The Basics of Landscaping Design

In landscaping, the success of your project doesn’t only depend on how beautiful are the plants that you are planning to include, how complete are your tools and supplies and how many tips and information you have.

Understanding landscaping design and its principles is a very important factor that you have to keep in mind if you want to see your garden beautifully landscaped.

Here are the basic principles that you have to remember when choosing your landscaping design;

Harmony – This is the main factor that you have to think about in a landscape design. You can do this by grouping alike garden elements together; including plants, garden decorations or lights. Try to create a big, single design out of the groups of plants or decors. You can group together elements with the same height, colors, textures and sizes.

Balance – If your landscaping design has balance, you can expect a great output. You see, anything with balance or equality can be very beautiful. Example of this is symmetrical balance and asymmetrical balance:

• Symmetrical – with equal space and wherein garden elements match this space.

• Asymmetrical – this is a mix of similar elements in one side and different elements on the other

Simplicity – this is a very common principle in most art and design. And if you’re just beginning to get the hang of landscaping, this is the best principle that you could follow. In this case, you can opt for simple elements like choosing few colors and plants as well as other decorations and lights.

Color – Of course, all garden will not be as beautiful as they are without color. Color is the one that brings life to everything that you have in your garden. You can apply some color principles in your garden such as choosing colors that make things look closer. In this case, the colors reds, oranges and yellows are perfect.

If you want, you can opt for colors which give you cool feeling like blues, greens and pastel colors. These colors make object look farther. Don’t forget to include background colors such as blacks, whites and greys. They are the colors that best compliments the bright colors of your garden.

Lines – choosing the line pattern wherein you will arrange your plants and garden decors is important. This is where the flow and contour of your garden depends.

Transition – in whatever you do, transition should be gradual and should look natural so you won’t experience any bugging hassles. This is also true with landscaping design. Natural transition is necessary in your landscape design because any abrupt or radical changes in the design will not look good. Like, if you are planting plants with different height; you should not plant a taller plan immediately beside a small plant. It would look much better to plant mid-sized plants in between them.

Proportion – when planning your landscaping design, it is best to organize your garden elements in relation to the size, color and types. This way, your garden will not look like it was all mixed up without proper planning.

These are just some of the principles that you have to think about regarding your landscaping designs. And you have to keep in mind that these are in no way absolute. You can still add up a thing or two and innovate most of these principles depending on what you prefer.

It is actually best to apply your own creativity when planning for landscaping design.

Editor
Peter Charalambos