Garden Ideas – 3 Quick and Easy Ways to Transform Your Garden
Unless you know a little bit about garden design and how it works, before you start planning your garden, you are leaving the results down to a lottery. Most people make the mistake of assuming that they can create a nice garden just by adding plants and features.
However, unless you get the design shape basics right, just adding plants and features will never create a truly spectacular garden. Getting the right design shape of your garden is critical; the shape needs to be visually pleasing as well as functional. The most important areas in order to get the right shape are the lawn and patio areas. Get these areas right and it sets the tone for the rest of the garden.
1. How to create the right shapes in your garden
a.) Choose simple shapes. Really simple, like circles, ovals, squares or rectangles. Avoid hexagons as they will look too fussy, simplicity is beauty.
b.) Make the shapes you choose big, for clarity. As a guideline, your areas of lawn and patio should add up to approximately two-thirds of the amount in your garden.
c.) Keep it interesting; create shapes that steer your eyes around the garden. If you are using two circles, for instance, as your lawn shape, slightly offset them from one another and this will create movements and encourage the visual flow around the garden.
You will be amazed at how effective starting with the right shape is. If you’ve had no success in the past with creating fabulous garden, give it a go by trying to get the shape right before you start adding plants.
2. Transforming your existing garden
If you’ve already added lots of plants and features to your garden, you can still get the shape right retrospectively. It’s a little harder to do if you just put everything that is there on paper and then try to overlay shape you think the work. Just tweaking an existing border shape to the new shape of your lawn you will find produces dramatic results.
3. Where to start
a.) Get some paper and plot your existing garden on it. The more accurate you can get your drawing the better. If you’ve never measured a garden, search for tutorials or instructional videos around the internet, you can also use basic landscaping books for reference.
b.) Once you have your outline, try drawing some simple geometric shapes on it and see how you can improve your current lawn and patio shape.
As Thomas Edison once said, genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, so get your work done. Never say give up, never say die, and keep practicing, you’ll get your perfect garden in no time.
