Design Principles

Creating good landscape design goes beyond picking out the best plants. It’s as much about understanding your lifestyle and analyzing your surroundings as it is about growing things. Creating pleasing lines that are neat goes a long way. Shrub groupings offer easy care, privacy and neatness. Foliage and shrub shape are more important than you might think, since we live in a four season climate where leaves aren’t out for half of the year.

The three most important things to consider are: (1) curb appeal; (2) an extension of your living space from indoors to outdoors; and, (3) privacy from both visual distractions and noise.  These three things will give you the most pleasure from your landscape while enhancing the value of your home.

Curb Appeal

The grasses, roses, and wildflowers planted in the front of this house complement the farmers porch and casual paint color, which creates great curb appeal.

Entryway with a focal point

An entryway with a focal point will pull the visitor into the garden space. The entrance is made clear using a wire trellis wrapped in grapevines and salvaged architectural elements.

Using a "Borrowed" View

Here the more rustic path encourages the visitor to travel more slowly.  In this case, slower travel is desired so that the view can be observed.  The use of “borrowed view” enhances the experience.  Although the view isn’t part of the owner’s property, it is “borrowed” as part of the design.

Distracting the Eye from Undesired Views

Another use for borrowed view is to distract the eye from something undesirable in the mid range. Her2e, the owners were upset when a housing development went in below them. However, by creating an interesting pond feature in the close range, they look immediately from the distance to the pond, or vice versa.

Extended Living Space

Outdoor Rooms extend the living space when they are conveniently located off of a frequently used room, offer privacy and are clean.  Porches, decks and patios offer the best potential use. Fire pits or heat sources extend the season, and lighting extends the day.  Screens or lures reduce insects.  Here, the patio is made private by a hedge screen. Since the patio isn’t used in the winter, deciduous plants offered quick growth at a lower cost. These hedges provide flowers first, then berries that are eaten by the birds.  In the winter, the smooth grey bark and vase shape provides great “architecture.”

This patio created an extended space that will be used for entertaining. A sitting wall creates additional seating.

Movement

Movement through a space is encouraged by straight lines or masses of the same plant or color. In this case, I want you to travel through the path quickly and encourage you to look beyond.

Winter Architecture Provides
Year-round Interest

This perennial garden has been planned with evergreens to add structure and form to the winter garden, while deciduous dogwoods add color.  During the spring and summer, perennials take the stage.

Year-round Color

This scene from mid-April shows that shrubs can provide color even when flowers aren’t plentiful. Here, two different spirea cultivars provide oranges and yellows in their emerging foliage, while Cornelian Cherry dogwood trees flower in lime-green. Later in the season, the spireas will flower in magenta and the leaves turn crimson in the fall. The dogwood trees will provide burgundy-red berries and maroon fall foliage.

Garden Room

A garden on a steep hill can be terraced into a series of rooms with shrubs acting as walls and the grass as the carpet. The shape of a garden room should always be determined by the shape of the inside area, not the planting beds. The enclosure promotes a sense of privacy, even though the garden is not completely closed off from neighbors.

Clean Edges

It is important to have clean edges for the garden to look polished. Here, the grass is manually edged and the beds are planted with perennial ginger to define the space. The high gloss of the ginger adds excitement.

Use of Foliage

Here, the use of foliage of different colors and textures adds to interest in a shade garden, where it is more difficult to grow flowers.  Interesting foliage also carries the garden over a longer period than perennial flowers.

Use of Ornament

The andirons and clay pot planted with salvia suggest a fireplace, adding to the interest and fun experienced in this garden.

Use of White and Yellow Flowers

White and yellow can be seen best from a distance and at night. Here, I’ve darkened the photo to show how these colors might be viewed at night from a porch or deck. These colors also work well for curb appeal, but should be used in larger drifts.

Monochromatic Color Scheme

Using one color or colors close on the color wheel creates unity in the design. You can’t go wrong!  The reds are enlivening and will make the space close in.

 

 

Hot Color Perennial Garden
through the Season

Careful planning with perennials brings color throughout the season.