Large journeys begin as small steps, and that’s certainly the case with landscape design. Most of us look at a plot of bare ground as a big mass of empty space. The idea of turning it into an appealing garden creation is almost overwhelming.
In reality, designing a landscape is no different than decorating the inside of your house. You start with an overall idea of what you want your décor to look like.
Your next step indoors is to assemble the big pieces of furniture. They become the “bones” of your interior décor, and, until you have them, you really can’t do much other decorating.
Outdoors, the equivalent to those structural elements would be the major shade trees and the anchoring shrubs that form the framework of your basic garden design. Any berms you might add would be included. There might be a few important vines, and you’ll probably end up with a big bed or two of trailing groundcovers.
You’ll also need to include the “hardscape” elements, that is, the important non-living parts of your garden’s designs. Put them in place as early in your planning as you can, because it’s hard to develop the gardens that will surround them until you do.
Once you have those major architectural elements in place, it’s time to start fine-tuning each room individually. That’s when you bring in the secondary pieces of furniture, and outdoors their equivalent would be decorative retaining walls, vines for the patio cover, water gardens, landscaping stones and street lamps.
Once all of the woody plants and major hardscape elements have been stirred into the landscape, it’s time to turn your attention to the finishing touches. You should be thinking about annual and perennial color, hanging baskets, topiary, patio furniture and garden antiques and how they will all fit into the final package.
So you begin with the small spaces, and you start fitting them into the much larger puzzle. People tell you that your landscape should have its own “rooms,” where your family conducts different aspects of its life. You’ll have space for cooking and dining, and you’ll also set aside room for reading and recreational activities. Where you’d have a washer and dryer indoors, you’ll have the toolshed and compost pile outside.
As you walk through your landscape, these rooms will unfold. The bigger the space that you’re landscaping, the larger the number of rooms you’ll be able to accommodate. If you plan things carefully and implement the plans faithfully, they’ll all be comfortable together, but each will have its own distinct personality.
Set out to get the best possible results in each of your outdoor living spaces. Begin with those areas that are nearest your house, since they’ll be the ones that get the most traffic. Finish each one to your own satisfaction before you move on to the next. Before you know it, you will have assembled many individual areas into a lovely landscaping quilt.
Neil Sperry, a McKinney resident, hosts Neil Sperry’s Texas Gardening from 8 to 10 a.m. Sundays on WBAP-AM (820). He is the publisher of Neil Sperry’s GARDENS Magazine. Learn more at neilsperry.com.
