Designing your first garden can be quite challenging. Granted, a garden will bring a positive change to your life. They will improve the air around, help you enjoy the outdoors and add more natural colour to your environment.
However, knowing where to start can be an issue. The following tips by landscape designers from Garden Club London will help you come up with a suitable landscape design for your garden.
- Study Landscape Design History
Don’t worry, you will not have to sit in another boring history class for this. You can just simply look at various garden designs from the past till now.
Landscape design is generally categorized into two: the formal gardens of Western Asia & Europe and the stylistic gardens of Eastern Asia.
The formal gardens of Western Asia & Europe are characterized by straight lines and symmetrical shapes. Eastern Asia gardens have more curves and irregular shapes, symbolic of the natural world.
Once you see the patterns of each style, you can select one design after which to model your garden. You also do not have to stick to one style. You can blend different elements from both styles.
- Have a Purpose for Your Garden
Before you design the landscape of your garden, it will be of substantial help to know what it will be used. Generally speaking, gardens have three purposes: to grow food, to create a green living space and for aesthetic enhancement.
Once you know why you are creating your garden, you can more easily design a landscape that suits that particular purpose. Moreover, you may decide that you want your garden to serve two purposes such as growing food and ornamental plants.
You need to be sure of your decision since there is no going back once the garden is complete.
- Get to Know Your Property
Each piece of land, no matter how small, has its own unique features. These features include which areas receive sunlight and how much, the elevation, the slope, the location of different types of trees, places that are windy and soil conditions.
Knowing the idiosyncrasies of your land including topography and microclimates will help you know which plants to grow where and which plants can be grown together. Understanding the nature of the land’s soil will also alert you of the changes to be made. Acidic soils and alkaline soils have different needs for example.
Knowing your property gives you a better understanding of how you will design the landscape so your garden can thrive.
- Design for the Future
When designing a landscape for your garden, it is difficult to see how it will all tie together in the future. It is especially so when you are first starting out and don’t have a clear vision for your garden.
On the other hand, designing the landscape gives you a better idea of how the garden will take shape. For example, when planting trees, think about how big they will be and their development in the future. It will help you not to make mistakes such as planting trees near the roof.
Designing for the future will also give your plants more freedom to grow. You can also leave space for more creative ideas to implement later on.
