The importance of good landscape design

Garden design plans are best developed with the help of a professional landscaping contractor with formal training in botany and landscape architecture. Gardens are key components to any yard and contribute much more than color and greenery to the aesthetic of your home and your landscape.

When designed in accordance with a master landscaping plan that reflects the entirety of your living experience, gardens accomplish a number of things for your property that add vitality and dimension to your outdoor living experience.

One of the many ways to develop garden design plans that directly reflect the architecture of the home; experience has taught us that this is often a much neglected ingredient of garden design. When people view your property, they view it as an entirety.

They notice the home first because it is the largest and tallest structure on the lot. Whatever unique structural features characterize its architecture set a pattern that the mind expects to see continue as they eye travels down the slope of the roof into the surrounding greenery. A garden design planned around the same basic geometric patterns and linear movement of the house itself brings an immediate sense of harmony and connotes a unity of Nature and structure that makes for superior landscaping design.

Garden design also adds a sense of life and growth throughout the property-even making inorganic structures appear more "alive" in certain respects. Outdoor areas have to be set aside for specific purposes, and outdoor structures such as swimming pools, play areas, sports courts, outdoor kitchens, and patio seating areas have to be constructed by experienced specialists.

Many of these structures are extremely complex and lack any semblance of an organic sensibility. This is where a professionally developed garden design can play a determining role in establishing the aesthetic of your property. Adding a sense of vibrancy, color, and life around exterior architecture and outdoor decor will go a long ways toward making your entire property appear to have a life of its own.

Garden design plans can also be developed that convey a sense of progression through the yard. We often plant gardens near motor courts and front walkways that run parallel to concrete and brick work. Plant material can be selected whose natural growth patterns help move the eye along toward an intended destination. Traditional French and Italian gardens are two good examples of garden designs whose forms connote symmetry and linear progression.

Other garden designs, such as the parterre garden, are built around pathways that are developed for people to walk through. Of course, one is not limited to the pure historical form of such a style. Landscaping professionals typically customize these forms to the specifics of a home and surrounding property to give it a much more personal look and feel.

One of the things we have noticed in recent years is an increasing demand for garden designs that reflect a peaceful state of mind. Japanese gardens, traditional Zen gardens, and morning gardens are very popular forms to plant around fountains and patios. Most of our clients that request these designs are looking for a private place set apart from the rest of the yard where they can read the paper, enjoy coffee and conversation at sunrise, or simply meditate to the sound of a water fountain.

Gardens planted for these purposes have to be carefully developed with the right soil nutrients and plant material to provide the sense of an ideal environment separated from the rest of the world.

Again, this is where a professional landscaping architect can prove invaluable in developing something truly unique that will last and continue to satisfy you for many years to come