Garden design basics

Planning your own garden starts with a basic understanding of both landscape design principles and proper plant selection guidelines for your particular area. While your garden is naturally smaller in scale than an entire landscape, it is, according to New Mexico Landscaper Steve Boulden, subject to essentially the same design rules.

• Purpose. The most important aspect of any home or garden design is the purpose of the space you're designing. Is your garden for a walkway or for outdoor living? Is your garden for food or flowers? Do you want your garden to be viewed as art or a place to be actively explored? Once you determine your garden's function, you can begin to sketch out a rough plan.

• Unity. Boulden says a landscape's unity is achieved through two concepts: consistency, elements working together to create a whole and repetition, similar elements scattered throughout the landscape. Use the size, texture, and color of the plants and flowers in your garden to create unity. You can also achieve unity through the use of garden decor: ornaments, decorative stones, and sculptures.

• Simplicity. Keeping a design simple seems obvious, but sticking with just a few colors and a few well-placed decor items for your garden really will make the whole thing pop.

• Balance. Balance in landscape and garden design is either symmetrical or asymmetrical. In symmetrical landscape designs, an equally divided garden has shared elements—colors, textures, heights, and plants. Asymmetrical designs are a little more complicated than symmetrical designs; while dissimilar garden areas might contain the same elements (to create a broader sense of unity), they may have entirely separate design themes.

• Color. Color, naturally, is what draws the eye toward your garden. Boulden says warm reds, oranges, and yellows appear to advance toward a viewer while cooler greens, blues, and pastels appear to move away from a viewer; he suggests using dark, coarsely textured plants in a garden's foreground with pastel-colored plants in the background to give a garden depth.

• Natural transition. Create an organic flow in your garden by transitioning between elements to move the eye through gradual changes in plant height, size, and color.

Start your own drawn garden plan by measuring your plot. You can either use a plat map of your home (and probably your neighbors' homes) obtained from your developer or county records office, or you can plot your own map on graph paper.

Make sure to measure your property from front to back and side to side; then measure the walls and angles of your home. Mark all measurements to scale on the graph paper and include representations of all other existing elements, such as trees, shrubs, decks, walkways, etc.

Now, take a look at your yard. Walk around it. Take some time to look at other yards, web sites, magazines, and gardening books. What are the themes you want to incorporate into your garden? Plot out paths on your site map, and start to sketch in design elements around them, including plants, decorative items, and any structural changes (retaining walls, slopes, ponds, watering systems, etc.) you'll need to make to your yard to accommodate your garden.

Finally, you're ready to select plants.

• Know your planting zone. The USDA has specific guidelines for which plants will thrive in which climates; check the Web for a zone map for your area. Do a little research on the types of plants you want and check them against the map to ensure your garden will thrive.

• Choose plants to fit your design. Consider the following aspects of your needs:
  n Dimensions: shape, height, width
  n Form, texture, color, season
  n Sun or shade requirements
  n Drought and insect resistance
  n Soil type