Garden Design Ideas

Garden design basics

Whether you have your garden professionally designed or you do it yourself, it is important to know some garden design basics so that you come up with a final plan that will suit your home and your lifestyle. The one thing about garden design that you can count on, however, is change. Plants die, trees get too big and your tastes will change as well. So when you sit down to design your garden, don’t become paralyzed with the fear that you are making unalterable decisions.  Follow your instincts and be reasonable as to what will grow in your area and you will be fine.

Plan First, Plant Later

A site plan is the first thing you will want to do if you are designing a garden. A site plan is a bird’s eye view of where everything will go in your garden. It can be done by a professional or you can draft one yourself. There are no drawing skills required.  Mapping out a plan simply makes it easier to execute the planting of a garden and see what it looks like before you start. You can also eliminate potential problems in this stage of garden design.  When you draw your site plan, following are some garden design basics that you will need to consider:

Formal Style Or Informal Style

Despite all of the different choices you have when designing your garden, the style will boil down to two choices: informal or formal. Keep in mind that a formal garden is not necessarily stuffy-looking and an informal garden is not randomly placed plants and trees; a formal garden is simply one with a specific purpose, and informal garden is an assemblage of plants and trees that are pleasing to the eye.  Deciding what purpose you will use the garden for will help you decide which style you want.

Symmetry And Balance

Symmetry and Balance have to do with the flow of the garden, the scale of the plants and trees and the repetition of the plants. People are generally more attracted to a garden that makes sense geometrically. You can be as creative as you want, but in the long haul, you will probably want plants that complement each other and have a rationale as to the way they are planted. For example, large shrubs that are surrounded by smaller flowering plants are pleasing to the eye because they balance each other out.

Walls, Roofs And Paths

Walls, roofs and paths give an order to a garden and make them much more enjoyable. Walls make gardens private, and roofs like those on a patio or a gazebo can give protection from the sun and rain. Of course, pathways make gardens accessible so that you can enjoy walking through them. Carefully planning these design elements will infinitely make your garden a place where you want to spend your time.

Once you have considered all of these design basics, the final touch will be to decorate it. Decorations include elements like bird houses, water features, fences, trellises, benches, sculpture, and decorative planters that give your garden a finished look and showcase your personality as a gardener.

Introducing Shade

When considering the garden layout it is important to set aside a shady area to allow you to enjoy the garden in the height of summer - a time when you are most likely to be outside with friends and family. A recent innovation in the provision of semi-permanent shade structures is the shade sail. These sunsails originated in Australia but are becoming widely adopted as the shade solution of choice by many style conscious customers. In recent years the European market has seen the most rapid growth in these products where they are known as voile d'ombrage in France and sonnensegel in Germany. The sun shades are available in a wide variety of shapes and colours to match your favourite outdoor space.

Garden Design Video

This video presents some basic concepts on approaching garden design.