Good design is a hallmark of every garden we publish at Southern Living. Such spaces provide year-round beauty, pay homage to their surroundings, solve common problems, reflect their owners' personalities, and make life easier and more rewarding. But understanding why one design succeeds while another fails is a difficult task for most folks. Knowing a few basic principles can make this process a whole lot easier. As you read on, we'll illustrate and explain some of these concepts that you can use to develop your own landscape.
A graceful arbor festooned with climbing roses provides a stunning backdrop for this casual Atlanta garden.
|
Selecting a Style
Choosing a look for your garden isn't quite as easy as picking out a tie. There are a number of questions to ask yourself first.
- Where do you live--in the city, the suburbs, or the country? Your garden should complement the environment or neighborhood.
- What is the style of your house? Is it formal or informal? Spanish Revival, Georgian, ranch, bungalow, or cottage?
- What are your needs? A lawn for the kids to play? A place to grow flowers? A place to swim? A place to entertain?
- What are the limitations of the site? Is it big enough for a pool? Is it too steep to mow safely? Are there unattractive views you'd like to screen?
- How much time can you devote to upkeep? Clipped hedges, large flowerbeds, and big lawns require considerable maintenance.
Once you've answered these questions, you're ready to choose a style. Here is a summary of the most common ones we see in the South. Select the one that's right for you. Flowers and Freedom
The cottage garden style is all about individuality. Basically the only rule is to have lots of color. Blooming annuals, perennials, shrubs, and vines party together like revelers at Mardi Gras. Seedling flowers sprout where they wish. Curves replace straight lines. Mulch or gravel is used to form paths. Paint is allowed to peel. Whimsical art, such as gazing globes and pink flamingos, is often a part of the show. Keep in mind, though, that in order to work, even a cottage garden needs some structure. This can be a picket fence that encloses the space or an evergreen hedge that serves as a backdrop. Structure gives a cottage garden form, which is especially important in winter when flowers are dormant. What type of architecture complements this style? Definitely not anything formal, such as Georgian or French Colonial. A bungalow or unpainted saltbox is a better bet.
Not a leaf or a flower is out of place in this yard in Apex, North Carolina.
|
Everything Just-So
The formal garden style is everything that a cottage garden isn't. It's as neat and tidy as a Marine's bed just before inspection. Straight lines, right angles, squares, and circles abound. Clipped hedges form geometric patterns. Symmetry reigns supreme; if there is a boxwood on the left side of the door, there must be another of the same size on the right. Shrubs are pruned with a surgeon's precision. No weed is allowed to live. Paths are paved with stone or brick. Formal, symmetrical gardens go best with the same type of houses. However, an informal home can still have a formal garden if the space the garden occupies isn't directly adjacent to the house. The formal style is often easier for beginners, because most people can relate better to hard lines and geometric shapes than wandering curves. But beware, all the clipping and weeding required to make things perfect takes time.
Each spring, thousands of coreopsis and other wildflowers decorate this naturalistic garden on the Texas prairie.
|
Don't Fool With Mother Nature
The natural landscape surrounding some houses is so spectacular or unique that it makes sense to capture in it the garden. This is called the naturalistic style. Such a garden reflects the authentic look of a region without strictly adhering to a palette of native plants. Nonnative plants can be included, as long as they blend in with the native flora and express seasonal colors and the casualness of the wild. Naturalistic gardens can exist in the heart of the woods or the middle of a prairie. They emphasize the landscape, rather than the house, and generally lack foundation plantings. Maintenance is minimal because plants thrive on their own, and almost nothing is pruned or weeded. This kind of garden style looks good with vernacular architecture.
A rustic stick gate suits many garden styles.
|
Aged Charm
When you hear the term rustic style, you probably think of casual, rural gardens that feature unpainted wood, rusted iron, and salvaged brick. Such natural materials recall simpler times. But rustic elements also have their place in upscale, formal gardens. A rusted iron urn or a lichen-covered bench can easily become an elegant focal point. The Language of Design
Every discipline employs its own lingo, and garden design is no different. Architects, landscape architects, garden designers, and garden writers often bandy about design terms such as "focal point," "unity," "scale," and "axis" and expect you to understand. Here's a brief primer that will enable you and the professionals to speak the same language. A focal point is any object, such as a fountain, bench, statue, urn, or tree, that draws the eye to it due to its placement in the garden. In a formal setting, a focal point is usually located in the center of a bed or at the end of a path or line of sight. In a casual garden, it may be more seasonal in nature, such as a spectacular shrub that blooms for only a week. Or it may be a colorful object that draws you to a particular plant combination.
A sturdy arbor captures and focuses your eye on the garden beyond.
|
How many focal points should one garden have? That depends. A small garden can probably accommodate a single center of attention. But if you have a large space that's partitioned into separate rooms by shrubs, fences, or walls, each area can have its own focal point. Whatever you select to fill this role needs to be in scale with the area in which it's displayed. A fountain from Trafalgar Square probably won't look right in a compact garden. So before you buy an accent piece, measure the space it will occupy, and look at the placement from several angles. Choose a piece that complements the overall style.
Sweeps of Southern shield ferns in this Dallas garden help tie it together.
|
Framing a view is a technique that uses man-made structures or natural objects to focus your eye on a scene or object in the distance. In a small area, you can employ this method to call attention to a sitting area, fountain, piece of art, or plant. In a large space, it can capture a dramatic view. When all of a garden's diverse elements come together to create a harmonious whole, it has achieved unity. This characteristic is especially important in gardens with many different types of plants. These landscapes need something to tie them together visually. You can use large sweeps of a single plant to connect different plantings or areas. Another option is to repeat single specimens of a tree or shrub at regular intervals throughout a border.
Placing small shrubs in terra-cotta containers shows the pleasing effect of symmetry.
|
Symmetry means that if you drew a line down the center of your garden, one half would mirror the other. Both sides would have the same dimension, shape, and plants. As mentioned earlier, symmetry in the garden works well with formal houses. It's also an easy concept for beginners to understand and put to use. But symmetry in a cottage or naturalistic garden is an abomination. Plants don't grow that way. Modified symmetry is a bit more accommodating for relaxed styles. Here, the major features on each side of the centerline are the same. However, smaller plants and features can be different, so you don't have to strive for perfection.
A series of three dogwoods are right in scale with this home in Bethesda, Maryland. Larger trees would dwarf the house.
|
When it comes to scale, we're not talking about that accursed device that you scream at every morning. In garden design, scale refers to the balance between the sizes of various landscape elements, including the paths, fences, containers, ornaments, and plantings. No single one of these features should overpower the others. Most of all, they shouldn't diminish the house. How many times have you seen a humongous fountain dwarfing a tiny cottage or an urn the size of Texas squashing a little porch? The size of the house should determine the size of everything around it.
This fountain and pond in Baton Rouge is on axis with the distant gate.
|
Remember that plants grow. Find out their mature sizes, and plan for this before you buy them. Otherwise, they'll grow out of scale, and you will be constantly pruning or moving them around. Don't feel bad if you don't know what an axis is. You're in company with about 99% of the population. To a garden designer, an axis is the centerline of a view or walk. Determining an axis makes it possible to line up landscape elements to create special effects. For example, an axis in a garden might run from a doorway through a pair of identical planters, down the center of a walk, to a distant gazebo. In this case, the door and the gazebo are said to be "on axis."
"Garden Design 101" is from the Southern Living Garden Guide 2004.
|
| 
