If there's a dead giveaway that you've just finished planting a new area of garden, it's that all the plants are the same size. Short. You slave for hours over a hot spade and at the end of the day you have a new garden that looks ... short.
So here's a trick. I discovered it (well, probably thousands discovered it before I did) when I dug the shovel into the middle of our new grass garden and stood back for a look. Yep. Looked fine. I removed the shovel to return it to the shed and turned back for a last look. Not fine. Short.
I reinstated the shovel. Vast improvement. Since I didn't want trees or tall shrubs in this particular piece of garden, the solution was a tall, slender post, or pou, as they call them in our part of the world. It's a great way to add instant height to the garden without planting something that will want its head chopped off a few years down the track.
Pou are easy to come by. You can use a fencepost, a dead ponga trunk, a piece of bamboo, a pole (you can put a flag on it if you like), a stone pillar or a genuine, carved Maori pou. Any of them will add a dimension to your garden that'll give the illusion of maturity - or at least draw the eye away from ground level.
If you want to add something permanent and substantial, it might require someone to dig a hole and fill it with quick-set concrete before positioning your post in it.