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| Landscaping your garden |
Approaching the design of a landscape requires some degree of prior thinking and analyse. For a garden to succeed, its elements have to connect and present a scene of fluid control. For what is a garden if not nature controlled, our personal interpretation of nature and how we would like to live in it.
In the big outdoors all things are connected. Processes that occur thousands of miles away (the sun) affect the processes that occur in your back garden. Plant growth, as well as the hard materials that you ay choose for your garden, are affected by forces well beyond the control of even the most professional of garden designers.
To create a good design requires a certain humility in the face of this unimaginable massive system of connections.
Good design also requires a certain boldness in the face of this immensity. Making a mark on the landscape is not something to be entered into lightly. This country’s millennia-long tradition of earthworks, stone monuments and landscape construction in the form of wall and hedge field division, cannot be described as subtle. But it works.
To create a good garden you have to ask yourself why some arrangements look good in the landscape and some look out of place.
The key to this is joined-up design. Lets look at this in two ways – joined-up design within the garden itself, and joined up design incorporating the garden into its wider context.
A concept often used in the professions of landscape architecture and urban design, is that of legibility. A space in which people move, be it on foot or by car, should be legible. In other words, you should be able to read it. A path should look like its going somewhere, and unless you are deliberately trying to create mystery, it should be fairly clear where its going. A utility area should be in the place you would expect it, the patio should be in the sunniest area and a pond in the lowest area.
This may sound like stating the obvious, but in all fairness, how many gardens have you seen that just don’t make sense. Areas with neither form nor function abound in the average modern garden. So much popular garden design is based on Victorian concepts of lawn, shrub bed and summer bedding. We need to learn to read the garden again.
New Beginnings
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A good start on the road to a new garden literacy is to get functional about it all. Find the logical place for the washing line, for the children’s swing, for the dog kennel, for the shed, for the coal bunker, for the compost heap. Then design the garden around this. It might sound boring, but it can be surprisingly productive to start a design in this way.
This way of thinking could be called the initial analysis. What do I need in the garden and where can it go? When you installed your kitchen, you didn’t get distracted by the precise location of the bread bin before you had figured out where the sink, fridge, cooker and washing machine were going.
There are many styles of gardens to be considered. Style could refer to the styles that are already in existence – once new and revolutionary historical styles such as Babylonian, Roman, Chinese, Japanese, European Medieval, Renaissance, French or Italian formal, Dutch formal, Georgian English, Colonial, Victorian and Edwardian.
There are enough garden history books to provide plenty of inspiration via these proven styles. If you have built a period style house it is always worth exploring the historical garden style that would apply.
Garden style seemed to lose its way a little in the twentieth century (with some notable exceptions), only to emerge with spectacular populist tackiness in the form of garden makeover TV programmes. There are examples of fine modernist, post-modernist, minimalist and natural-style gardens from the last 50 years, but in the spirit of the times, much garden design is about finding your own personal style.
If you have evolved a unique personal style and are confident to reflect that in your garden, work away, but if you don’t have personal style just make sure you borrow a good one. There is one major factor that so many people get wrong and that factor is scale. The outdoor realm has a different scale to the indoor.
The person who can quite easily create beautiful interiors can just as easily make a complete hames of the garden by getting the scale factor wrong. Get over the ‘Hansel and Gretal fear of trees’ complex and plant some big ones, choose the larger paving slab, group a few of the same kind of plants together. Obviously these are are generalisations and every garden will have different scale requirements, but keep the considerations of scale at the forefront of your designing mind.
A final word of advice on joined-up design within the garden – be grown up about your plant choices. Think about texture, tone, scale and most especially foliage. Flowers come and go, but foliage is there with you for most of the year, and it truly dictates the planting mood of the garden. There are more types of green than you might think, and the size of foliage can make the difference between a bitty looking garden and a sophisticated tableau.
Wider Schemes
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We have looked at joined-up design within the garden, but you must also think about how your garden joins up with the landscape at large, aesthetically and ecologically. The wider landscape may be a surburban housing estate, a country road or a bog, it doesn’t really matter. No garden is an island, so to speak, and it will always be determined in some way by its surroundings. Nowhere is this as important than in rural situations.
As the crawl of ribbon housing along rural roads continues, it is the gardens that are the first visual port of call to the innocent passer-by. Which brings us to the importance of the boundaries of the garden. More than likely you will share a boundary with, if not another house, then almost certainly a public road. Your choice of boundary will not only determine, to a degree, the look of your own garden, but also the look of the wider landscape.
When taking all of this into consideration, one must come to the conclusion that there is a certain amount of civic responsibility to making a garden that is suitable for the surroundings.. It is up to you to decide what is suitable in any given area.
Some rules are absolute, however. There is a very strong case for using local materials in rural and even urban settings. In rural situations, the planting of native trees will not only ‘sit’ the house into the landscape, but also embellish the landscape at large. As well as views into, there can of course be views out of your garden, and here one can utilise the Japanese concept of ‘shakkei’ or borrowed landscape.
Any views out of the garden, be they sweeping vistas of the bay or a glimpse of the neighbours tree, especially become part of your garden. So don’t build a wall around yourself, use these borrowed landscapes to your advantage.
The final point about this joined-up design business is one that has been widely lauded in the style mags – that of joining the inside to the outside. With building and heating technology allowing for more and more bigger windows in houses, not to mention French doors, conservatories and sun rooms, the view out to the garden takes on greater significance than before.
In approaching a garden design, make a point of studying views from the windows that look out onto the garden. Realistically, with our climate, much of your enjoyment of the garden is from the comfort of a centrally heated room.
Whatever your particular style, if you follow the above advice, a stunning garden should be well in your sights. Finding the right balance between respecting the surroundings and making a statement is the key to a successful garden. If this seems like too much of a challenge, you can always hire in the professionals to do the job for you.
Hiring a professional
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Those with a bit of sense and a bit of money may hire a garden designer to envisualise their dream space. Considering gardening design is a relatively new career in this country, a Garden Designer may have come into the business via various qualifying routes.
You should look to see a portfolio of previous work and ensure that a sizeable amount of your and the designers time is spent discussing requirements, style and costings before pen is set to paper. Some landscape architects are also involved in garden design, and you are assured of a professional service if you hire one of this fairly rare breed.
The country is full of “landscapers” of varying degrees of reputability. Many of these firms are staffed by qualified horticulturists or designers, but as many again are ‘cowboys’ trying to earn a few quid at what they wrongly see as an ‘easy trade’. The ALCI (Association of Landscape Contractors in Ireland) can provide a list of reputable firms. Whichever category of landscape professional you engage you should expect the following stages in the road to garden paradise.
The Initial Consultation
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The initial consultation is a very important first step in the process. Most designers will charge a fee for this stage. The designer will meet you on site to find out what you like, what you want and what you think you need in your garden Some designers may even send a questionnaire in order to deduce your inner desires.
It is helpful to the designer if you have thought a little about your requirements and how much you want to spend. An average garden will start at about 5,000 euros and between 500 and 1,500 of this will cover the designers fee, depending on the level of complexity.
Cut out images from magazines that take your fancy to help the designer assess your individual needs. Style is all about being confident about a look, and about yourself living in it. Its also very important at this stage to be realistic about how much garden maintenance you can afford to undertake, and to be honest with the professional about this important factor. You may be content with just a consultation – a few hours of professional advice without any further costs or drawings.
Site Survey
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The designer will then carry out a full survey and assessment of the site. This involves checking the microclimate – shady/windy areas, suntraps etc, noting the orientation and the light that may enter the garden at different times of the day, as well as drainage, soil types and views out or in from the garden.
The designer will also have to measure up the garden and note any existing features, observing the tone dictated by the house and any other built features like walls or garden buildings.
A Draft/Concept Plan
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At this stage the designer can begin to create a draft or concept plan, outlining the design proposals. Ideally, this will have married your practical requirements, your stylistic bent and the constraints or opportunities presented by the site. This draft plan is then discussed between you and the designer and any alterations or changes will be noted.
Final plans, working drawings and instructions.
The designer will hen draw up detailed masterpieces, planting plans and construction details. He or she may also produce sketches showing what the garden will look like when finished. This process may take some time as the details are finalised. For larger gardens, the designer may draw up a contract document for you to sign with the contractor to avoid any misunderstandings in the construction process.
Working drawings will then be handed over to the contractor to proceed with the garden. The designer will then supervise the construction for an additional fee usually charged on a hourly basis. Alternatively, the designer may be part of a design and build firm where the design and construction is handled by the same people.
Garden designers can also offer advice on cost estimates, or consult with you if you would like to carry out the work yourself. If you fancy having a go at designing and constructing the garden yourself the following sections should keep you on the right path.
Plants
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All over the country garden owners are planting on a whim, seduced by the temptation of the latest, greatest frou frou flower on display in the garden centre. Follow this route and in five years time your garden will resemble little more than a melange of mis-matched oddities. The two other great sources of most peoples plant choices are the knowledgeable garden relative and the style magazine.
The green fingered Uncle can be a great source of inspiration but doesn’t tend to be up on the latest trends. The style magazine on the other hand oozes class but can be short on practical info.
Right plant-right place
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The main rule in planting design is ‘right plant – right place’. Whatever trends come and go this rule must be adhered to. Nature has managed to cover the planet with a blanket of living plants, colonising the most inhospitable of places. If plants can survive in Arctic tundra and the Gobi desert, surely a few can be coaxed into thriving in your own patch of nature.
Your garden no matter how shady/damp/small, can play host to plants. It is simply a matter of knowing what plants will grow well in your environment. A good garden designer will know this and plan the garden accordingly.
Planting plans
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If you are going it alone arm yourself with information, it’s all out there in the plethora of garden books on the market. The information is there in the garden centres too. Most plants for sale now have a little tag indicating the preferred environment, indicating ideal sun, shade, wind or soil conditions and moisture levels.
This tag will also tell you the eventual heights and spreads of plants, take note. If you are tackling the planting design of a garden yourself, and assuming you have already addressed the big picture, it is a good idea to draw up a rough plan. A home made planting plan does not need to name and place every plant, merely to give you a guide to heights, texture and colours.
Draw a quick map of the garden and identify where you might want a feature plant, where you might want ‘in-between’ plants for structure, and where you might want ground cover, trees etc. Don’t skimp on the trees either.
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The above article is courtesy of House and Home, Ireland's favourite interiors magazine which also publishes 'Build Your Own House and Home', the annual 300 page reference to building a home in Ireland.
www.houseandhome.ie
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http://www.houseandhome.ie/subscription.asp
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