The Language of Landscape:
Designing a Garden That Reflects Your Personality
This is a perfect time for site analysis. Garden centers are overflowing with plants and ornaments, and it's a wonderful season to be outdoors.
Even if you have horticultural know-how, you probably think landscape design is an abstract concept to grasp. This is because it's tougher to visualize the effect of a garden than to imagine a single element in the mind's eye, such as a flower, a tree or a trellised vine. Therefore, the big picture should be broken into smaller parts so you can better understand it.
Fifteen years ago, I developed a system to assist homeowners with the basics of landscape design. It's called "lernscaping" and helps you determine what you want, so your landscape will reflect the essence of your personality.
Lernscaping puts your interests and desires into the "language of landscape." So, you can communicate what you want to garden center personnel or a landscape professional before you have turned one spade of soil or purchased any nursery stock.
There's no way to include my entire 84-point questionnaire in this column. But here are its key points, so you'll be able to create a basic idea for a landscape that fits your desires, personality and budget.
Reflect on your childhood. At a young age, you were probably already identifying choice landscape elements. The sounds of a babbling brook could remind you of fly fishing with your dad or walking along a stream with a friend.
Perhaps your favorite recollection of spring, as a child, is picnics in Rock Creek Park. Therefore, the fresh green smells of the lawn and the woods, the sweet honeysuckle and hillsides of daffodils bring with them an exhilarating feeling.
Think about the elements that excite you in the garden now, for example, sculpture, colors, rocks, smells, paths or types of paving. What themes do you prefer more than others? Formal fountains vs. rock water cascades, geometric, symmetrically balanced paving or a curved, sweeping patio into the woods?
Let these thoughts and images form the framework of your design. They are critical to making the landscape personally yours.
Get to know your outdoor space. Pay careful attention to the dimensions of your land, compass aspects, drainage patterns and the location of underground utilities. By becoming familiar with all the features of your property, you will save time, money and aggravation in the later stages of your landscaping efforts.
Now, record your garden's vital statistics. Make a checklist that includes the following information:
Consider every aspect of your outdoor area, favorite colors, seasons, plants, building materials and activities. Do you entertain, have children? How many hours do you spend in the garden, and how much do you want to spend for it? Do you want screening, seating, lighting and water? A client once asked me to make a clothesline blend into a natural garden that we were installing. Therefore, it was an important element to include in the design.
Sit, read, work and relax in your outdoor area, at different times of the day and night. Note how the sun travels, casting shadows or creating hot spots.
Look to the horizon. Check the view from every possible angle. You want to enhance or frame an aesthetically pleasing vista. Often pleasant views are lost when developers clear land, and it is necessary to create beautiful vistas of your own.
Heat pumps, highways and smokestacks are features that you might want to screen. Beware, however, that planting in or fencing off an ugly feature might call more attention to it. Your goal should be to distract the viewer as much as to hide the eyesore.
In the case of a heat pump, for example, you might use benches that have an ornamental quality and face the viewer away from the objectionable object. Plan color and interest on the opposite side of the garden.
To mask an unpleasant, distant sight, you can plant large pines, spruces, cedars and/or hollies staggered in masses of three or more. Planted in strategic places, these evergreens, which grow full all the way to the base, will serve as year-round cover and focus the eye in toward the garden.
Highlight existing features on your property. I've helped people develop designs that retained and enhanced existing features, such as native wildflowers, streams, rock outcroppings, native woodland plants, an old windblown juniper and existing trees. Decide whether an old apple tree is worth keeping. The extra thought is worth it.
You may look at natural features as liabilities and not want to keep them. For example, if vegetable gardening is your interest, rock outcroppings could be a nuisance.
A windblown eastern red cedar or pine would be in the way if you preferred a formal garden. Pyracantha and barberry are desirable plants that provide food and shelter for birds, but they're too thorny to grow near a child's play area. Sculptural elements, seating, fountains and water gardens are a welcome addition to most landscape designs. At least one piece in a private corner of the yard, tucked into some background shrubs, and surrounded by perennials, can add interest to your garden.
Ultimately, your budget will determine the size and the quantity of plants that you install. But cost shouldn't hold you back from creating your ideal design on paper. What's more important at this point is establishing a preliminary budget. A rule of thumb is about 10 percent of property value.
If the bottom line is unrealistic, there are ways to cut costs. The most grandiose design can be broken into its smallest parts. You can coordinate a design installation to do the paving this year, plant trees next year, more the following year, then shrubs, and so on for however long it takes. Royal gardener Andre Le Notre took 25 years to complete the gardens at Versailles for King Louis XIV.
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