Five Hints for Getting the Garden Design Look

Beautiful gardens, whatever their style and size are restful calming places. Where you feel immersed in the mood of the place and connected with nature. As I design a garden, this feeling is what I aim to achieve every time for my clients.

Here is an insight into how I do this with five hints to achieve the ‘designed garden’ look.

1. Be objective. It’s easy to just get used to how your garden looks. This can stop you seeing the potential. A designer would bring fresh eyes to a space. To help, take a few photos from different angles. Then look at them a day or two later. You will then see what needs to be decluttered and which parts look inviting and need accentuating.

2. Aspect. A designer spends hours documenting every corner of your garden. You can check the direction your garden faces with a compass on your phone. Showing you where the is sun at different times. This dictates the plants to grow in different areas. It also helps decide where to site a bench for evening sun or a shed in a shady place.

3. Give the space a reason. A garden can feel static, the whole space may be visible with no reason to investigate. Create drama and intrigue by giving the garden a sense of journey. A path or curved lawn may do this. Add height to either side, use trees, screens, obelisks with climbers or even a beautiful shrub. This starts to obscure the view to the end of the route, leading our eye down the garden.

A focal point at the end ensures we are rewarded for investigating. It could be a secluded bench, large container, sculpture, seating area, characterful existing tree, humble painted shed. Even a pretty view outside the garden.

4. Harmony and colour. Harmony is how the various parts of the garden are linked together to give it a sense of belonging. Colour adds to a garden’s harmony too. A designer will look at the style and materials used for the house and structures around to create this feeling. To do this use similar colour tones, and materials as your property in your scheme, it allows the garden to blend effortlessly with your home. fences, gates and sheds which don’t blend in can be painted with one unifying colour to underline the harmony. For flowers, select a palette of up to three colours which you love and blend well together. Repeat these coloured blooms throughout your garden.

5. Planting. Develop structural planting in your borders to provide year-round interest. Evergreen shrubs are ideal for this. Plant at either end of a border and one or two in the middle depending on its length. Softer summer interest plants and spring bulbs can then be planted around them. Use groups of three, five or seven plants of each type and plant together in blocks or ribbons. Repeat these planted groups throughout the border to add to the harmony of the garden.