Developing Your Garden's Personal Style, Garden Design Fundamentals, Proportions And Sizes

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Every man to his own taste

Today, homeowners have at their disposal an amazing palette of colors, many improved hybrids growing in the region. Working on flower arrangements, they create original design solutions, beautiful views. They combine heat-loving and cold-resistant plants against the background of stones, benches, patios, hedges in accordance with their tastes, expressing their vision of paradise - a place of bliss, happiness and pleasure. Gardeners can choose to emulate one of the established styles or develop their own.

The landscape design of many gardens serves the main purpose - to emphasize, highlight the front of the house. It is here that there are bushes at the base of the foundation, a walking path leading from the road to the front door of the house, a young tree to decorate the place. Sometimes the front lawn is decorated with islets of flower beds, bushes, a dirt carpet, or surrounded by ornamental plants around the perimeter. In remote areas there is a utility yard. There is a patio on the side of the house.

Some gardeners in the front part beautifully combine vegetable plantings with flower beds. They create a surprisingly inviting space while bringing vegetables closer to the kitchen.

Near the front of the house, it is possible to create a green room that will serve as a foyer for the house. From prying eyes and from noise, this area or the frontal part as a whole can be planted with bushes.

To give liveliness to the lawn, it is planted with ornamental grasses, among which perennials such as rudbeckia, asters, roses and others are planted. Thanks to the shape and texture of each plant, an almost year-round interest in the composition is achieved. Moreover, skillful selection of flower colors is also very important here.

The Basics of Good Design

Harmony and harmony, proportions and size, light and shadow, mass and place, texture, image, color - these are all aspects of a successful design. They are used in large gardens to create delightful views, harmonious - without repetition and boredom. A well-planned garden design is a design balanced between good mix and surprises.

Harmony and unification

In any style, successful design, planting, sustainable ornamental combinations are designed to create unity in harmony with oneself and the environment. There are many ways to achieve a sense of harmony and unity in a landscape - this is art.

One of the conditions for achieving the goal is growing healthy plants. If the plants are struggling for survival, languishing, it means that this place is inconvenient for them, they are in need of something. Therefore, before buying plants, study their requirements and choose those that will be comfortable in the chosen place.

When creating compositions, such groups of plants are selected that have similar requirements. Disharmony should not be allowed. For example, plant primroses, which prefer moisture, and stachis with gray leaves, as they prefer dry conditions, in one composition.

We must not forget about the natural requirements of the surrounding plants. For example, hosts adapt to both wet and dry conditions. They feel good both in partial shade and in perfect shade. And they usually look more decorative when grown next to ferns, astilbe and other acclimatized plants than with sun-loving roses and lilies in flower beds. Other disharmonious combinations are created with poppies, which naturally appear on dry mountain slopes, and rhododendrons, which naturally grow in the wild. While you may succeed in growing these combinations, the end result can be disharmonious.

The effect of unity and harmony is highly dependent on the formation of plants. The formal garden uses mainly conifers, which are given perfect geometric and predetermined symmetrical shapes.

In wooded gardens, plants grow that are adapted to both the sun and the shade. They grow better if they are given the conditions of free, unlimited development. Bushes can be trimmed. The purpose of their cultivation is to create a form that will be in harmony with the environment. Tall trees over time can form a canopy, a vault.

Some shrubs are used to form tight-cut hedges. Others - forsythia, spirea - and with natural growth are graceful. But sometimes they are cut off to form balls or boxes, and then they may look uninteresting, since their natural shape is destroyed. This is where harmony disappears.

So the plants must be in harmony with each other, the whole garden must be in harmony with its surroundings. The garden fence should be one of a kind, unique. However, the garden must also have some connection with a specific place. For example, a garden with a panoramic view of an area overgrown with shrubs looks more harmonious than with a scene in the distance.

Unity with the surrounding area is achieved by incorporating natural plants, stones into the design, imitating the prevailing forms and colors of the outer side of the garden.

Repetition and rhythm contribute to the creation of unity and harmony - the repetition of color or planting of different plants. For example, a row of pink begonias is planted along a pond and similar plantings are repeated in the border on the lawn. Different plants can be used to create unity. For example, re-planting of stachis with gray fluffy leaves or ball-shaped plants. Images and shapes that are repeated throughout the garden can also provide an inviting rhythm that leads to unity.

A straight line of trees, tall trunks create vertical images. If the paths in the garden are curved, then this shape of the lines in the flower beds (beds) should be repeated. Some designers use repetition of house shapes in the garden - stones reflect the squares that decorate the model of the house, cut trees to form squares, use square trellises on paths and walking paths.

To reflect the architectural feature of the home in the garden, plan for similar material in the landscape. If the house is brick, the walking path should also be brick. Home and garden will be one by using local natural building materials rather than imported from afar.

When creating landscaping, it is important that the presentation in the plan, personal goals and the final effect coincide - alleys, carefully executed flower beds and paths reflect the requirements of the owner. The future requires skillful cultivation of healthy plants, creation of exotic images and preservation of individuality. A private garden should always be the most individual, reflect the tastes of the owner, his goals.

Proportions and size

Objects in a garden appear large or small depending on the actual size of the garden environment. For example, large items such as a couch, sofa, look huge in a small room.

In a sense, a garden is an ornamental outdoor space where some principles of size and proportion apply. A large garden needs a sense of the border to separate it from the surrounding space and horizon, to define it as a specially protected place. Large trees and bushes serve as a transitional zone from the garden to the enormous size of the surrounding world.

A common mistake, especially in small gardens, is the desire to have numerous tiny details. As opposed to creating a garden with objects proportional to its size, try to start by incorporating vertical elements, such as a tree, trellis, or hedge, to limit ownership.

Achieving proportion

There are fast growing plants. They need annual pruning to get the right size, shape, and proportion in the garden.

Any garden, formal or informal, will be most successful if its individual elements are combined in eye-pleasing proportions, matching each other in size, and giving pleasure.

Since ancient times, gardeners have maintained a balance of width and height. And these days, designers use this method. It is recommended, for example, that the width of the curb is at least two-thirds of the building's rear. If the curb is planted along a 1.8 m high fence, then the curb width should be 1.2 m, that is, the 2: 3 proportion proposed by ancient architects is respected.

Interestingly, these same proportions are observed when plants grow naturally between leaves and branches, and are also used when pruning trees.

Of course, there are no rules without exceptions. For example, plantings around the house, regardless of its height, should not obstruct windows. It is advisable to grow plants with a height equal to two-thirds of the height of the house against empty spaces of the wall of the house and between the windows.

For small gardens, the hedge should be low, as tall ones look depressing. If you need a place for privacy, then you should pay attention to the trellises, trellises.

When planning the landscape of the entire garden, the dimensions of all the elements in the garden are applied to the plan, attractive proportions and their balance are provided.