Garden Design Nursery Landscaping Guide
Garden Design For A Perfect Garden
By Bridgitte Clare Tavernar
Garden design is a discipline that requires attention to detail,
plant knowledge, technical competence and artistic flair. You
can complete a garden design course, to increase your knowledge
and skills and then look at completing a design of your garden
during the winter months.
You can visit websites on the internet, to look at the more popular
garden designs. The Japanese gardens are rather popular. The Japanese
perfected garden design long ago. Water features are included
in nearly every garden in Japan. Japanese water gardens are, in
fact, famous throughout the world for their natural beauty and
exceptional craftsmanship.
Garden design is a living art form and very few of us are lucky
enough to have a natural talent for it. The rest of us need to
learn the basic principals and practices of good garden design.
Think About Your Garden Design During The Winter Months
For those of us who love to garden, garden design is a subject
near and dear to our hearts. When the winter months deprive you
of the chance to roll up your sleeves and dig some dirt or tend
the flowers, nothing can stop you from poring through the seed
and plant catalogs, dreaming of spring.
Plans to put in a cutting bed or create a mini-field of perennial
wildflowers dance in your head like sugarplums, full of fun and
promise. Without a cohesive plan for your planting adventures,
you may end up with a garden design that’s not as pleasing as
you’d like.
Winter is a great time to work on sprucing up your existing garden
and fine-tuning an overall design. After all, what else is there
to do?
Create A Wishlist Of Plants For Your Garden
The fun part of designing a garden is constructing your wishlist
of plants, from shrubs to vegetables - and beyond, of course!
Remember, you don’t need to do it all this year. Gardening is
somewhat like a great marriage. It’s a lifelong love.
So when you put your list of projects to paper, think long term.
Don’t hesitate to include your ideal plants, garden ornamentation,
brick pathway, or the massive display of spring bulbs giving way
to summer perennials.
The old way of garden design required graph paper, a sharp pencil,
plenty of patience and excellent visualization skills. Although
some gardeners still prefer this method, you can have a lot of
fun creating your garden design with any number of excellent software
packages that are available now.
Garden Design Software
There is some manual labor involved. You do need to measure the
dimensions of your garden area. Once that’s accomplished, you’re
ready to sit down and create a visual representation of your dream
garden design.
Garden design software comes with databases of plant images and
characteristics, organized in categories. Choose your gardening
zone, plant type, exposure and soil requirements to select those
suited to your plot and taste. Such software lets you virtually
install your brick pathway and plant a perimeter of annuals.
You’ll see how many plants are required for the allotted space
and how they’ll look at planting time as well as in midsummer.
How about a shade tree to eventually cool your southern facing
kitchen? Select your tree and plant it. See how much cooling cover
it provides three or five or ten years from now.
Garden Software Can Master Calculated Predictions
The software calculates the distance of the tree from your house
that’s required to keep your foundation intact 20 years from now.
Marvelous! The visuals provided by such garden design software
are inspiring and accurate representations of what you may expect
of your design, both in the short and long term.
The best thing about garden design software is that if you decide
you don’t care for the looks of an area, you just do it over -
on your computer! You can also make as many garden designs as
you wish. It’s a lovely way to spend some winter’s eves!
Using Your Garden Design Software
You can start by drawing existing trees. The shade they create
will affect your garden. Draw twenty different landscape symbols
on paper, including both hard and soft landscape features.Do not
trace the hard and soft landscape features.
Do not trace the symbols but draw them yourself and submit the
drawings to your tutor. Either scan them and email with your assignment,
or mail, be sure to include your name and the course and lesson
number plus your address.
Garden design is a discipline that requires attention to detail,
plant knowledge, technical competence and artistic flair. There
are garden design courses to provide you with the knowledge and
skills required to design, build, research and manage gardens.
Once you finalise your garden design on a computer, then you
will have the blueprint for your spring garden.
About the Author:
Bridgitte Clare Tavernar has written a number of articles on gardening
and landscaping including Greenhouse
Gardening, Small
Garden.
Keep a lookout for more of her articles on this website.
Little Known Gardening Facts....
What is the difference between annuals and perennials?
Both are, of course, plants but the difference
is in how long they last and how often you have to replant them.
Annuals must be replanted every year. Examples of annuals are
any type of vegetable, sunflowers and flowers such as violets.
Perennials are plants that will renew themselves. They include
trees, bulb plants such as lilies, tulips and include roses and
other hardy plants that go dormant that during the winter months.
Most ornamental grasses are considered to be perennials.
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