Reaching the level of the top professionals in garden design takes years of study and experience. There is nothing stopping you though, understanding their approach and mindset.
Designing your garden not only involves creating a grand plan from A-Z, but also adding some shrubs or bedding plants to an existing composition. Whatever its scale or significance, any change in the garden should be approached with the mindset and attitude of a professional designer. While not everyone can successfully design a garden, there is nothing preventing you from seeing things as would a top designer.
A professional designer rigorously distinguishes between two separate aspects. One involves the subjective taste, needs, and desires of the customer. Creating a magnificent garden that is unsuited to the homeowner is like cooking a superb beefsteak for a vegetarian. The tendency of the average home gardener though, is to focus entirely on what he or she wants and likes, and to include plants in the garden on that basis alone, often or not after simply thumbing through a plant catalogue.
The second aspect, one that the homeowner is liable to ignore, involves choosing garden features, whether they be plants or otherwise, according to the universal and objective principles of design. The professional designer assigns a specific role to each element – paths, paving, lawns, trees, statues, or flowers, and places them in one of three categories.
The Dominant and Support Factors
A successful garden composition must have a clear motif. This could take the form of a focal point, such as a water feature, a statue, or a boldly designed flowerbed. From this all else flows. For instance, when choosing shrubs to form a backdrop to showy flowers, if your mindset is “I like”, you may choose species that have spectacular blooms.
The designer on the other hand, is more likely to view the showy flowers of the bushes as competing with the flowerbed. He or she would probably choose quiet, green shrubs instead, in order to provide support to the flowerbed, rather as the choir supports the lead soprano, or as the orchestra, backs the first violin.
The Sub-Dominant Factor
A complete composition will include factors that echo the dominant feature, but at a reduced level of intensity. Let’s take a water fountain as an example of the centerpiece or focal point of the garden. While the lawn, deck paving, or wooden fence surrounding it, would clearly belong to the support category, how can a sub-dominant factor be established?
One possibility would be to plant ornamental grasses close to the water feature, as the billowing, fountain-like form of the grasses (and other narrow leaved plants) would echo the movement of the water! In this way, the water feature’s role is enhanced, while peppering annual flowers around the fountain would weaken its role, by competing with it.
Everyone has their likes and dislikes. However, if you can detach yourself from them to some extent, as would a top garden designer, and ask yourself if the plants you intend to add to the garden are likely to enhance the composition, or liable to detract from it, you will stand a far greater chance of achieving satisfying results.
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