Garden Design IdeasGarden Ideas, Photos and Tips for Gardening at Home
instance by David Despau .
It ’s enticing , in a field as subjective as garden designing , to find that rule do not apply . However , after 28 year and hundreds of projects later , I ’ve make out to consider in sure principle and guidelines that are neither fussy nor constraining . All have proven invaluable to me over my years of garden - devising . Applied by any nurseryman , amateur or professional , they will leave in a more successful , satisfy invention .
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have ’s get going with two rules that can kick - go the process of position out a landscape , then move on to guidelines that help in scaling the proportions of a garden ’s element and , at last , to choosing and using the right plants .
01: OBEY THE “LAW” OF SIGNIFICANT ENCLOSURE
Yes , this one ’s a “ law , ” not just a normal ! It cover the root meaning of garden , which is “ enclosure . ” This , to me , is utterly critical in create a sensation of recourse and of feel oneself within nature ’s embrace . The law of meaning enclosure aver that we experience close in when thevertical edge of a distance is at least one - third the distance of the horizontal spacewe’re inhabiting . credibly derived from behavioral psychological science studies , this rule came to me from a professor in graduate school , and it was one of the best thing I learned .
Just yesterday , as I was start up the design of a patio that I wanted to separate from an neighboring play orbit , it give me instant direction for how tall a hedging I would require : the orbit was 17 foot encompassing , and so my hedge should be at least 6 metrical unit . Sit near a tree diagram in the Mungo Park , or a wall , and bit by bit butt aside , and you ’ll see how it works . Of course , there are times when the pointedness of a landscape design is a monolithic sense of scale or view , but the good gardens , whatever their size , regulate a feeling of enclosure and openness , and this rule will aid .
On this project in Pacific Palisades , CA , an existing and overgrown row of genus Ficus was deoxidize by one-half knowing it would still more than adequately envelop the terrace . example by David Despau .
02: FOLLOW THE REGULATING LINE
My schematic architectural breeding also introduced me to the concept of the “ mold line . ” The estimation is that an element of architecture ( for example , a doorway , or a construction edge , even a windowpane mullion ) or a typical landscape painting characteristic ( spectacular tree , existing pool , property bound ) can “ generate”an notional line that aid connect and organize the design . For example , in position out one backyard , I projected the lines of its construction addition into the garden space and then aligned the swimming pool and wooden walkway with those parentage . The result is neat and cohesive , even after being softened with planting . “ A regulating line , ” save the smashing designer ( and theoretician ) Le Corbusier , “ is an assurance against capriciousness … It confers on the work the quality of rhythm … The selection of a baffle line locating the fundamental geometry of the work …. ”
The decking on a different project in Pacific Palisades , CA , creates a regulating line that is parallel to the plane create by the greyish wall of the house in the upper right of the image . Another regulating line is created by the sharpness of the pond run parallel to the glass window on the home . These lines intersect at the base of the tree . instance by David Despau .
Le Corbusier hits on the two aspects ( a bit paradoxical , perhaps ) that make the regulating line so worthful . First is the idea of underlying social club : that the garden , for all its innocence , or violence , is founded on solid principles — what ’s sometimes known in garden circles as “ right bone . ” Second , that shape line of work — at least as I employ them — are subjective ; it ’s the designer who identifies and manipulate them to create the garden . And I ’d say that the use of the regulation demarcation , more than any other concept , tell professional from amateur design .
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03: USE THE GOLDEN RECTANGLE TO GET PROPORTIONS RIGHT
Certain rules help us refine design . One is the Golden Ratio which is a ratio of proportion that ’s been observed in everything from the Great Pyramids at Giza to the Greek Parthenon and has been used throughout history as a templet to a pleasing good sense of balance and gild . The practical lotion that I make of the Golden Ratio involves its sib , the Golden Rectangle , in which the ratio of the inadequate side to the farsighted side is equal to the ratio of the long side to the sum of both side ( a / b = type B / a+b)—you probably did n’t know that landscape painting architect had to learn math . Numerically , the Golden Rectangle ratio is close to 1 : 1.6,a proportion I regularly expend to lay out terrace , patios , arbors , and lawns . Theraised bedsin my vegetable garden are 5 by 8 feet . It ’s a orthogonal proportion that always depend skillful — they do n’t call it golden for nothing !
Raised planters in my garden follow the Golden Rectangle . Note , too , the meaning enclosure provide by the Eugenia hedgerow . Illustration by David Despau .
04: TURN TO THOMAS D. CHURCH WHEN DESIGNING STEPS
Another ratio may even be platinum : That ’s what I ’ve always called the convention for stride design advocated by landscape architect Thomas D. Church , often credit with produce theCalifornia style . lay out in his seminal workGardens Are for mass , it says simply thattwice the height of the riser main plus the pace should equal 26 inches . That means that if the riser is 5 inches , the tread ( what you walk on ) should be 16 inches . All I can say is that the rule is truthful , and I ’ve used it from steep canyon face to gentle change of patio level . A useful corollary United States Department of State that 5 feet is the minimum width for two people climb step side by side .
At this Mediterranean inspired garden in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles , the roofing tile - look steps follow Church ’s ratio . Illustration by David Despau .
05: SIZE MATTERS
A last rule have-to doe with to scale and the sculpting of space is this : Go big . present with a determination to make a staircase wider or narrower , a pool longer or inadequate , a arbour higher or lower , the answer is almost always the former . In my own garden , I remember laying out an arbor , with its Post 10 substructure gamey , and listening to trusted friend wondering whether it was n’t “ a minuscule too improbable . ” Thankfully I gravel to my hitman , and some 18 long time later , wreathe in wisteria and anchored at the ground by clusters of pots , the arbor seems just correct .
At ten feet , this pergola in my garden allows for hanging and skirt leaf to intertwine and tie the spindle to the place without infringing on the sense of infinite . instance by David Despau .
06: PLANT BIG TO SMALL
It ’s with plants , probably more than any other element of gardens , that the infinite variation and fickleness of nature is most manifest — and so perhaps , they are the trickiest to prescribe rules for . And yet , successful planting is the crowning touch of a garden . Three rule have always served me well .
The big palm tree on this Mediterranean project were already on the belongings ; the peppercorn tree diagram follow . Then the hedges and vines were installed . Only after all this were the perennials and containers embed . Illustration by David Despau .
First , is to plant big to small : start with tree diagram , then shrubs , thenperennials , then ground cover charge . This is significant not only in a compositional way ( see the bigger manakin first gives a good sense of the overall anatomical structure ) , but in a completely practical gumption . Setting a handsome tree diagram may require machinery or at least multiple nurseryman and copious space for maneuvering and stationing amendment and stain ; it would be deplorable to damage or undo some freshly plant bed . This seems so obvious , but for lots of nurseryman ( the author included ) a block of impertinent perennials may be impossible to forfend plant right on off . Be strong ; resist the temptation .
07: PLANT IN MASSES
While there is much to be said for thecottage garden , with a rich raiment of varied planting ( indeed , it ’s the real master gardener who can pull this off),there is a power to encounter a amount of one plantthat is authentically touch on . Russell Page , one of the great 20th - 100 landscape painting designers said it well : “ the most striking and satisfying ocular pleasure amount from the repeating or the massing of one unsubdivided constituent . think the Parthenon with each column a different kind of marble ! ”
Ornamental grasses , Miscanthus sinensis‘Morning Light ’ andSesleria autumnalisflank a garden boardwalk in Pacific Palisades , CA . Using drifts on both sides of the walk reinforces a sense of mass planting . example by David Despau .
I call up as a first garden designer in California being taken aside by my wise man , a transplanted Englishwoman who owned the nursery , walk through a huge block of salvia , and being told that I could , if I liked , use 30 of them — not the three or five I ’d typically been plant . It was a liberating second .
08: REMEMBER THIS ABOVE ALL
possibly my favourite rule of all prison term , all the more magic for its motive to be aline for inflation : It ’s better to implant a 50 - penny plant in a $ 5 hole , than a $ 5 plant in a 50 - cent hole . Imparted by Ralph Snodsmith , my first official gardening teacher at the New York Botanical Garden and spill the beans wireless host ( a case whose working uniform was always a wood green three - while courting ) , there is no greater planting wisdom . No matter how glorious a plan one conceives , if the plant are not well planted — at the correct height , in a sufficiently sized , and decently remedy perdition — the results will in all probability be poor . Some rules just ca n’t be broken .
On yet another labor in Pacific Palisades , CA , I planted aBrugmansia versicolor(angel ’s trump ) . This plant had been lie with around in the back of my truck for weeks so I asked the customer if they wanted it . With a well - dug and better hole , it flourished . Illustration by David Despau .
ABOUT THE AUTHORGardens are such personal and case-by-case expressions that the very idea that there is a “ way ” to create one seems almost harebrained . And the image of prescriptions about how it should be done — from schematic wisdom such as imbed tall plant in the back of the delimitation and short ones in front , to the brassbound strictures of codes , compact , and restrictions — will stir the rebel impulse in any originative soul . Faced with a edifice codification that dictates a 42 - column inch bound on planting , I will make it a point of honor to go higher . I am all for a hefty anarchistic neural impulse in the garden .
But I am also formally trained , the product of a prestigious East Coast graduate landscape computer architecture program — deemed quick to design gardens when I moved west to Los Angeles to begin my career . In fact , as I see it now , I knew only a few things then , and those in a for the most part theoretic way . What ’s more , my cognition was to be tested and often subverted in my unexampled surround . Everything was different : plants , mood , construction technologies — everything . The first metre I saw eucalypt Tree hacked into pelage - racks of butt and pulpit , I remember think “ perhaps that ’s how they ’re supposed to be dress . ” ( I got that sorted pretty quickly . ) It was some years later on — work on first in a big role , then in a terrific glasshouse where I got an intensive course in appropriate planting for Southern California — that I migrate towards residential garden design . There , personal involvement seemed the high , and the experience of landscape the most intimate — just the thing that had drawn me to the field in the first place .
See how these tips fit into a full out-of-door architectural plan — visit ourLandscape Design hubfor more skillful advice .
say about five morelandscape design ruleson LandscapingNetwork.com .
This article , adapted for the web , in the first place come along in the Early Spring 2015 progeny of Garden Design Magazine under the title " ruler of the Game . "
