You can add many design elements to your garden to give it a personal touch. However, it’s common for people to fill theirs up with whatever types of plants they fancy, resulting in an uncoordinated, incohesive look.
When in doubt, relying on the expertise of a landscaping service can help you identify what style fits and which elements to incorporate into your garden, taking both aesthetic and practical concerns into consideration.
However, if you’re a bit of a DIY-er and would like to try your hand at this project, here are six dynamic design points you should focus on:
1. Color
In gardening, do not limit yourself to the color green. Consult with a landscape designer for other plant colors to integrate into your garden. If you’re the type who buys whatever plant you like, now is the time to stop and think.
You can continue buying plants, but make sure that there’s a purpose for every one of them. Properly integrating plant colors can make your garden appear more vibrant and harmonious. You can also use all the colors you like, but you may need to create more garden beds to organize them.
Consider the relationships between complementary or companion plants and use them as a basis for creating colorful combinations. Geraniums, for example, work well with roses by protecting the latter from leafhoppers and Japanese beetles. Roses and marigolds share a similar relationship.
2. Lines
When it comes to gardening, the term “lines” refers to the structure within your landscape. Think flower beds, the perimeter of a deck or the edges of your walkway. How you employ lines in your landscape greatly impacts the flow of your garden.
If you want to infuse a classic or formal touch to your garden, hard lines and straight angles will do the trick. But if you want the opposite, which is essentially an informal look, adding curved lines is the answer.
Below are some tips for using lines:
- Horizontal Lines – Make any space feel bigger by drawing the eye to the ground. You can use walkways, garden walls or any small hedges to add them to your yard.
- Vertical Lines – Make your space bigger by drawing the eye up. Use an arbor or tall trees to add vertical lines to your yard.
3. Focal Point
Step back and look at your garden the way any visitor would. Others shouldn’t appreciate the entirety of your garden in one glance. Instead, they should be taken on a leisurely discovery that sparks interest in your garden.
An easy way to add interest to your landscape is to include focal points. This can be anything that will grab attention and then lead the eyes to the surrounding plants.
Some great examples of focal points include water features like fountains, bird baths and koi ponds, garden furniture, sculpture, special containers like antique metal urns or custom-designed plant pots, cobblestone footpaths, and many others.
4. Texture
Plants with various textures highlight one another’s key attributes. Even if you love soft, billowy plants, an entire landscape full of them will not look good. You need to integrate wild, coarser, bold foliage to create a truly amazing garden.
The contrast brought by texture gives your landscape more definition and character. So you can have your little herb garden and some fine-textured plants with tiny flowers and leaves combined with bold-colored ones like the Spanish flag or Tropicanna canna.
5. Sound
Homeowners rarely integrate sound in their gardens, but it’s vital for adding life to your landscape. From the birds singing to the wind rustling through the trees, sound is something you should consider and plan for.
Integrating sound into your garden is easier than you think. You simply have to use plants with seeds for various types of birds or a source of hydration for them, like a fountain or a bird bath. You can also hang up wind chimes along your external entryway or on the lower branches of trees.
The time you spend in the garden is often private. Adding some captivating sound elements enhances the garden ambiance and brings you closer to nature.
6. Scale
The size relationship between surrounding spaces and the elements within your garden is called “scale.” When choosing plants, consider the sizes suitable for your garden setting for the appropriate design scale.
In choosing the right scale for your landscape structures and plants, always consider the size of your house and garden space. For example, integrating a gazebo into your landscape would work well if you have a large garden area. Otherwise, you may want to limit yourself to adding simple garden seating, which can be better accommodated.
Combine the Right Elements for a Great Garden
Now that you know the essential design factors to include in your garden, make sure to implement them.
Creating a great garden isn’t about randomly placing plants together. It’s about skillfully blending these aspects to craft a space that’s harmonious, beautiful and functional.
