Garden design is an individual thing. It is often a reflection of your personality. You may like me, but you might not. While some people prefer tidy, neat gardens with no surprises, others enjoy the excitement of windy paths and lots of plant material, and the unknown. There are three types of gardens: semi-formal, formal and informal. You can divide them into different types depending on your preference. You can tie the garden design to your house, such as the grand french chateaux. The geometric patterns in the garden can match the house’s construction.
Lucky people have the gift of designing space. Some people don’t have this gift and struggle to visualize how the space will look. It is essential to understand that good design is about how you manage space and how people move around it. Good garden design is based on patterns and the space that they create. By using geometrical shapes, circles, triangles, rectangles etc. You can create a cohesive feel in your garden. You need to consider ground patterns and movement in your garden. What would you like people going? You can create ground patterns with bricks, paving or plant material like cut grass.
Formal gardens are symmetrical, geometrical, and have a strict policy regarding repeating patterns and plant material. This is a very controlled process. Plants are cut, shaped, and manipulated frequently. It’s often suitable for smaller gardens such as court yards. Formal gardens include urns, balustrades and formal pools. You know what you can expect, so there are no surprises.
Informal designs can be asymmetrical or not as well-planned. The structure elements like steps, walls and paths can be strewn with plant material. The plant material can self-seed and roam around the garden. Informal gardens are soft and full of surprises so you never know what you can expect.
Semi-formal is a combination of both the two. It is usually the constructed structures, such as steps, paths, and retaining walls that are formal. The informal element is the plant material, which is allowed to spill on top of them, softening the hard edges.
There are many styles of gardens available within these three types. They include contemporary, Japanese and Mediterranean.
Contemporary is a style that reflects the modern world but uses a variety of plant materials. As important as the flowers are their form and texture, so is the foliage. The hard landscaping is designed to be woven into geometrically shaped buildings that flow into the larger landscape. To highlight architectural forms, plants are used as focal points.
The cottage was an ideal way to go back to simpler country homes in the late nineteenth century. They were planted with vegetables, herbs, fruits, bulbs, and fruit bushes. They were geometric and harmonised in their colours. The plants thrived on being heavily fertilized.