Designing a garden is similar to an artist painting a picture or creating a work of art. While colour balance, texture, line forms are some of the common elements you need to consider when designing your garden, we have highlighted some other tips that are often overlook but are essential for creating an aesthetically pleasing and practical garden.
Your garden is an ongoing ever-changing creation, evolving with age, seasonal trends and climate changes. In brief, here are some things to consider when designing your garden.
A Practical Approach: Work out how much time you have per week to maintain your garden. This will greatly affect design foundation and the plants you select. Design to suit the time you have for upkeep and maintenance. You can still have a beautiful garden if you have limited hours to spend in it – it just comes down to planting wisely.
The Purpose: Decide on what you want your garden to do for you and what features you want in it. Some things to consider are a veggie garden, fountain, fishpond, green retreat, aviary, Zen garden and so forth.
Texture: Combine a range of fine, medium and coarse-textured plants to create depth, aesthetic appeal and to group plants into microclimates. The choice of texture available to you is plentiful – smooth or prickly, ripply or frilly – and there are endless ways to combine them to achieve repetition, contrast, balance, and unity.
Efficiency: Give your garden the best chance to thrive by installing an irrigation system, which hydrates your plants effectively. You will also want to make sure that your soil is bursting with essential vitamins and minerals, so do regular soil tests and get in the habit of throwing on a layer of compost every three months. Finally don’t forget to protect your soil with a toplayer of mulch.
Plant Wisely Choose plants that suit your climate, habitat and soil. For example, if you live in a high wind-prone area, choose wind tolerant plants, and if close to the beach, you will need to select plants, which are salt-tolerant.
If you are wanting to plant exotic plants such as roses or camellias, don’t overlook the fact that you will have to spend quality time maintaining them; providing adequate irrigation, fertiliser and modifying the soil as needed.
Careful Planning: Plan your garden around your lifestyle, future home extension plans and family needs. A garden should be designed to blend in with the home and reflect the personality of the people who live there.
Careful planning of your garden prevents costly mistakes later down the track, especially if sections of the garden have to be uprooted for house extensions, or replanted. If you take the time to plan your garden with thought, then you will create a live piece of ever-changing art that you and your family can enjoy for years to come.