Brief theory of garden designing
A task of a landscape architect is to arrange garden space in a way that it is harmonious. Particular parts of a garden require different layouts, that correspond with a character of a building or fencing. To do an attractive project that will meet your requirements you should know basics about garden designing rules.
The garden is always planned as a composition of geometrical forms.
Following forms can be distinguished:- vertical, standing forms,
- horizontal, recumbent forms,
- central (e.g. cube).
Both architectural elements and plants could be treated as one of those geometrical forms.
When designing a garden try to reduce all the components to simple solids.
In case of trees and bushes those solids originate from sphere and to each you can attribute specific species.
Try to create interesting composition, keeping in mind that you should always aim at balance which you can gain by using proper shapes and proportions.
You will notice that how we perceive a particular solid depends not on this solid itself but on its surroundings.
One of the most important components is a background which is a specific wall in a garden’s interior. Your background can be wide mountain landscape or thick hedge of your neighbour’s garden. The same forms have different influence depending on the background:
Against a background of hedge, ragged, free solids of bushes have strong influence, while against a background of an open landscape they are hardly visible.
Good tip
If there is a possibility to do that, try to avoid a background which will draw observers’ attention and simultaneously divert his/her attention from components formally important in your garden as a beautiful fountain, sculpture, or plant of interesting leafage or flowers.A key garden material is colour. Proper colour composing has a direct influence on your visual perception; therefore, you should take care of correct colour composing.
The most intensive visual experiences are gained through joining complementary colours: blue – orange, red-green, yellow-purple. However, joining contrasting colours requires some skills because it is easy to cross a line of good taste. Joining pastel colours is much easier as they always nicely contrast with a green lawn; what is more, they introduce to your garden a romantic character.
While solids are building materials of your garden, a texture is connected to its surface. This composition factor not only influences looks of a garden as a whole but also, by intensifying aesthetic experiences, it influences the sense of touch.
We experience many additional impulses: we subconsciously react to soft ornament grass and rough tree bark. Texture sometimes also influences colour of plants. Tomentose that performs a protective role diffuses light that is why parts of plants covered by it are mat and adopt silver of grey tint. It is worth to know that depending on texture, surfaces reflect the light differently. Therefore, a colour of the particular plants depends on a number of rays absorbed or reflected by the surface. Porous surface reflect the light in different directions while smooth surfaces reflect rays in a straight line towards an observer.