Best Garden

It is a rare gardener indeed who wishes to make a gar¬den look smaller than it is, unless he or she is moti¬vated by an underlying passion for bonsai landscapes. Most wish to increase the apparent size; others to make a broad site with little depth appear longer than it is, or to make a long and narrow garden seem less tunnel-like; or the aim may simply be to make a small garden seem less confined. A way to do all these things is through the manipulation of scale.

Making a small garden appear less cramped is often best achieved by avoiding a single unified design; rather, the space can be broken down into even smaller portions, where the attention is focused onto the detail of planting and hard landscaping. These spaces or garden rooms can each be given different characters which are presented as a series of little sur¬prises. There is no golden rule which says a garden must have an open lawn in the middle; if space is really tight it is usually better to go for a fuller, heavier planting. One possibility is to turn the garden into a miniature ornamental jungle, where paths wind in among the plants in such a way as never to reveal the full extent of the site.

Long thin gardens can also be treated this way, so that it is never possible to see down the full length of the long axis. If this is unavoidable, then try to arrest the eye with some major feature in the foreground or middle distance, such as a circular lawn or a specimen tree, or place horizontal features such as low walls, wide steps, paving or hedges across the axis. Tiered plants like Viburnum plicatum ‘Mariesii’ have the same effect. In a less symmetrical garden, features can be placed down the sides, causing the eye to swerve and pause – perhaps a painted seat in a formal arbour or the striking trunks of a multi-stemmed tree. In all of this it is a good idea to begin by making a sketch plan of the garden and drawing in the sight lines to see where the visual emphasis lies.

There are many ways of increasing the sense of depth in a garden. Vistas can be emphasized and “lengthened” by stressing the distant perspective. Eye-catching features can be used to draw the eye away into the distance, and there is no need to rely solely on the contents of your garden to do this. Make use of the landscape outside: let a distant hilltop or church spire become the focus of a garden vista. On the other hand, a door in a garden wall 20ft (6m) away will work in the same way for a smaller garden. It is a matter of degree and using opportunities.

Creating a false perspective is another useful tech¬nique. By placing large plants in the foreground and smaller ones of the same shape in the distance, at a glance they all appear to be the same size but receding into the distance. It is possible to do the same with foliage, by planting thin airy foliage close by and den¬ser foliage further away.

Lawn-mower stripes in a lawn can be used to give direction to a view or to pull the eye in a particular direction, lengthening or shortening the perspective. Arches and pergolas will enhance perspective, while fences and trelliswork have a strong linear impact. Trellis can also create trompe I’oeil effects, giving the impression of three dimensions where only two exist. Even mirrors have been used in garden doorways to double the length of a vista. Trompe I’oeil can be used to highly sophisticated ends, with false scenes and features painted onto flat surfaces. Such tricks can be very restrictive to a whole design so they should be used with care. Simpler devices might be preferable; the reflective surface of a pool of still water offers tran¬quillity and a vertical dimension (its own depth and the reflection of the sky above).

Tags: garden features, gardener, golden rule, plants, sketch plan, specimen tree, visual emphasis

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 10:43 am and is filed under Garden Care, Gardening Tips, How to. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.