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Garden Design Ideas
Gardens start with ideas. Perhaps you just want less grass and more roses - or you only have space for a few pots but you want lots of colour. Here is how one of my gardens progressed... I often use the word design, but it's really still about your ideas..
See this photo above? it started out like this... with some ideas an a bit of a plan that kept changing.
It is easier to change some lines on a sketch than to make huge changes with stone or landscaping.
We put down the flagstone as it was cheap and seemed to fit but when we saw all the other stone, it was too much the same.
So we switched to brick pavers and the difference was beautifully amazing.
See the difference the brick makes? softer and the colour is less monotone ... Here it is just a few years later and still, it keeps evolving...
Before you do anything drastic, no matter your level of experience, here are some steps to get you started.
Unless it is a huge project like ours was, and you already have a garden of some sort, begin by doing a bit of tidying - weeding or getting rid of someone else's leftovers.
Perhaps your garden just needs a bit of rescuing? Maybe you've inherited a garden or even starting from scratch.
Check out these Ten Steps to take your garden from Lousy to Lush.
Take Your Garden from Lousy to Lush in Ten Steps.
Ideas can come from magazines, other gardens or the internet. Save photos, make notes of what you like and we'll find a way to use them.
Designs will evolve from your notes, photos and your lines on a piece of paper so it's really helpful to organize them....
It could be a rough sketch like this one below:
Or a bit more detail with curved beds and paths like this below.
or.... straight lines and traditional beds.
It's a good idea to keep track of your notes, sketches and photos: what you like, want; plants that suite your soil and place - your zone etc.. Here are some ways to do that.
IF YOU HAVE A VERY WET AREA
Look at RAIN GARDENS .
Now that you have some ideas, consider that you might need more than just my own garden story.
Making any sort of plan, or filling a notebook with ideas, you will
have some big decisions to make. Will you need
And, there's more about what steps you can take...
remember the Ten Steps ?
My Garden Journey
If you have a little time and want to see my story, pour a cuppa ....It's a bit long but along the way I'll share links to other pages... and you can return here any time.
Many years ago, our "new" home had no garden and looked like there never was one.
I was overwhelmed.
In the book, ‘The Brain that Changes Itself” Norman Doidge says when we make a ‘modest’ change, (moving to a new house), we find that something as basic as our sense of space, must be slowly altered while the brain rewires itself. ...Yuk…
I didn't really want to do the 'slow altering' thing… I wanted a garden - right away …
I just wanted my garden ideas to be "done" - flowers blooming, bees buzzing so I could sit and admire it.
And every once in awhile, nature gives us a little nudge.
For me, it wasn't so little - a big old dead tree had to be taken down. It opened up the whole back yard - now just an ugly open space.
If you want to take a break now and check out some other links - do so, and then come back
Keep track of your ideas, what worked, what didn't, what you bought, and where and what you paid and find a place for those blasted plant tags.
Or maybe you want roses on your boulevard (or "hell-o" strip) - maybe even a hedge?
or even more ROSES (and some roses will grow in the shade !)
What about getting rid of some grass to make a garden?
LOOK what I did:
Maybe you want to start small with some pots or containers CONTAINERS
Even in Winter - see Months and Outdoor Arrangements
Other plants and TREES as well.
Maybe we just need to fool the eye a little and make the viewers stop awhile so they don't see the whole garden all at once, even if the garden is small.
See how we did that in another garden with an ARBOUR and a REDBUD TREE.
STILL WITH ME? - then let's go back to my story.....
After the big old tree came down, I had to re-think the space but I wasn't a gardener so planning was pretty much haphazard.
Usually the first thing we think of is grass....
Thick green grass. Kind of like a canvas only soft and wonderful to walk on. So, grass it was….a good start.
Oh, the big tin shed…it wasn't very pretty, but it kept all the tools out of sight.
I was left with a rectangle yard and long straight sides: I decided I preferred curves.
I carved out some sinuous edges under a huge Blue Spruce. Nothing grew under those piles of needles, not even weeds…. but because I didn’t know any better I planted Hostas my neighbour was throwing out. And I liked how it looked.
It was much later I learned "garden designers" actually ask some important questions before they begin: like:
- How do you want to use this space?
- How do you want to feel in this space?
- What colours do you like?
- How much time do you have to do your own gardening?
- How much will it cost to hire someone else?
Questions to ask before we begin - perhaps I will, next time.
A few weeks later… this is how it looked- not much of a garden yet, but my own "design-philosophy" had more to do with how much time I had and the things I didn't know, than any formalized plan.
It was just a yard waiting for my imagination to make it a garden.
The next year, I decided the tin shed, although practical was not very attractive. I had to fix that. Inspiration comes from old memories or places we've been.
A few years before, I spent a month at a writer’s workshop in Provence, whose lavender hills still haunted me…
With a few small cans of leftover paint and a photo, I painted a scene on the front doors of the shed.
I found a couple of old windows in the basement, painted them and hung them on lattice on either side of the doors… Voila ! my shed made me smile and felt like I had some of those Provencal hills closer to home.
Next I planted a fast growing (too fast) Silver Lace Vine (Fallopia aubertii) which grew up over the shed in one season.
You don’t have to be an artist to do this…. All it takes is an idea - copy someone else’s painting or photo or have a creative friend do something for you.
I think it looks better, don’t you?
I kept making the beds bigger because I kept buying more plants I liked.
When the tree in my neighbour’s yard died, I had less shade… and more sun and wind. Time to pivot my "design" once again....
Although most roses like sun, they were often battered by the wind that swept down along the back of neighbouring yards.
I found a LILAC that was fast growing, with luscious scented blooms that blossomed later than the regular lilacs or Common Lilac (Syringa vulgaris) – a “Preston Lilac” (Syringa Prestoniae-' Nellie Bean') and planted it on the west side to block the wind. It looks small here, but it's the largest plant next to the fence.
When you design your garden, think about dividing it into areas (garden books call them "rooms" but I find that a bit far-fetched as most of our yards are pretty small).
I added an arbour with a bench around the corner- almost out of sight.
Below, you can just see the edge of the bench and it always made me want to go there and sit for awhile and to see what was going on in that nook. Like this….
Sure enough in less than 4 years, "Preston" was 8 feet tall…. With lovely large, heart-shaped leaves and beautiful grey stems that let me look through them to the back of the garden.
... the next year, how simply glorious…. No muss, no fuss, just glory !
It gave lovely shade to the Solomon Seal and wood violets that popped up one Spring.
Those violets popped up wherever they pleased so I kept moving them to shady spots as ground cover until I needed the space for another plant. They kept the soil moist and shielded the roots of more delicate plants too. (science folks call it 'green mulch' while others call them invasive.)
If you choose to plant violets, they'll spread quickly so be ruthless and keep them just where you want them, otherwise they would happily take over an entire garden. Some of my gardener friends admit to "hating" them, but how could you not love those sweet little faces?
The rest of the garden grew bit by bit.
For example, you saw how the Rose Garden grew from the stump of that old tree and each year, I kept adding another rosebush or two.
No real formal plan, but an idea or two can evolve until you are pleased with your garden. By this time, it really does begin to look like you had some garden design ideas.
You can see the progression when you look at the Rose Garden page, but hang in, I'll show you the desperate way it looked in the beginning and how it looked only 4 years later.
Make sure, if you like an informal look, that you make the edges curved. Don’t be afraid to exaggerate the curves… tiny curves will look rather ditsy…. and are a nightmare for cutting the grass around them.
Undulating curves are pleasant to the eye, more romantic and send your eye around your garden.
Like these......
Actually, some folks lay down a hose and move it around until they get a shape they like... some others, use spray paint to make the shape that way... whatever works for you.
Plan your plants a few at a time, as you can afford.
As the years go by, my gardens keep changing and so will yours. When I add a statue or a new plant, sometimes I have to make the bed bigger to accommodate it.
Or I move it to another spot if it isn't doing well. It's rather like a new garden every year.
And colour… we started to talk about colour in the beginning of the garden design and left it to talk about shape.
Remember the colour wheel on the page about Container Gardens ?
The same goes for flowerbeds. Think about how you want to feel in your garden.What colours calm or excite your?
Do you work all day indoors so that when you come home you want to spend time on your deck or in your garden?
Then your colours should reflect the gentle and relaxing shades of soft pink, mauve and blue.
Different shades of green will do the same thing.
If you depend on your garden to give you a jolt of energy, then you might choose vibrant reds, yellows and oranges…
When you plan your garden, make room for lots of perennials… as they come up every year. However the down side of that is that if you only plant perennials, your garden will look much the same from year to year….so add trees, shrubs and annuals.
Annuals provide a lot of the colour in your garden and you can change the look of your flowerbeds from year to year by changing the colour of your annuals… it's win-win.
Your gardens will depend how you want to feel in your spaces – and if you plant for that feeling, the design will follow naturally. If you want order and symmetry, your garden will have straight lines with a calmer and more formal look.
If you want your eye to roam around your garden, stopping in nooks and hidden spots, then you will have lots of curves, focal points and winding paths to lure you into those spaces.
Your colours will follow your preferences… and when you go to the garden centres, you will fall in love, over and over and over again.
Follow your heart, and plant what you love (and for your zone); take care of it and it will keep surprising you.
