Choosing A Garden Style: Romantic, Roman, Muslim, Chinese

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

Architectural and stylistic elements of decorative gardening

Colds set in. It would seem that there is nothing else to do in the garden. This is absolutely not the case. Late autumn, early winter is a great time for creativity: wild flowering and greenery of plants do not prevent you from seeing the perspective of your site.

This is the most convenient time when you can change the style of the garden without interference. After all, the beginning of the creation of a new environment is laid by architectural elements that determine which of the many styles of garden art will decorate your estate.

Why just an image? The history of ornamental gardening goes back eight millennia. Basically, descriptions, picturesque and graphic images of the most famous gardens have come down to us. All of them, in modern newspaper language, are exclusive, author's models, expressing the sublimation of ideas about the beauty and harmony of an artist-designer, corrected by habits, tastes, religiosity, wealth and customer status.

It can be argued with full responsibility that the art of growing gardens has developed and continues to develop in parallel with the growth of states, the evolution of human ideas about beauty and harmony. In addition, in the creation of any garden there are many factors that cannot be ignored: climate, soil, relief, size and configuration of the site.

Therefore, just as it is impossible to find two completely identical faces, so it is impossible to find two identical gardens. Theorists identify the characteristic details inherent in the gardens of certain eras, styles and countries. The totality of these details evokes in the observer very specific associations associated either with pictures of real life or with images created by the imagination. The landscaping solution for the landscaping of the site is the use of characteristic details to create a garden in the chosen style.

Of course, plants play the leading role. For example, landscape gardens widespread all over the world recreate the nature of a particular region through the use of plants appropriate for a given climate (and, obviously, the success of creating such a garden directly depends on the quality of plant material and professional skills of gardeners).

Water gardens, Art Nouveau gardens, architectural or romantic gardens are, in fact, the quintessence of the author's imagination, where similarities with a particular style are created by decorative elements made in the appropriate style - vases, sculptures, garden furniture, sundials. Therefore, we will not dwell on them, but consider the general features of layouts and architectural elements characteristic of the most famous styles of decorative gardening.

Rural Holland

A Dutch garden is in many ways similar to a rural garden - small in size, with a well-groomed vegetable garden. Its distinctive features: the garden is divided by the house into two unequal parts.

The front, in front of the house, the front part from the street is separated, as a rule, by a low through fence, it does not obscure the pretty view of the flower garden in front of the house. Just behind the house is a neat small vegetable garden, and then in tiers - fruit trees and stunted perennials. There is usually only one path - from the gate to the threshold of the house. Sometimes they arrange an additional path around the perimeter of the site in order to have access to all the plants in the garden.

It is used occasionally, so colored gravel or river pebbles can be used for paving. Like any other country-style garden, the Dutch garden is decorated with the attributes of a peasant life: a wooden wheelbarrow with flowers, a tub or a water trough "forgotten" among colorful buckets of flowers, a simple wooden bench, an old cast-iron column-crane, a toy mill or a painted weather vane, clay sculptures of domestic animals. The Dutch garden is distinguished from other rural gardens by its meticulous neatness and neatness.

National romance

A romantic garden is an abundance of lush vegetation and secluded corners with gazebos and benches. Gardens of many countries of the world can have a romantic mood - the house and the fence are entwined with ivy, climbing roses or Amur grapes, narrow paths and paths winding among overgrown trees. Romance is also inherent in the Italian romantic garden. In our climate, it can be recreated on the sunny side of the site.

It is better if the site has a natural slope, then the task is simplified. It is enough to make two small terraces. Pave the top with, for example, Italian mosaic tiles, natural flagstone or pseudo-natural stone. There will be a light table and chairs for family tea drinking, surrounded by flowering annuals and perennials in portable containers. On the lower terrace there is a pond with a small fountain, along the perimeter of which low bushes are planted, for example, park roses.

A romantic garden can also be a landscape garden, if the architectural details in it will not stand out, being an addition to the landscape, if the reservoirs (in no case fountains) are decorated like natural ones, and a well-thought-out system of paths will lead the guest along a route that opens a change in landscapes. Do not forget that the paths in this case are made of natural materials: wild stone, sawn trunks or tree bark, a lawn that is resistant to trampling. Throw in a close-cropped, dense green lawn, artistically framing groups of plants, clumps of exotic shrubs and grasses, and you have a garden in the English style of the Romantic period.

Timeless classic

Roman garden - peristral. In fact, it is a smaller model of a Byzantine garden. It is arranged in a small patio. Peristral is unthinkable without water.

It can be a small rectangular pool, a stone fountain or a spring. Sculptures, arches, arches and columns in the antique style will be located around. The abundance of light marble and limestone in the walls of the house and in the high fence, large slabs of paving free from plantings will serve as a background against which shades of greenery and vines colors will play brighter. If the walls of the house and the high fence are folded or decorated with massive stones of a dark shade, it makes sense to turn to the images of the medieval or monastery gardens.

In the first case, the style of architectural elements will need to be replaced with medieval Gothic (worn chipped stone, pointed arches and massive cast iron). In the center, place a well, a pool or a fountain made of old boulders, next to several rosehip bushes, a stone bench covered with turf, flower beds in stone drinkers, several fruit trees - usually apple trees.

The image of the monastery garden is defined by perpendicularly intersecting paths in the form of a cross. At the place of their intersection, a crucifix or an altar was previously placed, now a well or a fountain, but the presence of flower beds, medicinal or herbal herbs remained unchanged. The large monastery garden can be divided into "rooms" by brick walls or hedges. Inside the "rooms" are sheared boxwood and yew bosquettes, a collection of herbs or flowers.

If your relatively small patio is on the sunny side of the garden and you would like it to serve as an additional outdoor room, then the idea of converting it into a Moorish garden is pretty self-evident.

This style originated in the medieval castles of Spain, under the influence of the Arabs, and absorbed the features of medieval romance and oriental bliss. Usually such a garden is framed by galleries and covered avenues entwined with grapes and roses. Much attention is paid to water, and it can be enclosed in a variety of forms: a calm mirror-like surface, streaming and flowing ribbons, falling jets, scattering splashes.

Trees are planted regularly but not trimmed, flower beds are framed with mosaic paving. Interestingly, a garden in this style does not have to be compositionally connected with the main building.

National character

Spanish garden. His chamber style, intended more for recreation than for demonstration to strangers, is emphasized by a high stone fence or a clipped hedge of dense small-leaved bushes.

Fruit trees are planted along the periphery, the trunks of which are covered with ornamental shrubs. The central part is occupied by a shallow raised reservoir of the correct form. The calm surface of the water mirror is emphasized by the banks decorated with stone tiles. The rose garden, laid out around the reservoir, includes straight paved paths along the perimeter.

Garden furniture is simple and comfortable. She is an attribute of the garden, not its decoration. The accents are shifted towards paving, bright flower beds, shrubbery. Massive stone sculptures and old stone create the atmosphere of an ancient aristocratic castle.

Muslim garden. If the sun on your site is in abundance, prosperity allows you not to deny yourself anything, and the contemplative peace of Eastern philosophy is close to your soul, then this garden style is for you. Styles of Spanish and Moorish gardens were born on its basis. But the splendor of decorations (bright flowers, marble of fountains, birds in golden cages) is at the forefront of the Muslim garden, and not the desire for solitude.

The Muslim garden is designed to amaze the imagination and associate with heaven on earth. However, it is based on the strict canons of Islam: its basis is a clear square, divided into four parts, the so-called "chor-bagh" (translated into Russian "four gardens"). This form of the garden, apparently, is a reflection of the legend about the Garden of Eden, from which four rivers flow in four directions, the prototype of such a layout is the most ancient shrine located in Mecca.

Be that as it may, but the strict geometricity of the squares of the layout is emphasized with the help of paths, plants and channels of water. The main decoration of the entire garden is located in the centers of the squares of small fountains or pools, faced with marble, multi-colored ceramic tiles and glass.

Philosovsky garden

Chinese garden. This style is rooted in ancient times. Even before our era, the Chinese realized that the basis of a harmonious society is obedience to the laws of the universe.

The study of these laws, their systematization were later formulated as the laws of Feng Shui, again popular in the modern world. Confucianism, Taoism - one for all religious and philosophical teachings of China was the awareness of man as a part of the Universe. The absolutization of the beauty of nature, obedience to its laws formed the basis of the landscape style of Chinese gardens. The free layout of these gardens is combined with strictly symmetrical compositions of garden buildings.

There are few of them. These are mainly characteristic curved bridges, gazebos, pagodas, zigzag staircases painted in bright colors (red, emerald green, yellow). The buildings are inscribed in an elaborate natural landscape, including lakes and hills. The main task of the creator of the park was to find the starting point from which the most beautiful landscape would be opened.

A Chinese garden can be a garden of natural scenery, where even a small fountain disguises itself as a trickle running among the rocks. It can be a garden of scientists, with a labyrinth of paths for many hours of walking, or a home garden surrounded by a solid wall of stone or bamboo. The latter is replaced by conifers in northern China.

According to the emotional impact on a person, Chinese gardens are divided into the following types: laughing, threatening and idyllic. The laughing garden, with its cheerful flower beds and funny sculptures, is in stark contrast to the menacing garden dominated by overhanging rocks and broken bizarre trees. The idyllic type of landscape is emphasized by a fairly large reservoir with an island and a fishing lodge or gazebo. Almost every element of the East Asian garden, from a stone or a plant to a crane well, has a semantic meaning, symbolizing one or another material object or abstract concept.

Meditation garden

Japanese gardens largely inherited Chinese traditions, thanks to the influence of the ancient Japanese religion Shintoism, further spiritualizing the artificially created landscape. The desire of the Japanese to recreate the picture of the world with the help of a landscape on a small plot of land has led to the fact that predominantly low-growing forms of plants are used in their gardens, and the so-called "garden bonsai" is formed from vigorous plants.

Imitation of nature, imitation of its best examples thanks to modern materials and technologies are now much easier to implement than just five or six years ago. Therefore, and also because the wide range of plants and materials used makes Japanese and Chinese gardens endlessly diverse, easily changeable, their popularity continues to grow with us. But even a decade ago, they were extremely rare to be found in our northern strip. It was impossible to imagine a private classical regular garden.

Front garden

Regular gardens are the prerogative of large areas. Regular planning involves planting trees and shrubs along the pathway, emphasizing the symmetry of the garden.

The vantage points located at the intersection of the alleys are carefully thought out - stone, wooden or cast pavilions, gazebos, benches around fountains, sculptures, etc., installed there, are placed there for calm contemplation. When choosing plants, preference is given to species that lend themselves well to shearing and retain their given shape for a long time (evergreen, slow-growing, small-leaved).

Bosquets are widely used - geometrically correct and symmetrically located small areas, framed by a sheared boxwood hedge. Inside the bosquets, trees, shrubs or flowers are regularly or freely planted. The image of the Italian regular garden is created on a large area with elevations. The main building is erected on the highest or central one.

The garden is planned as a continuation of the house under the open sky and has a uniform style with its appearance. The main attention is paid to the front part in front of the building, as a rule, visible from the entrance to the garden: there can be terraces, and a water cascade accompanied by fountains, and a grand staircase decorated with sculptural groups, and a central flower bed. Remote garden "rooms" can resemble the secluded inner gardens of castles or fortresses.

The French regular garden is perfect for flat terrain and temperate climates. It is distinguished by a broad main perspective and subordinate secondary ones: radial and diagonal alleys leading from the center into the depths of the garden-park. Characteristic features are the alternation of detailed, often very complex, stalls.

The parterres, framed by clipped hedges, include decorative pools, ponds, canals and fountains, decorated with exquisite flower beds and arabesques with decorative fillings using colored sand and marble or brick chips. Whatever the size of your regular garden, you need to take care of laying a complex, branched hydraulic system before laying it. An error in calculations can lead to waterlogging of any, even the most beautiful garden, as has happened more than once in the history of courtyard gardens.

Paths and platforms in the French garden are covered with granite cuttings, crushed bricks or small river pebbles. Garden furniture in light pastel colors is arranged symmetrically in special hedge niches or in dead ends of garden paths, from where a beautiful view of one or another part of the garden opens. It should be noted that the fence of a French garden cannot be a blank brick wall, which contradicts the very ideology of the garden - a demonstration of the showiness, splendor of style.