Notes

The Basic Principles Of Landscape Design

Whether you plan to "borrow ideas" or anticipate creating your own landscaping design, you ought to have at least a basic knowledge of the principles of landscape design.

Don't feel that you must apply every principle to every part of one's plan. Just having an understanding of these principles may help you generate ideas and increase your creativity.

Great landscaping is based on the eyes of the its creator. So, as the principles of landscape design are great guidelines to check out, don't feel like they're the "need to rules" of landscaping. Abstract and creativity are allowed.

Unity should be one of your primary goals in your design. It might be better understood and applied as consistency and repetition. Repetition creates unity by repeating alike elements like plants, plant groups, or decor throughout the landscape. Consistency creates unity in the sense that some or each of the different elements of the landscape fit together to make a whole.

Unity can be developed by the consistency of character of elements in the design. By character, I mean the size, height, texture, color schemes, etc. of varying elements.

A good example would be in the usage of accent rocks and boulders. If you've ever seen a landscape design that had a number of different colors and sizes of boulders, then you've seen that unity wasn't developed by this particular element.

This is just one example but the principle applies to all the elements such as groups of plants and materials.

A simple way to create unity in your landscape is by creating theme gardens. Developing a theme garden is simpler when it's linked to something you find attractive or like.

If you're thinking about butterflies for instance, you could develop a theme using plants that attract butterflies as well as using statues, ornaments, and other decor that are related to butterflies.

Unity should be expressed through a minumum of one aspect in your landscape and preferably more. Using elements to express a main idea through consistent style and a particular theme is what creates harmony.

Simplicity is actually among the principles in design and art. It's among the best guidelines you can follow as a beginner or take action yourselfer. Just keep things easy to begin with. That can be done more later.

Simplicity in planting, for example, is always to pick two or three colors and repeat them throughout the garden or landscape. Keeping decor to a minimum and within a specific theme and also keeping hardscapes such as for example boulders consistent is also practicing simplicity.

Balance in design is simply as the word implies. A sense of equality. There are basically two forms of balance in landscape design. Symmetrical and Asymmetrical.

Symmetrical balance is where you can find pretty much equally spaced matching elements, areas, and shapes of the garden design. With a garden equally divided, both sides could share all or area of the same shape, form, plant height, plant groupings, colors, bed shapes, theme, etc.

You may remember creating something similar to this once you were a kid in art class at school. Where you have a little bit of paper, splash paint onto it, fold it in two, unfold it, and then it magically creates a fascinating symmetrical design. So symmetrical balance or design is somewhat of a mirror image or reflection.

Asymmetrical balance however is one of the principles of landscape design that's a little more complex. While textures, forms, colors, etc. may remain constant to create some unity, shapes and hardscapes could be more random. This type of balance often has separate or different themes with each having an equal but different type of attraction.

Asymmetrical could be better understood as actually being unbalanced, abstract, or free form while still creating unity and balance through the repetition of some elements.

A good example of this might be where bed shapes or paths differ on both sides of the landscape dividing line while still sharing a number of the same elements and plants. One side could be curved with a sense of flow as the other side is straight, direct, hard, and completely opposite. Again, unity and balance will undoubtedly be created through other elements.

Contrast can be very interesting and this kind of form can create a neat contrast. Flowing lines are pleasing to the attention but the bold contrast of a curve combined with a straight line can be very interesting.

Asymmetrical balance isn't influenced by the shape of one's garden. It might be but generally it's not.

An example might be where one side of the garden is mostly large shade trees while the other side is predominately a lesser growing flower garden or perhaps a mix of both examples. Like I mentioned previously, the landscaping could be abstract while still maintaining unity through other elements such as rocks, plants, and decor.

Contrast and harmony may also be achieved using plants. Fine foliage verses coarser foliage, round leaves verses spiked leaves together with color compliments and contrasts.

Plant height, color, and texture may be varied from one area to another but each area should stay consistent within its theme.

You'll hear me talk about "themes" a whole lot. Many successful do it yourself designs follow a basic theme to achieve the majority of the principles of landscape design described on this page. It is a simple starting place for do it yourselfers which might be added to later.

Color adds the dimension of real life and interest to the landscape. Bright colors like reds, yellows and oranges appear to advance toward you and will actually make an object seem closer to you. Cool colors like greens, blues, and pastels seem to move from you and can make an object seem farther from you.

Grays, blacks, and whites are believed neutral colors and are best used in the background with bright colors in the foreground. However, to increase depth in a landscape, you need to use dark and coarse textured plants in the foreground and use fine textured and light colored plants in the background.

Colors can also be used to direct your attention to a specific area of the garden. A bright display among cooler colors would naturally catch the attention.

Natural transition could be applied to avoid radical or abrupt changes in your landscape design. Transition is basically gradual change. It could best be illustrated when it comes to plant height or color but can also be applied to all elements in the landscape including however, not limited to textures, foliage shape or size, and the decoration of different elements.

In other words transition may be accomplished by the gradual, ascending or descending, arrangement of different elements with varying textures, forms, colors, or sizes.

An example of an excellent transition would be a stair step effect from large trees to medium trees to shrubs to bedding plants. This example is where a little understanding of proper plant selection would can be found in handy.

Transition is one of the principles of landscape design which you can use to "create illusions" in the landscape. For instance a transition from taller to shorter plants can give a sense of depth and distance (like in a painting), making the garden seem bigger than it really is. A transition from shorter to taller plants could be used to frame a focal point to make it stick out and seem closer than it truly is.

Line is of the more structural principles of landscape design. It can mostly be related to the way beds, walkways, and entryways move and flow.

Straight lines are forceful and direct while curvy lines have a more natural, gentle, flowing effect.

Proportion simply refers to the size of elements in relation to each other. Of all principles of landscape design, this one is quite obvious but nonetheless takes a little thought and planning. The majority of the elements in landscape design could be intentionally planned to meet up the proper proportions.

For instance in case you are developing a small courtyard garden, a massive seven foot garden statue put into the center would be way out of proportion and just a little tacky to say minimal. Or a small four foot waterfall and pond placed in the center of a large open yard would get lost in the expanse.

Don't misunderstand this to imply that if you have a large yard you can't have smaller features or garden decor. Proportion is relative and elements can be scaled to fit by creating different rooms in the garden. The goal is to create a pleasing relationship on the list of three dimensions of length, breadth, and depth or height.

A small water feature could be proportionate if put into a large part or on the edge of a large area and becomes a center point of the larger area while creating its distinct atmosphere. An entire room, sitting area, or theme could be created around it. Other rooms and themes can be created aswell. See small gardens for ideas on creating rooms and creating illusions.

Also, special consideration and study should be directed at proper plant selection in order to avoid using plants which are out of proportion.

Repetition is directly linked to unity. Regular property maintenance services to get a variety of elements and forms in the garden but repeating these elements gives variety expression.

Unity is achieved by repeating objects or elements which are alike. Way too many unrelated objects can make the garden look cluttered and unplanned.

There is a fine line here. It's possible that an excessive amount of one element could make a garden or landscape feel uninteresting, boring and monotonous.

However, unity can still be created by using several different elements repeatedly. This in turn keeps the garden interesting.
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