More Graden design Principles - Keeping your Garden Design Simple and to Scale and Proportion

Think you understand the principle of Unity and Harmony now? Good. Let's look at a few more principles of Garden Design that you'd do well to remember - ooh, that sounds a bit menacing doesn't it? Sorry!!

Heard of the phrase -

"Less is More"?

Well, it applies to Garden Design too. Simplicity in your design will encourage a strong and successful design. Keeping a design simple isn't always easy, as once your creative juices are flowing you can be tempted to keep adding to your design. Knowing when to Stop though can really help you design a fantastic garden - and if you've lots of ideas that you couldn't use, offer to design a friends garden and use them there (so long as they fit with your friends brief!)

So, how do you keep a garden simple?

The easiest way is to keep monitoring your design and ask yourself if it is getting too busy. If there is so much going on that you don't know which way to turn then look at which elements you can do without, and find the courage to remove them. If you're having difficulty deciding whether to remove the sauna or the jacuzzi ask someone who will be using the garden with you what their opinion is. It's not worth spending hours agonising over so be sure to put the dilemma into perspective. Ensure that simplicity runs through your entire design - from the layout to the textures and colours.

One way of keeping a design simple is to use just a few types of plants and mass plant them. (Apologies for the quality of the photo, my camera was playing up!)

If you find you've got hundreds of juicy ideas flowing from you, don't just add them to your design willy-nilly, keep a sketch pad nearby and jot down your ideas there. That way you'll be able to take a step back and develop the best ideas that will work for your brief.

Another principle that is fundamentally important is

Scale and Proportion

You will need to consider three relationships when you think of scale and proportions. Firstly, the relationship between the house and the garden. Secondly, that of the garden and the surrounding landscape. Lastly, don't forget the relationship that you need to have with your garden.

As soon as you begin your design try to think three dimensionally. This will help focus your mind on how elements will relate to each other and hopefully you will see if something will be out of proportion to something else.

Take a photo of a particular feature in your garden that you are planning to keep. Lay tracing paper over it and experiment by drawing different design ideas, seeing how they relate to the original feature in size and proportion. If you're not confident at drawing it doesn't matter, nobody else needs to see your drawings, just keep practicing until you feel more relaxed with your style. If you're really struggling to get your ideas on to paper, then you might want to consider going to a local drawing class to gain experience.

You could even try making a model of your garden. It will need to be to scale so that you can tell if an idea is going to work but it can be made from any discarded items that you can find. Turn yourself into a Blue Peter presenter and do your bit for the environment by recycling old boxes and toilet rolls. Remember you're not trying to re-create the dolls house that you (or a female relative) had when you were young, it's merely another tool to examine the major elements of your design and see if the scale and proportion will work within the boundaries of your garden.

Whichever method you choose, include a correctly scaled person to your sketch or model. That will show you if your idea relates to the people that will be using your garden.

When you come to size up your major elements and feature, think of their practicalities and what you are wanting to use them for. Make sure that a patio planned for seating 12 people is large enough to take 12 people - and a planned Koi pond can accommodate Koi and not just little fish!

Consider also, the type and size of material that you use. Generally a smaller garden will suit having a smaller unit of paving which will give the impression of having more space. If you were to use small units of paving in a larger garden however, it may have the effect of looking too busy. Be careful if you are including steps in your garden. They will need to be the correction proportion to prevent accidents. Make the risers (the vertical bits) as shallow as possible, and the treads (the flat bit of the step) as wide as possible, ensuring that the steps are comfortable to use and safe.

You can use scale and proportion to emphasise and enhance the sense of space within a garden. Make small gardens that have little space from front to back feel longer and wider by using horizontal or diagonal features. Add elements that encourage people to walk side to side, thereby giving the illusion that the garden is longer than it is as it takes some time to reach the back. You can use individual paving slabs or bricks to make a garden appear wider too. Lay the longest length of the paving slab or brick cross ways on the path and if you want to exaggerate the width even more, consider staggering the edges of the path into the surrounding planting.

You can control the speed at which people use the paths in this way. Bricks laid length ways with make people walk faster whereas laid cross ways, the bricks will slow the user down.

You can alter perspectives in the garden by choosing carefully how you place certain features. Putting larger objects behind smaller ones will make the horizon appear closer to you, shortening the perspective of the garden as a whole. You can also play with parallel lines, which in reality, recede away from the viewer and appear to converge to a point on the horizon. By altering the lines you can make the distance look longer or shorter to suit your desired effect.

Have an experiment with the perspectives and proportions in your garden. Decide whether certain paths need to allow people to move quickly (maybe to a shed or gate) or whether you want them to meander (maybe through a nicely planted area). Try out some ideas and see what will work for you.

Principles of Garden Design - How to Create Unity and Harmony in your Garden

Let's have a quick re-cap on what you should have by now!

You've measured and analysed your garden and drawn it all up to scale on a site and survey analysis survey.

You've asked yourself lots of soul-searching, probing questions and come up with your design brief.

You've decided what you would like most in your garden and laid it all out logically in your functional layout plan.

You've found inspirational pictures and colours that you like and put them together to create a mood board for your garden.

You're doing well and hopefully not finding the process difficult. It's meant to be fun and satisfying so hopefully you're not struggling with it.

Before we continue with the design lets take some time to look at different design principles that you should try to remember when you create your garden design. They will help you to make your design the best it can be. These principles should be used for all aspects of the design, from the site arrangement down to the planting plan and materials you choose to use.

The first principal we'll look at is

Unity & Harmony

No, I'm not going all airy-fairy here! Unity and Harmony determines how well the garden will "hang together". To ensure that each element of the design runs smoothly and effortlessly in to the next element.

You should try to "link" the garden to your house, both with structural appearance and materials used. Obvious examples of this would be a modern building of glass and steel sitting in a garden consisting of brick paths and cottage style planting. Similarly, a thatched roofed cottage would not look good if it's garden was made of concrete and stainless steel. These are easy "links" to establish, however the majority of peoples homes will be more subtle and you may have to investigate further to find something on your house that you can use to help you "tie-in" the garden. The "link" also applies to the interior of your house.

Look for recurring colours, textures and materials that you can take out to the garden with you. (Note how the cushions in this picture pick up the blue flowers planted in the garden) If you have wooden floorboards in the room next to the garden, you may want to continue the theme and have wooden decking as the patio area. Or, if you have a particular colour that you use everywhere in the house, you may want to choose plants that will only flower that colour.

Look for "links" that are most important to you and that will all help to make the garden appear to be an extension of the house rather than two completely different places. It's all well and good to add contrast to a design, but it should be kept to a minimum to avoid the design from looking confused and chaotic. If you do want to have an area in your garden that is contrast from the rest of the design, then you will need to find a way to "unite" them, so that it doesn't look too contrived. Use the same material to join the two areas - same gravel on paths, or same plants in a hedge joining the areas, etc.

Take a look at this picture. What do you like or dislike about it? Does it represent an image of good harmony and unity, or not?

Remember to look beyond the boundaries. You will need to tie in your surroundings with the design as well as your house. A rural garden in a town setting may not induce Unity and Harmony and could end up being a poor design - sorry!

There may be shapes of trees that are in the gardens vista that you can re-create in your garden and achieve a sense of harmony with the surroundings. Do you live in a region where there is a particular local stone, or other material that gets used all over the place? By using this same material you can help link your garden with its environment. Take a walk down your road and see if there's any material or features that get used repeatedly and accommodate them in to your design.

Try to restrict the number of materials that you use in a design. By sticking to two or three materials you will create unity in the design. Any more than four materials will make the design look chaotic and unrestful, especially if you're working in a small space.

Shapes in your design also need careful consideration as to how they interact with one another. Too many similar sized shapes will be dull and too many different sized shapes will create a very busy design. Finding a happy medium will create harmony in the garden. Try to include one dominant space or shape that can act as a focal point for the garden.

Repetition of shapes, plants and materials within a design can successfully hold a design together. Always have a dominant feature though, to prevent boredom from setting in to the design. Use nature to your advantage , and opt for plants that best suit your surroundings and situation. If you live near the sea, use plants that will thrive in coastal positions. Not only will they create unity and harmony with their surroundings, but you'll find them easier to look after!

Take a look at magazines and see if you can identify pictures that typify Unity and Harmony. Do any of the pictures that you chose for your mood board represent these principles?

If you are able to achieve a good unity and harmony in your design then the garden will be a relaxing and pleasant place to spend time in. So it's worth spending time making sure you understand how to achieve them.