Garden Design

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Garden Design
Designing Gardens as Part of a Sustainable
Landscape

• Diana Alfuth, Horticulture Educator
• UW-Extension, Pierce County

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Functional
• Maintainable
• Environmentally Friendly
• Cost Effective
• Visually Pleasing

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Consider the function of each portion of the
  landscape
• Note problems/attributes in the existing
  landscape
• Evaluate the site characteristics, including soil
  type, pH, light, wind, etc.
• Decide on your goal and landscape style

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Garden Design
Garden Design

• Formal straight lines, plants in rows,
  symmetrical, globes and columns
• Informal curvilinear patterns, plants in
  intertwined masses, asymmetrical, natural plant
  forms

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Locate gardens as part of your overall landscape
  design
• Create a good turf area, with functional spaces
  and gardens behind the concept lines that form
  the turf shape

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Garden Design

• Consider each individual viewpoint when designing
  the gardens and planting beds

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• The most beautiful
• landscapes are
• designed, not
• decorated. They
• create unity by
• incorporating
• Principles of
• Design, including

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BALANCE
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SCALE
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REPETITION
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SEQUENCE
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SIMPLICITY
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VARIETY
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Garden Design

• Design beds to keep maintenance to a minimum

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Sustainable Landscape Design
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Sustainable Landscape Design
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Sustainable Landscape Design
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Sustainable Landscape Design

• What makes it look good?
• Human eyes need a place to start
• FOCAL POINT
• A focal point is the first thing we see when we
  look at a landscape.

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Examples of things that create focal points are
  
• Artwork
• A plant that is different than those around it
• Structures
• Birdbaths, birdhouses, birdfeeders
• Boulders
• Bare spots
• Diseased/dying plants
• Debris
• FOCAL POINTS CAN CHANGE THROUGHOUT THE SEASONS!

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Focal Point

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Focal point

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Locating Focal Points
• Any given view of the landscape should have one
  major focal point, and maybe one or two secondary
  focal points. Too many focal points creates a
  busy landscape.
• Locate focal points 1/3 of the way from one side
  .

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Focal Point??

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• After our eyes find a focal point, they need to
  go somewhere, and look for lines to follow.
• Lines can be formed by edging, paths, structures,
  plant masses, plant form, shadows, etc.

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Focal
• point

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Lines

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Lines

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Lines

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Lines

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Too many lines, or no lines, create a confusing,
  busy landscape.
• Lines should take the eye where you want it to
  goand keep it in the landscape.
• Avoid lines that take the eye into the sky, or
  into the neighbors yard!

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Before you start thinking about specific plant
  species, to get a good design, you must first
  plan for each plants characteristics, or
  Elements of Design

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Elements of Design
• Primary (visual)
• Plant type
• Plant form
• Plant height/width
• Plant Texture
• Plant Season of Interest
• (including color)

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Sustainable Landscape Design
Consider both foliage form and flower form

• Plant Form
• Arching
• Upright
• Creeping/spreading
• Drooping/weeping
• Mounded
• Horizontal branching
• Columnar

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Plant Size (height and width)
• Consider the plants
• MATURE, NATURAL
• size!

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Plant texture
• Visual coarseness/fineness of foliage,
  branching, flowers.
• A plants texture is relative to whats around
  it, and it may change throughout the season.
• Plant texture is EXTREMELY important in design,
  and can make or break a landscape

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Texture

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Texture

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Texture

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• The finer the texture, the more of it you need.
  Lawn grass is our finest textured plant.
• Consider textural changes to create a focal
  point, repetition, and variety.

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Season of Interest
• This is how you get a landscape that is
  interesting all yearby planning it out on paper!
• For each plant, group or mass, think about when
  it will have significant interest, and make that
  work with whats around it, creating focal
  points, repetition, unity.

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Season of Interest

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• COLOR!
• Whats the easiest way to choose a color scheme?
• STEAL AND COPY ONE!!!!

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Color

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Color
• Warm colors appear closer, so are good for
  viewing from a distance.
• Cool colors recede, so are better up close.

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Color

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Sustainable Landscape Design
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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Elements of Design
• Secondary Soil/fertility preferences
• (non-visual) Moisture requirements
• Light requirements
• Hardiness
• Disease Insect resistance

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• On a scale drawing, locate plants in slightly
  intertwined groups and masses, using single
  plants only when a focal point is desired.
• These groups and masses will help move the eye
  through the landscape.

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Next, keeping in mind the Principles of Design
  (Balance, Scale, Variety, Emphasis, Simplicity,
  Sequence, Repetition), assign Elements of Design
  characteristics to each plant, plant group or
  plant mass.

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Key plants soften a hard feature in the
  landscape
• On vertical corners or structures, they break the
  visual vertical line and keeps the eye in the
  landscape
• They soften large areas of hard surface, such as
  retaining walls or fences

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Sustainable Landscape Design
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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Accent plants are a focal pointthey draw
  attention to themselves
• Could be all year, or only certain times, such as
  when in bloom
• Accent plants can be a single plant, a group, or
  a mass

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Sustainable Landscape Design
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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Plant groups are 3 or more of a species, where
  each individual plant is discernable
• Often serve as accent plants at some point during
  the year

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Sustainable Landscape Design
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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Mass plants when many plants of a particular
  species are planted close enough together so that
  you cant see the individual plants
• Masses serve to move the eye between more
  important components and to tie a landscape
  together

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Sustainable Landscape Design
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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Start with a backdrop! Everything looks better
  with a backdrop! Create one if one doesnt exist
  yet.
• Then, locate any non-plant focal points.
• Then, start with your biggest plant or your focal
  point plants. Using your available space as a
  guideline, your tallest plant should be 1/3 or
  2/3 the height of the backdrop (unless the
  backdrop is more than 18-20 feet tall).

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Sustainable Landscape Design
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Flower Garden Design

• How big should your garden be?
• The width of a border planting should be 1/3 the
  width of the total area.
• Each height should have an equal amount of
  space within the bed.

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• In small areas where other rules dont apply, a
  4-8 foot wide border allows for an attractive
  variety of plants.

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• For island beds, be sure they fit into the
  overall concept plan.
• A good standard size is 8 feet wide, 15 feet
  long, with maximum plant height of 5 feet, but it
  should be in scale to the site!
• The tallest plant should be as tall as ½ the
  width of the bed.

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Garden Design

• For beds viewed from a distance, hold your hands
  out in front of you at shoulder width.
• Where your hands meet the backdrop is a good
  length for your flower bed.

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Sustainable Landscape Design
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Know what plants look like all year
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Intertwine plant groups to avoid lines that act
as inadvertent focal points
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Sustainable Landscape Design
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Sustainable Landscape Design

• Finally, choose specific plant species that match
  the assigned characteristics for each plant,
  group or mass.

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• MATCHING PLANTS
• Emerald Elf Amur Maple
• Regent Serviceberry
• Glossy Black Chokecherry
• Spreading Cotoneaster
• Beach Plum
• Compact American Cranberrybush
• Emerald Triumph Viburnum
• Diablo Ninebark

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• MATCHING PLANTS
• Birdsnest Spruce
• Dwarf Norway Spruce
• Dwarf Balsam Fir
• Aglo Rhododendron
• Dwarf Yew

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• MATCHING PLANTS
• Rosy Glow Barberry
• Evita Weigela
• Snowmound Spirea
• Fritschiana Spirea
• Cutleaf Stephenandra

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• MATCHING PLANTS
• Big Bluestem
• Red Switchgrass
• Overdam Feather Reed Grass
• Red Flame Grass
• Tufted Hairgrass
• Fountain Grass
• Windspiel Purple Moorgrass
• Strawberries Cream Ribbon Grass

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Sustainable Landscape Design

• MATCHING PLANTS
• Paprika Yarrow
• Red Beauty Yarrow
• Fanal Astilbe
• Luxuriant Bleeding Heart
• Sweet William
• Daylillies
• Coral Bells

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Sustainable Landscape Design
Enjoy your landscapes!