Award winning garden designers Andrew Fisher Tomlin and Tom Harfleet along with Swedish designer Kajsa Bjorne have today launched the first garden show that will be entirely 3D printed. Called miNiATURE it will take place from 5 – 8 March 2014 at The Strand Gallery in central London.

Tom Harfleet said “The concept behind miNiATURE is to create a platform where leading garden designers and landscape architects truly have the ability to create unique and ambitious gardens, even if they are in miniature. Currently show gardens provide a platform to engage people with new design but often these can end up as safe and self-limiting due to budget and in order to win a medal.” He added “miNiATURE aims to change this by giving designers an outlet to explore creative designs at low cost through modelling. “

Up until recently this took place ‘on screen’ and a physical model could take time and expense but now with the advent of 3D printing we have the ability to produce high quality, detailed and accurate 3D models to communicate ideas and engage directly with clients. The show’s lead sponsors are 3D specialist printers Hobs 3D and the London College of Garden Design.

Some of the UK’s leading garden designers have already committed to showing unique new designs at miNiATURE including RHS Chelsea Flower Show ‘Best in Show’ winners Sarah Eberle, Adam Frost and Jo Thompson with further international names to be announced shortly.
-ENDS-

Lead sponsors: London college of garden design, and Hobs 3D
Media supporter: Into gardens Charity supporter: Streetscape

The miNiATURE show is sponsored by Hob’s 3D and the London College of Garden Design with media support from Into Gardens. The show will support the landscape training charity Streetscape.

Further events around the show and supporters will be announced shortly. Tom Harfleet and Andrew Fisher Tomlin have previously collaborated in projects in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. This is their first collaboration with Kajsa Bjorne, a landscape designer based in Sweden and Australia.

For more information please contact Andrew Fisher Tomlin on 07957 855457 or Tom Harfleet on 07766 884819

Email: Andrew@andrewfishertomlin.com

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By Sarah Cosgrove
Wednesday, 04 December 2013

The London College of Garden Design is looking at expanding overseas by offering courses as far away as Australia.

Andrew Fisher Tomlin and Tom Harfleet’s September Sky design in Sydney

The college, founded by designers Andrew Wilson and Andrew Fisher-Tomlin and landscaper Mark Gregory, could offer a combination of master classes and short courses taught by local designers next year.

Fisher Tomlin, also of Fisher Tomlin Bowyer, said: “We’ve had a couple of years where everyone has struggled to run short courses but because of my travelling there have been requests, particularly from countries where they have a culture of garden design but a different approach, such as Sweden and Australia.”

Fisher Tomlin intends to link up with local designers around garden events, such as the Sydney show where he and Tom Harfleet created the first British-designed garden at the Australian Garden Show Sydney in September.

“When we were doing that we were doing the Sydney show this year a number of professionals came along who said that our way was a very British way of designing planting. I think people are always interested in different ways of doing things,” he said.

The college is expanding in the UK as well, running more short courses at RHS Wisley and they are already half sold.

New courses include designing a contemporary small garden, designing kitchen gardens, designing with water and designing a family-friendly garden.

The Info Burst seasons continue in 2014 with the launch of a series of evenings with leading garden designers Sarah Eberle and Jo Thompson and landscape architect Noel Farrer talking about projects close to their hearts which were never built.

Among those in the know, his taste is revered more than that of anyone else now at work in Britain — celebrated this summer at an exhibition, Green Fuse, at the Museum of Garden History. He is particularly admired for the way he combines naturalistic perennial planting with a strong sense of style and sculptural structure. Yet although Pearson has created many gardens around the world — such as his work for the Millennium Forest in Japan — there’s relatively little of it to be seen in London. There’s the garden for Maggie’s Centre for cancer care at Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith, Handyside Gardens in the new King’s Cross development and a tiny garden for the Evelina Children’s Hospital. But that’s about all.

That’s going to change when the Garden Bridge between Temple and the South Bank is built — for Dan Pearson is already far advanced in plans for this most exciting of London’s future projects. When we meet at his spacious studio — his practice employs just nine people, because he doesn’t want it to get too big or formulaic — he’s just returned from working in San Francisco and Hawaii for three weeks and is still recovering from coming “back to winter and dark nights from flip-flops and T-shirts”.

But though he’s softly spoken and very engaging — even more so one-to-one than in public appearances, I would say — his focus is intense. It’s no surprise to learn that he dropped out of school at 17 to study at Wisley, already knowing then what he wanted to do, exactly what he’s doing now at 49.

He had known the designer Thomas Heatherwick for some time before earlier this year Heatherwick approached him with his plans for a garden bridge, which he wanted to have the sense of wildness that he had seen in Pearson’s own town garden in Peckham. “He said, come up this afternoon — and when I got up there, Joanna [Lumley, another key backer of the Garden Bridge] was up there as well and the two of them explained the project to me — and it was impossible not to be excited by it so we started working on it immediately.”

There has never been anything quite like the Garden Bridge before. There’s the High Line in New York — but that was a pre-existing structure, a disused railway, with its own plant life already there to influence its design. The Garden Bridge, though, will be entirely new, something where there was nothing, a special challenge for a designer whose work always responds to a sense of place first.

Dan Pearson has addressed this by developing a story, a narrative, for the garden, “to allow you to move from one place to another and have a series of different chapters”, in five different zones.

He wanted to link it to the Thames and its estuarine life — “I’ve always stayed close to it or liked to be near it, because it’s this big elemental thing which moves backwards and forwards every day” — and he had read in Pepys’ Diaries about the watermeadows and osier beds, and before that marshland, there used to be on the South Bank.

“We thought about creating a series of environments that could take us from the South Bank, where there’s a younger part of London with a closer link to nature, through to the older part of the city, where we could have more ornamental plants that would feel more connected to older gardens — so we’ve got a parkland quality at one end, and what we’re calling pioneer vegetation at the other end.

“In the middle, where the bridge reaches its teetering point, where you’ve got that view out, up and down the river, we’re calling that the Scarp — so we’ve looked at cliff-top environments and the plants that would survive in those exposed situations” — including Mediterranean plants such as cistus and phillyrea as well as British natives.

In between, over the two piers of the bridge, where it will be widest and the soil deepest — 1.5 metres, ample for trees — there will be woodland copses and glades, one “wild”, one “cultivated”, with figure-of-eight pathways through and round them. The plan at the moment is to have some 270 trees altogether on the bridge, many of them multi-stemmed so they can better thrive in such a windy situation — birches, such as Betula nigra with its peeling bark, and lacinated alders among them. There might be oaks too and he mentions a plan for a specimen mulberry, suitably gnarled, hoping some of these trees will in time generate their own folklore and associations for Londoners as the bridge ages.

On the south side, Pearson is envisaging shrubby willows with their coloured stems, and catkins, which can be regularly coppiced — while on the northern approach he’s thinking of hawthorns, perhaps ornamental varieties, some perhaps to be clipped to connect with the more formal feel there, perhaps liquidambars too.

“We’ve developed a palette that means we’ve got a continuity of vegetation, so you look at the bridge as a whole and it doesn’t look like a strange mishmash like an arboretum. So one thing will feather into the next and touch down again elsewhere,” he says.

He’s concerned that the garden should be seasonal, indeed “different in every week of the year, so you can return to it and have a renewed and fresh experience and it’s a delight in that way”.

There’ll be plenty of things like teasels that can be left over the winter — and no resort to bedding plants. “I think people are very attuned now to a naturalistic garden, not having to sing and dance all the time,” he says — and emphasises that the Garden Bridge will always be dramatic anyway, an exercise in fantasy, just by its nature. “It’s an extraordinary idea, a floating garden that rises over water and doesn’t touch it and has all this space around it — it’s already got a magical quality to it.”

And, he points out, though London has wonderful parks — “every time I fly over London I’m always fascinated by how linked they are and how wonderful our street trees are” — it has very few good public gardens, only five or so altogether, Chelsea Physic being the nearest. “That’s why this has been named a garden bridge, not a park on a bridge, because it is going to be a garden, and it’s going to be accessible to everybody and so central — and we feel very excited about that being something we can bring to London.”

It’s all the more exciting, for those who us love his work, that it will be a Dan Pearson garden that soars over the river. It has to happen, I blurt, as we look at the “mood-board” of sketches and snaps that is the garden’s current incarnation.

“Exactly the words I was about to use,” he says. “When we gave our first press conference, Joanna was so captivating, she said, ‘I can see it from here’. We all could. I’m walking my dog” — he has the most beautiful eight-month old lurcher, Woody, with him there in the studio — “over the Wobbly Bridge every night just to get a sense of what it’s going to be like. I can see it too!” And I, like every Londoner who loves gardens, just can’t wait to see it as well.

Highticulture: What will grow

The tall ones

Field maple (Acer campestre) and elder trees will run the length of the bridge. The UK’s only native maple can grow to 20m and live for 350 years.

Berry Mix

Featuring Amelanchier lamarckii (right), which turns a spectacular bronze colour in autumn. Birds love the berries.

In the north

The trees and plants on the northern side of the bridge have been chosen to add character. Look out for Clerodendrum trichotomum, known as the peanut butter tree because its downy leaves produce that smell when crushed. The white petals turn pink as they mature (left).

Southern trees

On the southern side there will be Fagus sylvatica “Laciniata”, a hardy beech with smooth bark that can grow up to 12m tall.

Evergreens

Among the evergreens on the bridge is Arbutus unedo, the strawberry tree (right).

Wild ones

Pearson is including pioneer tree species, which have the ability to rebalance damaged ecosystems, including Prunus cerasifera, the cherry plum, and Elaeagnus angustifolia, the Russian olive.

Susannah Butter

By Sarah Cosgrove
Wednesday, 04 December 2013

The London College of Garden Design is looking at expanding overseas by offering courses as far away as Australia.

Andrew Fisher Tomlin and Tom Harfleet’s September Sky design in Sydney

The college, founded by designers Andrew Wilson and Andrew Fisher-Tomlin and landscaper Mark Gregory, could offer a combination of master classes and short courses taught by local designers next year.

Fisher Tomlin, also of Fisher Tomlin Bowyer, said: “We’ve had a couple of years where everyone has struggled to run short courses but because of my travelling there have been requests, particularly from countries where they have a culture of garden design but a different approach, such as Sweden and Australia.”

Fisher Tomlin intends to link up with local designers around garden events, such as the Sydney show where he and Tom Harfleet created the first British-designed garden at the Australian Garden Show Sydney in September.

“When we were doing that we were doing the Sydney show this year a number of professionals came along who said that our way was a very British way of designing planting. I think people are always interested in different ways of doing things,” he said.

The college is expanding in the UK as well, running more short courses at RHS Wisley and they are already half sold.

New courses include designing a contemporary small garden, designing kitchen gardens, designing with water and designing a family-friendly garden.

The Info Burst seasons continue in 2014 with the launch of a series of evenings with leading garden designers Sarah Eberle and Jo Thompson and landscape architect Noel Farrer talking about projects close to their hearts which were never built.

Mary Lynn Powers, president of the Garden Clubs of Mississippi Inc. (left), Dr. Sadik Artunc, head of landscape architecture at Mississippi State University, and DeSoto Civic Garden Club members Donna Carey and Lynda Pointer met Melanie Gousett (right), state schools chairman for the landscape design series, when attending a landscape design course at Lake Tiak-O’-Khata in Louisville, Miss.

DeSoto Civic Garden Club members Donna Carey and Lynda Pointer attended a landscape design course in early November at Lake Tiak-O’-Khata in Louisville, Miss.

The purpose of Landscape Design Schools is to provide continuing education in landscape design. The course content is established by National Garden Clubs Inc. and includes a series of four sequenced courses consisting of 10 hours of lecture.

At the end of the sessions participants have the opportunity to take a written examination that is based on required reading and lectures.

Components of Course 1 included space, design and people, principles and elements of design, public landscapes, developing your home/private garden, basic site plan, color in the landscape, design for the environment, development of landscape design and development of landscape resources.

The next Landscape Design School (Course 2) will be May 13-15 at Lake Tiak-O’-Khata.

DeSoto Civic Garden Club is a member of the National Garden Club, Deep South Region Inc., and the Garden Clubs of Mississippi Inc., Hills and Delta District.

Lynda Pointer is a member of the DeSoto Civic Garden Club.

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Published: December 5, 2013 2:47 PM

Eye of the Day Garden Design Center, one of the leading distributors of Italian and Greek terracotta pottery, will be relocating its northern California location from San Rafael in Marin County to Napa Valley. The relocation is part of an aggressive expansion to increase its showroom sales to private consumers as well as landscape, design, and architecture firms around the world.

Carpinteria, CA (PRWEB) December 05, 2013

One of the leading distributors of Italian and Greek terracotta pottery, Eye of the Day Garden Design Center, will be relocating its San Rafael showroom in Marin County to Napa Valley. The relocation is part of Eye of the Day’s aggressive expansion to increase its showroom sales to private consumers, as well as to landscape, design, and architecture firms and industry specialists from around the world. The headquarters, located in Southern California on Carpinteria Avenue, will remain as is.

The headquarters will continue to feature designer and internationally famed lines of planters and terracotta pottery. The design center specializes in high-end European décor, and offers Greek and Italian pottery and terracotta planters, as well as French Anduze pottery. Additional garden accessories include fountains, pedestals, columns, statuary, birdbaths, and furniture design ornamentation of the highest quality from trend-setting manufacturers in Italy, France, Greece, Spain, and the UK.

Eye of the Day also happens to be one of only seven Gladding McBean distributors, which is a line of handcrafted terracotta pottery. The line, which will be offered at the headquarters and relocated showroom, is known throughout the world for its colorful glazes that can be found in 25 shades on its modern and classical vases, garden planters, fountains, and sculptures.

Eye of the Day Garden Design Center has worked with clients from around the world, including Ralph Lauren and Tommy Bahama, and has been featured on the DIY Network. Eye of the Day has also appeared at the Stanford University Shopping Center, one of the most high-volume shopping venues in the world.

“We’re excited to be expanding into Napa Valley, which is known for its mild climate, its lush vineyards, and its scrolling landscape. I honestly can’t imagine a better scenic view – I look forward to educating customers about some of the antique vessels I’ve picked up during my European travels with a glass of wine from a neighboring vineyard in my hand,” said owner Brent Freitas.

The new store is expected to relocate in January 2014, and store hours will be announced around that time.

About Eye of the Day Garden Design Center

Eye of the Day Garden Design Center is a retail showroom that features more than an acre of high quality garden landscape products, including Italian terracotta pottery and fountains, Greek terracotta pottery, French Anduze pottery, and garden product manufacturers from America’s premier concrete garden pottery and decoration manufacturers. Eye of the Day is a leading importer and distributor of fine European garden pottery, and caters to private consumers, and landscape design and architecture firms around the world.

To see what Eye of the Day Garden Design Center can do for your business, visit http://www.eyeofthedaygdc.com.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/12/prweb11394725.htm

If you are planning a new garden and are considering how to design it, remember it is always wise to begin with the end in mind! What kind of garden do you want to have when it is completed? Are you hoping to achieve a minimalist look in which each plant has plenty of space and invites attention? Do you prefer a fuller look with more crowding, more color, and an overall effect of abundance? In the former scenario, you’ll tend to choose unique, stand alone plants with lots of individual character. If the latter description fits you better, you’ll select more upright plants that blend well with others, to create a pleasing variety of sizes and colors. Of course, many choose the middle road, and eclectic mix of plants that suit their fancy while co-existing very nicely together. Follow these basic steps and you’ll achieve a garden you enjoy caring for and you simply love to be around.

Gardening Tips: How to Start your Garden Design

First, put your garden design on paper, for like with many things, success begins on the drawing board. Use graph paper and sketch out what you want your garden to look like, using one or two squares per foot of garden space. Draw in natural elements such as existing trees and man-made elements like patios or walk ways. Consider what types of plants you desire in each section, whether perennials, annuals, flowering shrubs, or perhaps ground cover or herbs.

Secondly, balance two things, color and size. Make sure that colors that are growing next to one another complement each other, rather than clashing with one another. Secondly, keep size issues in perspective. A large, spreading bush might completely overshadow a small perennial with delicate blossoms if grown next door to each other. Therefore, choose plants the will work well side by side. In this discussion, we’ll also remind you that it is important to know when the flowers you choose to use bloom. Daisies and others bloom for months. That makes them an awesome garden choice. Others bloom for only a week or two. Be sure to select flowers for each section of the garden that bloom at different times, so you won’t end up with any bare spots as spring turns to summer and then autumn.

The third basic step is to evaluate your soil and improve it if needed. A soil testing kit is an essential part of good gardening. It will allow you to determine the pH balance – the potential Hydrogen balance – of the soil, which determines whether the soil is too alkaline, too acidic, or just right. Most plants grow well in the middle of the spectrum, but knowing the exact makeup of your soil will allow you to add acidity or lower it for plants that do better with one or the other.

Next, choose a theme for your garden. Victorian English gardens will employ different plants than a Japanese garden. Low moisture areas will have more succulents than rainy, moist climates. Know your tastes, your climate, and the amount of time you have to devote to the garden, and you’ll discover a style that is right. Keep in mind this basic principle: when a garden has one or two primary angles from which it can be viewed, keep taller, bushier plants to the back. When the garden can be viewed from 3 or more angles, keep the taller plants to the middle, working your way toward the edges with successively shorter plants.

The final step is to get out into the yard and dig some dirt! Put your plans into practice and use our other guides to give you easy to follow directions every step of the way! You’ll end up with a garden you look forward to visiting and working in every day.

• 

BB Little Garden by Martouzet François-Xavier

Como, Italy (PRWEB) December 01, 2013

A’ Design Award and Competitions are delighted to share that the work BB Little Garden by Martouzet François-Xavier has been honored with the prestigious Silver A’ Design Award at Home Appliances Design Competition.

Details of BB Little Garden

This project proposes to support a new use that provide a fuller sensory cooking experience. BB Little Garden is a radiant growing lamp, wanting to revisit the place of aromatic plants inside the kitchen. It is a volume with clear lines, as a true minimalist object. The sleek design has been especially studied to adapt to a variety of indoor environments and give a special note to the kitchen. BB Little Garden is a framework for plants; its pure line magnifies them and does not disturb the reading.

To learn more about this design, please visit: http://www.adesignaward.com/design.php?ID=26574

The Silver A’ Design Award

The Silver A’ Design Award is a prestigious award given to top 5% percentile designs that has achieved an exemplary level of greatness in design. The designs are judged by a panel of three different jury which is composed of Academic, Professional and Focus Group Members. The designs are evaluated with score normalization to remove any biases and are voted on aspects such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, fun details, technology, and any other specific points that could be considered, each of these points are further weighted for different jury groups.

About A’ Design Award and Competitions

A’ Design Award and Competitions, aims to highlight the excellent qualifications of best designs, design concepts and design oriented products. A’ Design Award and Competitions are organized and awarded annually and internationally in multiple categories to reach a wide, design-oriented audience. Learn more: http://www.whatisadesignaward.com

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Planning a perennial garden can be overwhelming. Here are some tips to help organize your thoughts and choose a design you will like

Garden Style

In order for us to end up with a garden we can enjoy, we must first decide what we like. Choosing a garden style is the first decision. That style can be worked in to any size or shape later. A good start in choosing a style is to look at magazines and find pictures of gardens you like. Tear the pictures out and save them for a while as you collect more. Look at the collection of clippings. What do you like about them as individuals? What do they have in common? Are they calm like a Japanese style garden or are they a riot of color, shape, and abundance? Do you have a particular theme in mind like an all-white garden or a fragrance garden? A look we like can be incorporated into a property of acres or a collection of potted plants. In choosing a style, it is important to consider, not just what we like, but where the garden will be located. While you might like a meadow garden, or a whimsical garden in which to display your whirligig collection, perhaps the front yard is not the place. Your neighbors probably will not appreciate it and there may be zoning laws as to lawn height and content. In general, the front yard keeps a relatively formal look. As for the rest of the property, the farther from the house and street, the less formal the garden can be.

Perennial flower garden design tips

Plant Choices

Next, think about the flower and foliage color, various leaf forms, plant heights, and bloom times. Plants can be placed in drifts through a bed. They can be grouped in several places along a walkway to lead the eye down the path. Plants can be used as a single specimen, a focal point. Choose plants that vary in height, placing the tallest at the back. If the bed is large, plan how you will get to the plants in the back to care for them. A few well-placed stepping-stones may be in order.

Seasonal Considerations

Think about what each season will be like. Try to make a focal point for each season. You might put in some bulbs and forsythia, maybe an early blooming fruit tree like cherry, for spring. Add lilies, day lilies, gay feather, Russian sage, or a host of other summer blooming perennials. Choose different colors and shapes of foliage too. Many flowers, like gaillardia, bloom on into fall. Mums with so many colors offer great fall showings. Have some plants that have fall foliage color changes. Most of us have a winter to deal with. Grow plants that leave behind berries like nandina or bittersweet. Many plants have interesting seed heads that persist through the winter like ornamental grasses. Make sure to have some evergreen plants.

Containers

If your perennial garden is a container garden, a lot can be decided about the style by what kinds of containers you choose. They do not all need to match each other, but they should match your style. The containers could be rustic or they could be sleek and shiny lacquered pots with an oriental design painted on them. The plants can be bamboos, palms, bananas, trees, succulents or virtually any plant that you could grow in the ground. They can be colorful or serene.

Pots or other containers of plants can be set into the midst of a garden as accents. If you have a space that looks a bit drab or bare, set a potted plant there. This is an especially good trick if you are waiting for small perennials to grow into large ones. The garden can look a little sparse for a year or two. Another way to make a new garden look fuller is to plant annuals in the spaces until the perennials fill in. Some people leave sections of the perennial garden empty on purpose because they like to incorporate annuals, which are changed seasonally or for holiday flower displays.

Garden Accessories

If seats are placed along the garden path, sit there and look at the view. Is there a focal point for the lounger to enjoy? Is there something that attracts attention? Place seating with that in mind. If arbors are present, be sure that they are placed with the view through the arbor in mind. Think of the arbor as a picture frame. Any fencing should be chosen with garden style in mind. A two-foot-high fence of sticks might look cute in a rustic garden, but a more polished garden requires a more polished-looking fence.

As you can see, there is a lot to think about when planning a perennial garden, but dreaming about how you want it to turn out is half the battle. Now you know how to get started.

Planning a perennial garden can be overwhelming. Here are some tips to help organize your thoughts and choose a design you will like

Garden Style

In order for us to end up with a garden we can enjoy, we must first decide what we like. Choosing a garden style is the first decision. That style can be worked in to any size or shape later. A good start in choosing a style is to look at magazines and find pictures of gardens you like. Tear the pictures out and save them for a while as you collect more. Look at the collection of clippings. What do you like about them as individuals? What do they have in common? Are they calm like a Japanese style garden or are they a riot of color, shape, and abundance? Do you have a particular theme in mind like an all-white garden or a fragrance garden? A look we like can be incorporated into a property of acres or a collection of potted plants. In choosing a style, it is important to consider, not just what we like, but where the garden will be located. While you might like a meadow garden, or a whimsical garden in which to display your whirligig collection, perhaps the front yard is not the place. Your neighbors probably will not appreciate it and there may be zoning laws as to lawn height and content. In general, the front yard keeps a relatively formal look. As for the rest of the property, the farther from the house and street, the less formal the garden can be.

Perennial flower garden design tips

Plant Choices

Next, think about the flower and foliage color, various leaf forms, plant heights, and bloom times. Plants can be placed in drifts through a bed. They can be grouped in several places along a walkway to lead the eye down the path. Plants can be used as a single specimen, a focal point. Choose plants that vary in height, placing the tallest at the back. If the bed is large, plan how you will get to the plants in the back to care for them. A few well-placed stepping-stones may be in order.

Seasonal Considerations

Think about what each season will be like. Try to make a focal point for each season. You might put in some bulbs and forsythia, maybe an early blooming fruit tree like cherry, for spring. Add lilies, day lilies, gay feather, Russian sage, or a host of other summer blooming perennials. Choose different colors and shapes of foliage too. Many flowers, like gaillardia, bloom on into fall. Mums with so many colors offer great fall showings. Have some plants that have fall foliage color changes. Most of us have a winter to deal with. Grow plants that leave behind berries like nandina or bittersweet. Many plants have interesting seed heads that persist through the winter like ornamental grasses. Make sure to have some evergreen plants.

Containers

If your perennial garden is a container garden, a lot can be decided about the style by what kinds of containers you choose. They do not all need to match each other, but they should match your style. The containers could be rustic or they could be sleek and shiny lacquered pots with an oriental design painted on them. The plants can be bamboos, palms, bananas, trees, succulents or virtually any plant that you could grow in the ground. They can be colorful or serene.

Pots or other containers of plants can be set into the midst of a garden as accents. If you have a space that looks a bit drab or bare, set a potted plant there. This is an especially good trick if you are waiting for small perennials to grow into large ones. The garden can look a little sparse for a year or two. Another way to make a new garden look fuller is to plant annuals in the spaces until the perennials fill in. Some people leave sections of the perennial garden empty on purpose because they like to incorporate annuals, which are changed seasonally or for holiday flower displays.

Garden Accessories

If seats are placed along the garden path, sit there and look at the view. Is there a focal point for the lounger to enjoy? Is there something that attracts attention? Place seating with that in mind. If arbors are present, be sure that they are placed with the view through the arbor in mind. Think of the arbor as a picture frame. Any fencing should be chosen with garden style in mind. A two-foot-high fence of sticks might look cute in a rustic garden, but a more polished garden requires a more polished-looking fence.

As you can see, there is a lot to think about when planning a perennial garden, but dreaming about how you want it to turn out is half the battle. Now you know how to get started.