Gardening can be a task that is difficult, but one that holds its own reward in coaxing and nurturing plants to create something beautiful. However, some people want to go beyond the simple beauty of the greenery, and wish to impose order upon the more fluid shapes of nature, thus creating something that’s a work of art and a celebration of precision. It is this precision that forms the basis of formal garden design. If you have a desire to incorporate formal garden design in your own home garden, it helps to know where to start.

Clean Lines

Formal garden design is characterized by clean lines that define an area rather than natural, organic shapes. This is most easily accomplished by the use of tightly growing plants, hedges in particular, to define those lines. For those who are looking to incorporate formal garden design into their home, the simplest way to get started is to plant a hedgerow around a flower bed, enclosing your plants while using the hedge to provide a border.

Emphasizing the Pattern

As you grow more proficient in the significant upkeep that formal garden design requires, you may wish to find ways to further emphasize those lines. This is where paving and gravel can come into play, using them to fill negative spaces, defining walkways and even creating interplays of color that work with the plants used in your informal garden design. If you get to the point where your formal garden design is incorporating these elements, you’ll probably have something that looks like a beautiful, miniature park.

Topiary

A feature in many elaborate formal garden designs is topiary, where sculptures are created out of tight evergreen bushes or hedges. While you certainly wouldn’t expect someone new to topiary to suddenly start crafting elaborate sculptures out of the hedges, the process of coaxing the hedges to define the lines of your garden, in essence, contains the basics of topiary. If you do want to somehow incorporate this in your formal garden design, you should keep in mind that doing so requires patience and a steady hand when cutting.

For a basic topiary design to add to your formal garden, try using techniques to coax smooth curves in your hedges, helping the shape of your garden to flow. Or, if you still have something that’s got a lot of right angles and corners, start growing shapes at the corners to add decoration; think of the ornaments you see at the corners on fancy staircases and molding in architecture. By incorporating topiary into your formal garden design, you can take basic lines and create art, all adding up to a beautiful, green space in your home.

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Caroline Tilston, author of the Garden Style Guides, gives you a quick introduction to the essentials for getting started in your garden or outside space

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Ann Marier has written articles on house and garden topics providing helpful tips and advice. Read all about her latest articles on types of garden design offering a new insight into Garden design

The front yard of a home is a statement to the whole neighborhood of what the people who live in the house are like. Some yards are cluttered with junk or cars and do not speak well for the owners. Other yards have overgrown bushes and trees that say there is not much care being given to the home.

Having a beautiful front garden design can be a statement of great ownership. The time and effort put into the front garden design will not only look nice but will increase the value of the home and make the owners proud of their accomplishment.

Natural Front Garden Designs

There are many things to consider when designing the front garden. The first thing to consider is the location of the home. A home in the southwest desert will have a totally different front garden design than one in the northeast. Another consideration is the amount of care a person wants to take to maintain the front garden design.

Many people in desert areas where water is scarce and the summer season is extremely hot find that a natural garden design works great. Using rock, pebbles and drought tolerant plants can make a beautiful front garden design that will be able to stand up to the severe temperatures.

In very cold climates the homeowner may want to use the natural theme but will modify it. Evergreens make a beautiful natural garden design for such a climate. Looking for other native plants to the climate will insure that the front garden design will have lasting beauty.

Rocks and stone will look beautiful in cold climates as well and make great items for borders. Whatever the climate, using the natural products of the land will help make a nice front garden design.

Inviting Front Garden Designs

If the homeowner wants people to always feel welcome there are ways to say this with the front garden design. One of the most important aspects of welcoming people is making a clear walkway. Keeping the bushes and large plants away from walkways will make the home more accessible.

Another important aspect is using welcoming plants and colors. Bright cheery flowers say welcome better than about anything else. Early spring flowers such as tulips, crocus, and daffodils will invite people out of their winter doldrums. Bushes with bright green foliage can be placed to show the way to the door of the home.

Avoiding plants with thorns or a lot of pollen will make people feel more welcome and prevent injury or allergies. The front garden design of the home should be well manicured and inviting.

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When designing a container garden, consider the color, texture and form of each plant, combining bold colors with softer textures, pairing upright forms with weeping shapes and a using a variety of heights. Create visual interest in a container garden with helpful advice from a professional horticulturist in this free video on gardening. Expert: Leigh Anne Lomax Bio: Leigh Anne Lomax is currently the botanical garden and horticulture manager for Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art …

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Ann Marier has written articles on house and garden topics providing helpful tips and advice. Read all about her latest articles on types of garden design offering a new insight into Garden design.

Many people enjoy gardening and caring for their lawns as a hobby, making a beautiful outdoor space with one’s own thoughts, ideas, and work is very rewarding. Making a beautiful landscape garden design can be difficult for new gardeners or for some experienced gardeners as well.

Making a landscape garden design implies grafting a plant for each walkway, garden bed, tree, rock, and blade of grass to create the perfect outdoor space. This can seem like an overwhelming or daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. There are very basic forms that can be followed to make the space seem just right without taking so much work that it isn’t fun anymore.

Themed Gardens

Most landscape garden designs are based on a theme of some sort; it could be birds, relaxation, fragrance, a favorite plant or flower, a favorite color, or just about anything else. The point of a theme is to create a pattern and point of interest with in the landscape garden design to hold the viewer’s attention.

This can be accomplished subtlety or with obvious focal point. The key is pattern and repetition. The human eye likes to see pattern and repeating patterns; this can be accomplished in landscape garden design with color, size, species, or with an external commonality such as an animal the plants will attract.

Color is an important tool for landscape garden design, using bright cheery colors can create an entirely different feel than more subdued cool colors or neutral colors. Using bright colors in combination with cools or neutrals can enhance an overall theme.

If the subject of the landscape garden design were to attract butterflies, the garden beds could reflect this by creating floral wings on each side of the garden path, filled with flowers and plants butterflies need to grow and breed. To enhance the butterfly feel even further the colors used in the floral wings could reflect the butterflies the garden is meant to attract in color as well as shape.

Most landscape garden designs allow for paths and section planting areas into beds or by other likenesses. To create a unique garden space one can create lines with plant height, plant color, plant type, and the garden paths to create an over all affect that is pleasing to the gardener and their guests.

Using the butterfly garden example, choosing the plants a particular species of butterfly prefers and working around those colors, pairing it with like colors or plant heights can create dimension or a pattern within a pattern, which will give the garden a unique effect.

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In this lakeside update, landscape architect James David clarifies and connects diverse spaces.

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Ann Marier has written articles on garden issues such as bird problems providing helpful tips and advice. Read her latest articles on garden design offering a new insight and ideas.