Design Principles: Doing the Design and Landscape Materials

 DESIGN ELEMENTS

Design Principles part 3: Doing the design.

Do you have a particular favourite colour when it comes to plants or perhaps there are some colours that you just don’t want in your garden?

These are the sorts of things you need to think about when redesigning either all or some of your garden.

What to do next

• Consider your colour pallette, what colours don't you like or do like?
• Think about what plants your really want to include.
• If you have an attachment to certain plants, think about using those as a guideline to what else you can plant.
• Draw a scaled plan so you can work out the proportions of your gardens beds a bit better. A mudmap may be a good idea to start with but once you’ve decided on the plants you like, it’s time to think about drawing up a plan to scale so that you can be sure that all the plants you like will actually fit in. In some situations you may be able to get by with just the mud map.  
• Think about design styles: Start collecting images of gardens that you like.

Cottage Garden Style

A cottage garden is known for its flowering perennials with their soft, relaxed form and character. These gardens have a fairly informal style and are normally planted with flowering plants in muted and pastel colours. The plants tend to grow into each other, forming mounds and domes. 

Formal Garden Style

This style of garden has the most structure and can be quite rigid in their style. The basis of a formal garden is symmetry, balance, tailored plantings, simplistic plant choice and a sense of majesty. The gardens and pathways tend to run in straight lines and form grid like patterns

I'm talking with Glenice Buck of www.glenicebuckdesigns.com.au

Design Principles part 4

Landscape Materials

Over the last few weeks, Garden Designer Glenice Buck has been outlining all those factors you need to consider when you’re doing a re-design no matter how big or small.
Hopefully you’ve at least drawn a mudmap of your garden or yard if there’s nothing in it.
Do this before you buy the plants.

• But what are the options for say landscape materials?
• There are clever ways to achieve looks of the real thing without spending the big bucks.

Think locally to reduce transport costsThen there’s re-purposing material especially if it’s already in your garden or nearby.

What about fencing?

So many types of fencing

Timber 

Colourbond,

Wire fencing

Timber with horizontal rails.

Brick

Retaining walls

Reconstituted sandstone blocks

Drystone walls-especially if you have plenty of stone lying about on your property

Besser blocks that can be rendered or cap with sandstone fascias.

Timber- but this has a limited life and can be eaten out by termites.

Gabion walls-wire mesh that is filled with rocks.

Corten steel lengths edging as well as for retaining walls.

Steps: need to be structurally sound.

Natural stone: granite or Sandstone floaters.

Brick steps

Pieces of limestone or limestone tiles.

Concrete steps

Pathways

loose pebbles

paving: sandstone, granite, terracotta, brick, decomposed granite

I'm talking with  Glenice Buck of www.glenicebuckdesigns.com.au

That concludes the series on design principles