I see wonderful magazines photos showing groups of various perennials planted very closely together. Is this a good idea? I think it looks better than space between them but what about mildew and competing for sun, water and nutrients?
They plant them close together to get a nice filled in look--that looks better in magazine photos. In real life, you might want to space them a little farther to get better air circulation, etc, but you also don't want to leave too much space because then the weeds will come up between them. So it's a balance. The key is to space things appropriately for how big each individual plant will be at maturity. If you have a plant that's going to get 2 feet wide, don't plant them 6 inches apart from each other, plant them just far enough that they'll grow up to each other but not overlap each other too much. If you leave the right spacing, then when the plants are mature they'll look close to each other with no big gaps, but they won't be growing on top of each other. The mistake that a lot of people make is they plant things close together when they're still small because they want things to be filled in quicker, but then when the plants get to their full size they're all on top of each other. So the key is either to buy full size plants, or be patient and live with some gaps at first, or plant twice as many plants as you need and pull out half of them as they get bigger.
Plant them by their recommended spacing that way you won't have to move anything later. When they are still small you can fill in with annuals or hardscaping.
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