Why Have A Plan?
Show off your home to best advantageJoin Me In The Garden
The Front Approach
When I read about garden design, generally the lessons, concepts, and examples come from the pages of grand garden tomes. The photos and plans are from those privileged to work with hired labor, large budgets, and other advantages that aren't usually included in a home gardeners capabilities.
The challenge is to translate the beauty of such things into the smaller venues. Of all parts of the landscaping around a home, the front approach seems to demand the lion's share of the planning. Then, depending on our hobbies and interests, the rest of the property is given attention.
Using our resources of time, money, and effort to its best use to incorporate style into our garden is the purpose of a good design plan. Let's start this look at what our landscape design means to our front yard, the most public space.
A Good Marriage of Home And Garden
A primary goal of good landscape design is to create a harmonious relationship between the dwelling and the land. To help them work together and look like they belong together, a plan is considered successful when that is accomplished.
A Famous Case
Fallingwater
Fallingwater driveway, photo in public domain.
This can take one of two perspectives, from nature to architecture or more often, from the building to the surroundings. The modern look is to give nature preeminence, or at least appear to do so.
Wright's "Fallingwater" in Pennsylvania is one famous case of the site dictating the design. Using viewsheds and bending nature to enhance them makes the most of what might look untouched at first glance.
Framing a view is foremost in this perspective.
The Purpose Of Beautiful Design
Not in the general sense of an abstract philosophy, but in the nitty gritty of our own lives, the real need we have of design is that it streamlines both our mental and physical experience of life into something satisfying and beautiful.
We can all muddle through, and that is where most of us remain. But taking on the challenges of making a garden allows us to change the sometimes adversarial relationship with nature into a place where we can live harmoniously with it. It starts with understanding ourselves, then steps into understanding the nature of our place.
Design marries the two into a place in the world where we feel at home. We love our smaller homes and gardens, want to display them well to the world and enjoy them without overburdening ourselves and our families.
What are the differences between the gardens of books and magazine stories and our own? It is a story of who we are, the evolution of our lives and circumstances, and what part our garden plays within that story.
Nature Rules
- Is harmony with nature the perspective which you have in mind for your own landscape?
- The purpose of this type of plan revolves around the house, but with no intent on making a statement of dominating nature. Instead, it is living with it , even giving it pride of place.
- Many of the new directions in gardening trends are within this ideal of looking like nature is doing all of the planting.
- Whether you are opting for 'no lawn', 'New American', or other features and styles that put the environment first, this is a garden that needs a plan, but looks like it organically arrived.
Principles of Landscape Design
One reason to have a plan, certainly, is to incorporate good design into the many areas of a yard surrounding a home. There should be a flow just as in an interior layout, it should also please us to look at it, from inside our home and from the public view. Some ideals that a plan will use:
- Simplicity
- Unity
- Focal points
- Proportion
A Grand Manor
You may not own a grand manor, but that doesn't mean you need to skimp on design.
Front Yard Veggies
Here are some free sources for designs examples:
Include Features You Like
Make your yard your own in your plan, with personality. Growing food, inviting wildlife, adding art, there are many roles for your yard.
An Outdoor Living Area
Make the people, family and friends, feel comfortableWhen your garden is finished I hope it will be more beautiful
that you anticipated, require less care than you expected,
and have cost only a little more than you had planned.
-Â Â Thomas D. Church
