Plan your dream garden

Planning your dream garden starts rather easily with making a simple sketch of your yard and future gardening plots.

Walk around your yard, measure beds and walking paths and plot them out to scale on a sheet of graph paper. Remember to include existing features of your yard on the plot: a deck, yard decor, fences, lighting, etc.

Then, continue with plant, focal point, decor, and theme selections based on that vision that's been planted in your mind for so long. Here, we'll give you a few tips on putting together a few popular garden themes.

Japanese gardens

Japanese and Asian gardens are based on a simple, even obvious, principle: nature. The primary design aspect of a Japanese garden is to reproduce a totally natural setting on a reduced scale in a natural way, meaning garden elements must mirror their larger counterparts in nature. So, says Advanced Master Gardener Scott Reil, you would never install a square lake or fountain in a Japanese garden as both are man-made.

Asian gardens typically utilize water elements, rocks, and sand, as well as borrowed scenery—distant views beyond the garden worked into the overall view of the garden. Japanese gardens come from a storied history rich with symbolism and spirituality; every element of the garden has a specific meaning and purpose. While we can't give you the whole history and meaning behind these gardens here (though we do encourage you to research them), we can briefly detail the three main types of Japanese gardens.

• Hill and pond. The hill and pond garden is a basic style that actually originated in China that incorporates a pond, either made from water or represented by raked sand.

• Flat. Flat gardens are the kind synonymous with Zen gardens; these wide, flat, contemplative gardens were inspired by spaces in front of Asian temples.

• Tea. Tea gardens are rustic and traditionally very sparsely planted; focal points include a walkway, gates and pond.

Rock gardens

Rock gardens, though their name might be a shade misleading, actually do feature plants. Essentially, a rock garden consists of a protrusion of rocks into which a selection of low-growing plants is planted.

Rock gardens are good choices for sloped landscapes; plants generally utilized in rock gardens are indigenous to mountain regions. You can also install a rock garden on flat terrain by building slopes with sandy, rocky soil (though this is not an easy task).

If constructing a rock garden, consider the following:

• The texture and shape of natural rock outcropping. Study some books or visit local hilly or mountainous areas; rock gardens are meant to mirror these natural environments, so you'll want to embed your rocks within their slope in a natural way.

• The type of rock. Porous rocks will yield the best plant life; the top rock choice is limestone, while the one to avoid is a common field boulder.

• Layered construction. Layering the base of your rock garden ensures proper water drainage, a key component in healthy plant life among the rocks. Dig a hole at least a foot deep; fill it halfway with broken stone, bricks or terra cotta. Add a layer of gravel; top with a layer of soil and wash it with water. Lay major rocks of the garden irregularly and continue to top each layer with soil and a spray of water as you go.

• Low-lying flowers and shrubs. Quite a few plant types thrive in rock gardens, including creeping baby's breath, irises, toadflax, alpine poppies, blue phlox, and thyme.