How to Design Your Garden Using the Principles of Art

It doesn't take much to get things to grow, but it takes a gardener to arrange those growing plants artistically. Talent at garden design is a rare gift that is cultivated with the senses. The principles of art - including harmony, rhythm, proportion and symmetry - all come to play in garden design. Your garden should be an expression of you. You put a lot of time and energy into planting and tending to your garden, so why not spend an equal amount of time designing it. You want visitors to your home to really get a sense of you when they look at your garden.

Working with foliage that is long and thin, round and tufty, soft, wiry, rubbery, lacy, etc. is a perfect opportunity to design a space using various textures and forms to apply the principles of art. Have you ever seen how goutweed with its wispy, variegated foliage blends so imaginatively into a bed of pointy, hunter's green lily-of-the-valley. The bold texture of hosta is especially complemented when surrounded by the ground-hugging pachysandra, which mimics hosta's form on a miniature basis. This year my favorite flower garden was made to look sensational with the starring role played by massive amounts of perennial pinks in shades of pink, scarlet and magenta. Using the pinks as the color focus, blocks of a dozen petunias were added, triple-tiered, and in various shades of lavender, plum and cranberry - a bolder texture with a softer hue. In between each solid block of petunia color was a row of gray Dusty Miller. Finally, taller, lacy-textured perennial astiles were set in the background for contrast in texture and form. The result is eye-catching. As the season progresses, cool blues - asters, statice, linum, salvia fannacea, phlox ageratum, centaurea, and love-in-a-mist - will be phasing out the hot reds.

Probably one of the best reasons for striving for harmony is to create a mood, perhaps a cool, shady glen. This can be achieved with a bed of carefree, bold textured tuberous begonias under a canopy of lacy fern. At this time of year, anything that looks cool is especially welcome. But, if your garden isn't all that you wished it would look like, there's always next year. And in between.....

Sources:

Bryant, Kate The Complete Encyclopedia of Garden Flowers: Choosing Plants, Handy Hints, Descriptions, Cultivation Requirements 2003

Fell, Derek Encyclopedia of Garden Design and Structure: Ideas and Inspiration for Your Garden 2006

Hobhouse, Penelope Flower Gardens 2006

Sardar, Zahid New Garden Design: Inspiring Private Paradises 2008