To clip or not to clip?

 
  Is a certain amount of shagginess 'cool' in a garden?

Cool meaning - 'hot' - of course, and 'hot' meaning popular.  All I know is that the naturalistic look is 'in'.   And naturalistic means a certain amount of shagginess. 
Probably not acceptable, if you are a neat and tidy gardener though - it depends on what you value most about your garden. 

Clipped edges and hedges or a sense of abundance spilling over ?
I am not such a neat and tidy gardener that I need my garden borders to be regimented in neat rows, or to be sharply trimmed. ​  And yet, even though I do like abundance to the point of chaos, I also like a little bit of shape, so that you can tell that the garden actually is a garden.

Unclipped Muehlenbeckia complexa climbing up rusted construction rods, although you can just see where I have started clipping it on one side!

Santolina - sometimes called Cotton Lavender. And much like Lavender, it lends itself to borders and low hedges. It's lovely silvery feathery foliage is also most attractive - especially when it is allowed to billow about.

 Farmers would throw their hands up in horror at the thought of growing Muehlenbeckia complexa as a decorative plant, because even though it is a native, it's all too common in the countryside, as a nasty  twiner which invades fences, gates and anything else it can find to smother.  It also sends robust runners under the ground which pop up everywhere.  As well as being super shaggy above ground!   

So like it or not, I simply do have to clip and contain this most invasive of plants
   OFTEN!!
As for Santolina, it's at it's best when unclipped and billowing about.  But when not clipped, it becomes woody, leggy and out of shape.

Like it or not, it appears I do have to do a certain amount of clipping even just to keep the abundant  tumbling look I prefer!  Because if I didn't, I probably wouldn't have a garden at all, but an unruly wilderness.  I wouldn't really like to see M. complexa smothering everything, as there would be no colour or shape left in the garden.  Or would I like to see soft feathery Santolina growing into a tangled woody mess.  

So it seems that gardeners are often pulled in a myriad of different directions - if you clip the garden too much it will become too formal and and rigid and not billow about enough.  If you don't clip it enough, it will become out of control and you feel you won't be able to manage it

Somehow the clipped Muehlenbeckia complexa takes on an indecent unclothed look when it's been clipped to within an inch of it's life. So I'm back on the side of shaggy again!

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The Santolina hedges look so miserable and thin and woody when they have been clipped. Well behaved - yes, but at the same time they look skinny, unfulsome and downright stingy.

Admirable though this clipped formal garden is, I don't know that I could relax if it belonged to me. I can't imagine it would vary much throughout the seasons. As long as there is someone available to clip it, it wouldn't change much from summer to winter, and that is the boring bit! The shapes in this garden have been expertly shaped and sculpted so that they look like living sculptures. But would I want a garden that looks like a living sculpture. I think I would sooner have a garden that moved and swayed in the wind - that changed colour in the seasons - that kept me amused!

This is more my sort of garden and it will be constantly changing. Even in early summer when this photograph was taken, the informality and looseness of this perennial planting is obvious. And by mid-summer, it will be everywhere, as the neat little mounds of perennials will become tall and floriferous - a riot of colour and the feature weeping rose, green after flowering - will be camouflaged as it sinks into the riot of colour surrounding it. All about change!

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