid-color hostas.  A few other plants add contrast like the dark red ligularia and the leafy fern.  The stone path and border provide texture, lines, and movement guiding visitors around the garden.  Application of a few concepts of artistic composition has helped create a cool, green oasis from what could have been a jumbled pile of 500 hostas.

You can see more garden photos on Facebook at EVeldeyArt.