Unity in Garden Design

Theme

The theme of my own garden is a classical one: Parterre, water, and woodland. A parterre is a classic garden theme. By “parterre,” I just mean flat ground divided into geometric beds separated by paths.

To me, a typical vegetable garden of straight rows is a parterre. I have a vegetable garden in the middle of my garden. It isn’t an ornamental potager, it is just an organized place to grow vegetables and strawberries. Classic doesn’t mean that you have to recreate Versailles.

The English cottage garden style is very informal; it is also a very effective way to display a diverse collection of roses and herbaceous plants. Cottage gardens were door yard gardens, obviously created by humans. Distanced from the house they can look a bit odd without some sort of man-made framework, such as a fence or a clipped hedge.

If you prefer the theme of “untouched nature” then you need masses of plants that look very much alike. Plants in nature usually grow in colonies, not as collections of unrelated specimens. For example you could have a large collection of rhododendrons on the edge of a forest clearing; in the clearing, there could be a lily pond surrounded by a collection of the beardless iris.

As long as the rhododendrons were all shades of apple-blossom pink, the iris all lavender and the waterlilies all white, this could look like an almost unbelievably beautiful slice of nature. The more variety you introduce, the less natural it will look.

Gardening books often present historic gardens, such as those of the Italian Renaissance, as if they were themes. These are actually historic styles. The theme of many Italian Renaissance gardens is the same as mine – parterre, water, and woodland.

Imitation is just the first step in absorbing a style. Gardens that imitate the past have the advantage of having most of the problems worked out, but they are often soulless cliches. Instead of imitating the superficial characteristics of Japanese or Chinese pond and hill gardens, it might be better to learn from the ideas behind them.

For instance, in old Chinese gardens, water constituted the “arteries” of the garden, while the hills were the garden’s skeleton, and the plants the garden’s hair. A garden with this idea behind it could feel very unified, without being in a traditional Chinese style.

Some themes, such as “Shakespeare Gardens” and “Bible Gardens,” are intellectual; they still need a visual organization. Both gardens are well suited to simple parterre gardens; the visual theme could just a simple parterre enclosed by a lattice fence – a garden enclosed. An orchard would be a wonderful addition to this theme, many medieval and Tudor gardens were simple parterres next to orchards.

Another theme is the edible garden. This is also very well suited to the theme of parterre and orchard. It can include an arbor on which to grow grapes or kiwis or even gourds, with fruit trees espaliered along the enclosing fence. An herb garden can be a wonderful feature in an edible garden.

Country gardens can be a theme. A manor house garden is a form of a country garden, but I think of country gardens as unpretentious. Use fencing that is characteristic of farms or ranches in your area; suburban-type fencing can destroy the mood.

Domestic animals can do a lot to maintain a country garden theme. Instead of hiding the chicken yard, why not think of it as an aviary? Chickens can be quite interesting to watch; they could be the focal point of your garden. The edible garden and the cottage garden go perfectly with this theme.

White gardens have been fashionable for decades; it is probably best to think of these as moon gardens, attractive in the evening and in moonlight, and to include pastel flowers. Light-colored gravel paths, especially straight ones, show up very well in the moonlight, are very easy to navigate. If the garden is designed for moonlight, it will probably also feel unified under sunlight. Many pale flowers are fragrant, so the fragrance can be an underlying theme of this type of garden.

The wildlife that you hope to attract to your garden form the basis for yet another theme. Water is essential, at least a birdbath. If your plants are intended to attract certain species, your garden will almost certainly be unified. You will still have to think about esthetics when composing the plants into a garden, but the animal’s preferences will provide the unifying theme.

You may have noticed how often I mention water. If your garden lacks unity, the addition of a few water features may tie it all together. A lily pond in one part of the garden, a simple fountain in another part, and a birdbath in a third part may be all that your garden needs to tie the disparate parts together.

Then again, depending on your yard, it might just add to the feeling that your garden has too many features. It is always best to think and dream for months before adding anything. Live with ideas in your head before spending time and money on them.

The lawn is even better at unifying a garden than water. It can be used in the same way as water, to create calm, uncluttered “negative space”. If your planting is very complex, you need negative space.

A theme should be used to create an overall sense of unity, the feeling that every part of the garden is a part of one garden. If you can find a theme that you can stay within, you can indulge your collector’s instincts without creating a garden that feels like a collection of unrelated ideas.

Color

When thinking about how to use color to unify your garden, the first color to think about is green. Green is the color of the plant pigment chlorophyll, so most leaves are in shades of green. Many gardens have large areas of lawn; these give the garden a dominant theme of green.

A garden that is just shades of green will feel very unified, and there are so many shades of green that it will have quite a bit of variety, a green garden can contain shades from the palest green to almost black. Some shades of green are almost yellow, others are almost blue.

Gray foliage can also unify a garden. Most gardens have some green in them, and all gray gardens tend to be a bit dull without flowers to enliven them, so gray foliage is probably best used as a theme to weave throughout the garden. The advantage of gray foliage over green is that while some shades of green clash a bit with each other, shades of gray always harmonize with each other and gray goes with every flower color.

Colored foliage is more often used for contrast than for harmony. It is possible to have a garden dominated by red or golden foliage, but such gardens usually feature within a larger garden. A way to integrate such a feature into a larger garden is to use plants with colored foliage in positions where you might place a piece of sculpture.

For example, if you have a red garden within your garden, having a plant with red foliage at the end of every axis in your garden will help to integrate your red garden into a garden where the foliage is predominately green.

When thinking about color, look at the surrounding environment. If your garden has an ocean view, the colors surrounding your garden will be different from my garden, which is surrounded by a forest of conifers.

A garden with an ocean view should probably reflect the subtle colors of the ocean, as well as the colors of any rocks or sandy beaches that can be seen from your garden. It is usually best for the colors in your garden to harmonize with the surrounding environment. Harmony will give your garden serenity, but too much serenity can be dull, I will explore the value of contrast in future articles.

In most gardens, the sky is a very dominant element. Reflecting pools in each part of the garden will introduce the changing colors of the sky into the garden’s plantings. Because the colors of the sky and the pools will be in total harmony, the plantings surrounding the pools can be very complex and the garden will still feel unified.

Paving can also provide a theme of color to weave throughout the garden. A system of gravel paths can introduce shades of gray into every part of the garden. Concrete can also do this, but while gravel is naturally attractive, concrete usually needs to have some sort of texture or pattern. I will go into this in future articles.

Brick and terracotta go perfectly together, although this theme of terracotta will be a more dominant color scheme than gray will be. Gray goes with all flowers, terracotta doesn’t. Think of terracotta as burnt orange, it goes best with the sunset hues of yellow and orange, and with shades of lavender and purple.

Cut stone is expensive, and can be slippery when wet, but it makes wonderful paving, usually in tones of brown and gray. Rocks can sometimes be collected for free. If you use the same sort of rocks throughout your garden, the result will feel unified. These rocks could be used in a naturalistic manner, or to build retaining walls for raised beds; the lines of the beds could unite plantings that are a riot of color.

Paint is one of the easiest ways to use color to unite a garden. You can paint treillage and garden furniture to match your house. Decking can also be used to unify a garden when left to weather, it becomes a beautiful gray or it can be stained to match treillage, fences, gates, and furniture in your garden.

While a garden with flowers in a limited range of colors will feel unified, flowers are so fleeting that it is usually best to ignore them when focusing on unity. Lavender is an exception to this rule.

Lavender flowers go with all other flowers except for the true blues. Lavender is a much better blender than white. If you want to separate colors, either white or lavender will work, but white stands out much more than lavender does. Lavender always recedes into the background, allowing other flowers to be focal points.

If you are thoughtful about your garden’s background colors, flowers can be the exuberant stars of your garden. You will able to ignore a lot of rules about color and indulge your love of flowers, while still having a garden that is a unified work of art.

Patterns

Moving through a garden is like listening to music. The mood can change as you move through it. Repeating patterns throughout music, and throughout the garden will make it feel like a unified work of art, even if the various parts have contrasting moods and color schemes.

One of the more obvious ways to weave a pattern throughout the garden is to have paths with a design in the paving. Bricks almost demand to be arranged in a pattern. Concrete pavers are also most effective when arranged in patterns; they can be very attractive when combined with bricks.

Concrete pavers can be used as stepping stones, as, of course, can real stones. The Japanese are masters of this art. In the 17th-century stroll garden at Katsura, some of the stones are arranged in long rectangles, while the rest of the stones are arranged in curved patterns. This can give the feeling of moving through musical composition. An interesting approach might be to arrange the stones like the notes in a favorite piece of music.

While poured concrete often looks harshly utilitarian in gardens, it can be made more attractive through the use of patterns. One of the most effective patterns imitates flagstones. You do this by scoring the smoothed surface of wet concrete into random geometric patterns using a length of 1/2 to 3/4 inch copper pipe that has been bent into a slight S curve. This is actually more attractive than crazy paving in stone because the uniform color of the concrete avoids the blotchy effect of most stone crazy paving.

Classic Chinese and Italian gardens often have mosaic paths composed of small rounded stones. While very labor-intensive to create and easily damaged by frost, they are a beautiful way to weave a pattern throughout a garden.

A parterre is an arrangement of planting beds on flat ground; this can be as simple as an arrangement of square or rectangular beds separated by paths or as elaborate as an oriental carpet.

Renaissance parterres often look like quilt patterns composed out of stars and diamonds. If you love quilts, this might be a way for you to combine that love with gardening. The beds don’t have to be geometric; they just have to be arranged in a pleasing pattern.

Normust they be planted with masses of bedding plants, they can be planted in a cottage garden manner. The pattern of the beds will help to unify the diverse planting.

Plants can be arranged in patterns. In formal, symmetrical gardens the pattern is obvious, but plants can also be arranged in more subtly. When you repeat a plant throughout your borders, you are weaving a pattern into your garden.

For instance, when using plants with sword-shaped foliage such as iris, repeating that plant in other parts of the bed will establish a rhythm. As in music, the rhythm will be more interesting if it isn’t too even. If all of the plants are evenly spaced, it will be like listening to music that is just a series of evenly spaced thumps.

Diverse plantings may need some regularity though. A good way to unify a diverse herbaceous border is to have a series of evenly spaced balls of clipped boxwood along the front of the border, the balls establish a rhythm that imposes a certain amount of order onto the chaos of the planting behind them.

When thinking about patterns, don’t forget about leaves. A garden where all of the leaves are the same size is harmonious but monotonous. This can be a virtue in a parterre when the plants are arranged into an elaborate design, but in less formal gardens it is boring. I like gardens with lots of harmony, but occasional dramatic contrast.

For example, along the south border of my lily pond, I mainly use plants with sword-shaped leaves, such as iris, narcissus, kniphophia, schizostylus, amaryllis, and hemerocallis. For contrast I use a large clump of white calla lilies; this clump is midway between the east end of the border and the east arbor. The upright iris leaves also contrast with the rounded leaves of the waterlilies.

On the north side of the pond, the planting is much more diverse. Since the pond is mainly intended to be seen from the south, the harmony of the south border unifies the diverse planting on the north side of the pond. I have many photos of my garden on my webpage, Kirk’s Garden.

Espaliered trees and shrubs are a striking way to introduce pattern into a garden. An espalier is a tree or shrub trained in a vertical plane against a trellis, fence or wall. For more information about them, click on the word Espalier.

Tree trunks can also give a garden a rythmic pattern. This pattern can be formal or naturalistic. An example of a formal pattern is an allee, which is a long straight path or drive bordered by evenly spaced rows of trees. A pleached allee is a walk bordered by tall square hedges that have been woven together; they appear to be on the “stilts” of bare trunks. Hornbeam and lime are the species most often used in pleaching. A natural grove of trees can be given a random pattern by selectively removing or planting trees. This approach is a great way to control a grove of bamboo.

Fences and lattice can weave a pattern into the garden. This is most easy with lattice, but take a good look at the wide variety of fencing that is available.

If you repeat a pattern often enough, it will help tie together very diverse plantings. You will be able to indulge your collector’s instinct, and still have a garden that feels unified.

Line

There are two main traditions in garden design. The Western tradition arose out of the gardens of ancient Egypt, the Eastern tradition is descended from the gardens of China. Both traditions use lines to unify their gardens but in different ways.

Chinese painting is closely related to the art of calligraphy. This sensibility permeates the Eastern tradition of garden design, both in China and Japan. When looking at these gardens, you’ll see how strong a role line plays in their design. As in calligraphy, the lines may be broad and sweeping or broken up and strung together in short strokes.

The uncluttered shores of some Japanese pond gardens demonstrate the broad sweeping stroke. All of the pond’s shores are not so simple, but the shore closest to the main building often is. Stepping stones are an example of a line that is broken up into short strokes.

Remember that in Japan and China, drawing, painting, and calligraphy are all traditionally done with a brush. In Europe, drawing and calligraphy are usually done with a pen or pencil. Europeans see more of a difference between a linear approach and a painterly approach than the Chinese and Japanese do. This influences how the East and West use lines in their garden.

In Western gardens, line is often used like the preparatory drawing that usually underlies a traditional western painting. The line is used to give the garden structure; this structure is usually based on geometric forms such as straight lines, rectangles, triangles and circles.

In the formal garden, the structure is often more important than the plants, but even in most informal gardens, designers working within the Western tradition use line to give the garden structure.

The most important line in many Western gardens is the axis. This is a straight line from a principal viewing point to the principal focal point. There can be more than one principal viewing point, but there is only supposed to be one dominant focal point within the garden.

In a large garden, there can be more than one dominant focal point, but they cannot be allowed to compete with each other. The Western tradition demands that each dominant focal point be a separate experience. In fact, the Western tradition pretty much demands that there be a dominant focal point, a garden with a number of minor focal points but no dominant focal point is said to be poorly designed.

In the formal tradition, the lines are often made clear, a straight path will lead to the focal point. In informal gardens, the line is usually invisible, but it is still there. The designer controls the line by making obvious viewing points; benches are often placed at viewing points.

The Chinese tradition is based on the unrolling of a scroll painting, there is no focal point, you move through the garden and experience it in a linear manner, similar to watching a film or reading a novel.

In both the Eastern and Western traditions, paths are important lines that lead the viewer through the garden. The Western approach tends to be more logical and less complex. Many Japanese gardens are intended to be viewed like a rectangular painting from the main building, the interior of the building provides the frame for this picture.

In these gardens, there is usually a dominant focal point, but unlike a formal Western garden, this focal point is almost always placed off-center. Also, there is rarely an obvious viewing point, the garden is intended to be viewed from anywhere within the frame.

During the winter, deciduous trees are totally linear. When choosing and training a deciduous tree, think of how it will look during the winter. Some trees naturally have interesting structure and some are gawky or a mass of twigs.

When thinking about line, don’t forget about the drama of silhouettes and shadows, especially during the winter when shadows are long. Trees are not the only garden elements that cast shadows or can be silhouetted. Many garden structures are linear; by this, I mean that they are often just post and beam structures such as arbors and pergolas. Even most gazebos and summerhouses are basically roofs supported by posts; any railings add to the linear quality.

Lattice is totally linear, it is composed of lines crossing one another. A lattice screen to the east, south or west will cast interesting shadows during the winter, especially if you are creative about the pattern. When thinking about lattice, think about all open-work designs. You can create wonderful designs using 2 x 4s, leave enough open spaces in the design to create interesting shadows unless you are mainly concerned with privacy.

The line is very closely related to the pattern, which is why I decided to follow my article on patterns with an article online. When using the pattern to unify a garden, you repeat the pattern throughout the garden. When using lines to unify a garden, you are thinking more in terms of broad strokes. These strokes, whether visible or invisible, will tie together a garden of herbaceous plants.

Imagine a garden with a straight path leading to an arbor. Because of the strong axis and the strong lines of the arbor, the planting on either side of the path can be very diverse, the lines will compose the planting into a unified picture. A strong sweeping line, whether the shore of a pond or the division between lawn and flower bed, will do the same thing in a more naturalistic manner.

In both formal and informal gardens, don’t forget about the trees that often soar above the plantings and structures. A few trees that can be seen from every part of the garden will help to unify a garden, because you will be seeing the lines of the tree from each part of the garden.

Texture

Everything in the garden has a texture. We experience texture through our senses of touch and sight. While it is possible to create a garden that is about the sense of touch, in this article I will focus on texture as a visual experience.

When thinking about how to unify a garden through texture, don’t focus too much on the details. Look at broad areas of textures, such as clipped hedges, mown grass and the foliage of trees and shrubs.

It may help to think like you are creating a collage out of pieces of fabric, textured paper and sandpaper. The contrast of velvet against sandpaper is similar to the contrast of the mown lawn against a graveled surface.

In design, the subject of texture is about harmony and contrast. Contrast can be used to stimulate, but this article is about how to unify a garden through the use of texture. A garden with too much contrast lacks unity. A garden without contrast will be perfectly harmonious and perfectly boring.

Think of texture as a pattern that you weave throughout your garden. In a parterre, the texture isn’t very important because the geometric pattern is the dominant element. You don’t want a lot of textures competing with the geometric pattern, you just want a simple background that the design will be displayed against. The patterns of informal gardens are built up by playing texture against texture.

Most informal gardens are composed out of three layers of foliage. The topmost layer is composed of trees, the middle layer is composed of shrubs and understory trees. The bottom layer is composed of ground cover, herbaceous plants, bulbs, and low shrubs.

Many gardeners focus on the bottom layer with its herbaceous flowers, but it is the upper layers that are most important. This layer dominates the lower layers, both by casting shade and just because of the size of the plants. The topmost layer is usually composed of trees. The exception to this are gardens surrounded by tall buildings.

In gardens surrounded by tall buildings, it is probably best to repeat the textures of the surrounding buildings within the garden. For example, if the surrounding buildings are brick, the path or terrace could be brick. If the surrounding buildings are stucco, you might have a wall fountain with a stucco background, this wall fountain could be against a freestanding wall that is backed by shrubs.

A common mistake is to have a garden full of plants with leaves of a similar size and shape. While a garden like this will be harmonious, all of the plants will blend together into an amorphous mass. Many flower borders suffer from this problem and the usual advice is to add plants such as yuccas to give the border structure.

While this will work, if you create an interesting contrast of textures among the upper layers, the bottom layer can be very unstructured. I love herbaceous flowers, but I think of them as frosting. If the upper layers are mainly composed of small-leaved plants, then a few bold leaved plants displayed against the mass of small leaves will provide all of the textural contrast that your garden will really need, the rest of your garden can be harmonious.

Garden books often give the impression that every perennial of rounded shape needs to be near a sword-leaved perennial or the garden will be boring. Actually, the garden will be most restful if the herbaceous plants are grouped in masses of similar leaves. In nature, most herbaceous plants grow in colonies, not as isolated individuals.

When thinking of leaves, don’t just think of size, but of shape. Plants with leaves of complex shapes often look best against bold, simple leaves, such as those of magnolias and rhododendrons. They also look good against conifers, this is because the texture of a conifer is very different from that of a broad-leaved tree, so there is a total contrast. This is also true of bold, simple leaves, so you could have a tree with indented leaves against a tree with bold, simple leaves, against a background of conifers.

The middle layer can be a mass of billowing foliage or a clipped hedge, it can also be a fence or wall with specimen shrubs displayed against it. If the fence or wall has an attractive texture, let it be a texture that unifies the garden. If the fence or wall is unattractive, it can be covered with vines, the overlapping leaves of ivy create a wonderful texture.

If the herbaceous planting is very complex, then the texture of the middle layer should be simple. This is why clipped hedges are such an effective background for perennial borders. If you want lavish perennial borders, then a simple middle layer with some contrast in the top layer might be the best way to go.

The bottom layer offers the most opportunities for creating a rich pattern out of textures. This is because the plants that make up this layer are smaller than the plants of the upper layer, so you can fit more of them into a garden. Of course, the plants of all three layers are rooted in the bottom layer, except for epiphytes and plants in hanging baskets and tall urns.

A richly textured bottom layer will slow down the visitor, it will also direct their eyes downward. You can orchestrate how someone experiences your garden by having a richly textured lower layer that the visitor picks their way through, and then an open space with a simple texture, such as lawn or gravel. This simple texture will cause the viewer to look up and focus on the upper layers.

It is always difficult to reconcile the collectors’ urge with the desire to create a garden that is a unified work of art, but if you look at your plant’s foliage as textures to be played against each other. You can have a diverse collection of plants and a unified garden.

Form

Garden design is often compared with painting because of the way that colors can be used to compose a garden “picture”, but gardening is really closer to sculpture. Unlike paintings, most gardens are intended to be moved through, to be experienced in three dimensions.

We experience form as the contrast between positive and negative space. Positive space is anything solid, we ourselves are positive space, when we move through our gardens, we are part of the positive space in the garden.

Negative space is open space, what we are able to move through or put our hands through. Our perception of positive and negative space is totally human, for example, to us, a lawn is a negative space because we move easily across a lawn, to an insect, the same lawn may feel like it is mainly negative space as they have to walk around each blade of grass.

Negative space defines positive space, the point where positive space stops intruding into negative space is the outline that we perceive as form. If all of your garden was a positive space, you couldn’t even breathe in it, there would be no air.

Visually, negative space gives the garden a “breathing room”, a garden that lacks such spaces will feel claustrophobic. It is often effective for parts of the garden to have this claustrophobic feel, but then it is very important to have open areas or “breathing rooms”.

As sculptors, we use both additive and subtractive methods when shaping our gardens. We use the additive method most often, every plant that grows upward into the air displaces negative space. When we pile earth or build walls and other garden structures, we are also sculpting using the additive method.

When we excavate the earth, we are sculpting using the subtractive method, we are also doing this when we prune. When we reduce a plant’s size or open up a plant to expose the plant’s structure, we are taking away positive space and adding negative space. When we excavate to create a pond we are using the subtractive method, when we fill the excavation with water, we are using the additive method.

Part of our fascination with water is that when we are looking at the still surface of a pond we see it as a solid, but we know that we can move through the water. Like a lawn, a pond will create visual negative space, even though we can’t walk on the surface of the water, at least during the growing season.

For a part of a garden to feel like a negative space, it is not necessary that we really be able to move through the entire space, but the taller the plants, the more closed in the space will feel. If the plants are higher than the visitors’ knees, they will start to experience a claustrophobic feeling. It is important to remember that all of your garden’s visitors will probably not be the same height, to create a “breathing room” in your garden, the plants in this area should not be taller than a toddler’s knees.

Sculptors use the terms “mass” and “void”. Mass refers to solids or positive space. Void refers to negative space. When thinking about how to unify a garden through the manipulation of positive and negative space, the terms mass and void are very helpful. While some plants naturally have strong sculptural forms, these plants are generally used as accents. When thinking about positive and negative space, it is best to think of plants in masses, rather than individual plants.

The classical gardens of France often appear to be carved out of the surrounding forest. If your garden is surrounded by forest, this subtractive sculptural approach can be very effective, but it does require quite a bit of forest. If your garden is just surrounded by a thin band of trees, the trees will appear to be added to your garden, rather than your garden being carved out of the forest.

In a situation like this, a garden carved out of a solid mass of shrubbery may be more believable. Imagine your garden as a solid mass of shrubbery, and then carve voids into this imaginary mass of shrubbery, then add some trees for height.

You can also take the additive approach, to do this, it is best to start at the perimeters of the garden and work inwards. A garden that is totally open and can be viewed from one point is not very interesting, all but the smallest gardens will benefit from being divided into spaces of unequal size.

In all gardens, a mass of similar shrubs will be more effective than a collection of plants that are just crowded together without any thought to the similarity of foliage or growth habit. Clipped hedges are also an additive approach, they are obviously planted, not sculpted out of a natural stand of shrubs.

In a small garden, clipped hedges are often more effective than a shrubbery. Clipped hedges make a virtue of the geometric shape of most suburban back yards, this is easier than trying to pretend that a suburban backyard is a slice of untouched nature.

Also, clipped hedges take up less space than shrubberies. Topiary is the ultimate way of sculpting plants, topiary is most at home in gardens with clipped hedges because the pruning techniques are similar. Topiary is not just for grand gardens, in England, the art of topiary survived in cottage gardens when it was out of fashion in grand gardens.

When thinking about mass, don’t forget about the way that deciduous trees and shrubs open up a garden during the winter. I personally like this, it makes the garden sunnier during the winter.

I also like being able to see views during the winter that are blocked by foliage during the summer. Don’t just design your garden to interest visitors, but to interest you. A garden which is the same year-round can be a bit boring to live with, however beautiful it may be.

Shapes

When using form to unify a garden, it is best to not focus on individual plants, but I have to admit that it is the growth patterns of individual plants which create the forms that most gardens are composed out of, so this article is about the shapes of plants and how they can be used to create a garden that is a unified work of art.

Trees are the tallest elements in most gardens, so they are the dominant element. The shape of a tree against the sky can set the mood for an entire garden. As the trees mature, their influence over the garden becomes stronger and stronger, so it is best to think about the mature shape of trees before planting them.

During the 18th century many Cedars of Lebanon were planted on English estates. These trees, with their strong horizontal or tabulate branching patterns are now unifying features in the gardens that have developed around them. The distinctive form of the cedars is easy to recognize from every part of the garden, so even though each room in the garden may have its own theme, they all feel like they are part of one garden.

Cedars of Lebanon are not fast-growing and they only have tabulated structure at maturity, but these patriarchs of English gardens have a lot to teach us about how to use shape to unify a garden.

When trees are small, they aren’t very impressive, so we tend to plant too many of them. Trees with striking shapes are most effective when viewed against the sky, not as a part of a mass of trees. If you can practice self-restraint and patience, your garden may only need one large tree which has a striking growth pattern.

If you are creating a new garden in an area without trees, you should look at the shapes of mature trees. Many deciduous trees have cloud-like shapes maturity. Cedars and many pines are tabulate at maturity, but when they are young they have the cone like shape typical of conifers.

Other conifers retain this cone-like shape throughout their lives. Some trees have a columnar (or fastigate) shape, they are best used as exclamation points in the landscape, although they can be used like columns in formal gardens. Weeping trees direct they eyes downward, so you should have something at their base which is worthy of such a dramatic flourish.

Fastigiate and weeping trees should be used with caution, most gardens only have room for a few trees with such dramatic shapes. Hollywood junipers have an almost flame-like shape; plants like this should be used in spots where you would place a dramatic piece of sculpture.

It is easier to have a collection of trees with horizontal branching patterns, since the trees will interlock with each other. The different textures of the trees will contrast with each other, but the shapes will harmonize. You could have a Japanese black pine as the dominant element in the planting with a Japanese Snowbell as an understory tree.

There aren’t a lot of shrubs with tabulate structure, but Viburnum plicatum ‘Mariesii’ has very horizontal branches. This plant is lower growing than the flowering dogwoods, it matures at 8 to 10 feet, but it has an effect similar to the dogwood without the disease problems that are plaguing the American dogwoods.

Some trees and shrubs are planted for the effect of their bare branches during the winter. Harry Lauder’s Walkingstick is an example of this kind of plant, during the winter it is one of the most striking plants in the garden, but during the summer it is just a mass of rather coarse leaves.

Saucer Magnolias are at their best when the blooms open on the bare branches, but the mature structure of the branches is striking all winter. During the summer Saucer Magnolias are mainly a mass of bold leaves, not quite interesting enough on their own, but very attractive as a background to plants such as threadleaf Japanese Maples or Sumac.

When thinking about shrubs, don’t forget about the lowest layer of the garden. Many low growing shrubs are rounded, Mugho pines contribute a very nice billowing effect to this layer of the garden. You can also echo the tabulate structure of trees by planting Kew broom. The Wilton carpet juniper will provide an effect similar to a stormy sea when planted in a mass.

When thinking of the lowest level of the garden, most of us think of lawns, but there are ornamental grasses that have as much impact as a large shrub. Bamboo is a grass that can have as much impact as a grove of trees.

Lily-turf has an effect similar to grass, and I like the dull lavender-blue flowers in late summer. New Zealand Flax has all of the drama of the largest grasses, so do yuccas. Plume Poppies can have as much impact as a large shrub, and Gunnera has even more dramatic impact than any shrub that I can think of.

There are many shapes among perennials, these are just a few. I was only limited by my desire to provide images. I hope that this was enough to give a starting point to those of you who are just beginning to think about the shapes that plants contribute to the form of a garden.

It takes a lifetime to become a master of all the possible ways to use these forms to create a unified garden, I am far from being a master of that art, but I am constantly learning. That is one of the best things about garden design, it is such a complex art that there is always something to learn, it keeps us young.

Balance

There are two forms of balance, symmetrical and asymmetrical. This column is about balance in the classical Western tradition. There may be other sorts of balance in other traditions, but I am not familiar enough with those traditions to write about them.

I have been looking at my garden to see how I use balance to unify it. I call the style of my garden “rustic formal”. When most people think of formal gardens they tend to envision the grand gardens of late seventeenth-century France, such as Vaux-le-Vicompte.

In these gardens there is one over-all symmetrical design; each part of the garden supports the grand design. My garden is descended from 16th-century gardens, especially those of the Netherlands. Italian gardens were the most classical of 16th-century gardens, but even in Italy most gardens were not rigidly symmetrical. 16th-century gardens were an arrangement of formal features, but the over-all design was rarely symmetrical in the sense of one half of the garden mirroring the other half.

I use symmetry in a manner similar to 16th-century gardens. The features in the formal part of my garden are symmetrical, the canal has a pair of arbors on either side, the simple parterre is symmetrical, but the overall pattern of the entire garden is not symmetrical.

For example, the simple parterre has a double row of blueberry bushes to the east and a narrow bed of roses to the west. I also use symmetry in the less formal parts of the garden when I want to emphasize a feature, this helps to unify the formal and less formal parts of my garden.

These rules are not just for formal gardens, but for all gardens, at least Western gardens. Classical doesn’t have to mean symmetrical, the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Nicholas Poussin are very classical without being symmetrical. The paintings of both artists had a huge influence on the English landscape gardens of the 18th century such as Stourhead.

The basic idea for these landscape gardens came from China, but the way that they are visually composed is inspired by classical European paintings much more than by Chinese gardens and paintings. In the paintings of Poussin, the figures are dominant over the landscape, so they aren’t as helpful to gardeners as those of Lorraine, but Poussin had a wonderful sense of composition.

In classical European paintings, most compositions are based on triangles, circles, and spirals. Many paintings are also based on the Golden Section. The Golden Section was discovered by the ancient Greeks, it gives proportions that most humans find very pleasing. the Golden Section is a line divided so that the shorter part is to the longer as the longer part is to the whole.

To use this in garden design, measure the breadth of the area that you will be composing within, for example, from one corner of the garden to the opposite corner, this will give you the length of the line that you will divide. Measuring from either end of the line, place the dominant plant at a point eight-thirteenths of the length of the line.

By the dominant plant, I mean the plant which will be the focal point of the composition. The focal point doesn’t have to be a plant, it could be a gazebo or a statue. You can use the Golden section to place a less important plant on either side of the dominant plant. This will create a triangle with the dominant plant as the apex of the triangle.

To do this, measure from the ends of the line to the dominant plant and place each less important plant at points eight-thirteenths of the length of the line. Poussin used the Golden Section in many of his compositions, this is why they feel so balanced.

The difficulty with using paintings as models for gardens is that most of us have gardens that we move through, so the composition is constantly changing. It is best to have spots in your garden that are designed to be viewpoints. Even if you never sit in your garden, nothing indicates a viewpoint better than a bench.

From this viewpoint, you can design a composition in the same way that you would compose a painting. After pausing to view this composition, the visitor can move through the composition to the next viewing point. As long as there are obvious points from which to view carefully designed compositions, I don’t think that most people will notice if each plant in your garden forms less than perfect compositions with every other plant in your garden.

Gardens are not nature, but they are composed out of nature. We don’t expect Mother Nature to constantly give us breath-taking compositions. We often walk though a tangle of vegetation to reach a natural composition which we find especially pleasing. It is best to focus on the main compositions first, then refine the minor compositions in a manner that doesn’t conflict with the main compositions.

While these techniques will work in any garden, they are especially helpful in gardens which are collections of plants. The more variety you have in your garden, the further you are from nature. Nature composes out of a limited palette, so most of Mother Nature’s compositions are pleasing. It takes art to unify collections of plants, but the end result can be a paradise.

Scale

When attempting to create a unified garden, scale is one of the most important considerations. Every element in the garden has an effect on every other element. A garden in which one element overpowers every other element may feel out of balance.

This is not to say that you can’t have a large plant in a small garden, just that the plant will need to be carefully placed and everything else in the garden will have to relate to this plant. The large plant will set that scale that other plants are compared to. A plant which would be impressive in a grouping of small plants may seem unimportant next to a large plant.

All gardens are created by and for humans, so the scale of a garden is always human. Even the grandest gardens are on a human scale, they were designed to impress humans with their grand sense of scale. A landscape garden can be created in a small space; the Japanese are masters of this art.

They create the illusion of greater space by carefully controlling the size of trees and shrubs. Plants are also carefully selected for their leaves; plants with large leaves are planted towards the viewer, plants with small leaves are planted in the background. Gardens like these are intended to be viewed as pictures, if a human steps into the garden, the small scale of the garden becomes obvious and the illusion is shattered.

Most gardens are connected with private homes, apartment houses or public buildings; public parks are an exception, they often aren’t connected with important buildings. In a private garden, the house is the garden’s main reason for existing, the garden exists in relation to the house.

Because of this, the house sets the scale for the garden. It is important that all architectural elements, such as paving, paths, and walls be in scale with the house. Paths, decks, and terraces are more often underscaled than overscaled. A terrace which is the size of a large living room may feel underscaled.

This is partially because the clouds in the sky make it clear that the outdoor ceiling is much loftier than any indoor ceiling. You can have walls the same height as indoor walls, but unless the terrace has some sort of roof, the dimensions will be different from indoors.

Also, people expect to have more freedom of movement when they are outdoors, so a terrace the size of your living room may feel more cramped than your living room.

A grand house usually needs a grand setting. This can be a real problem in suburban areas where the house almost fills the lot. A possible way of dealing with this situation is to use the small garden area to display an important piece of sculpture.

Another solution might be to have most of the garden area be water so that the area could be used for impressive water works – either fountains or sheets of falling water. Even a large boulder in a small garden can have a grand enough sense of scale to harmonize with a grand house.

A modest home usually calls for a modest garden. My own garden is on a rather grand scale for the house, the house is just a simple, unpretentious, one-story house.

I don’t feel that the garden is really too grand for the house, one of the main reasons for this is because the style of my garden is “rustic formal.” I avoid doing anything which looks too expensive. I borrow ideas from grand gardens, but I adapt them to a local culture where wire fences and metal-clad pole buildings are ubiquitous.

What really sets the scale for my garden is the surrounding forest of conifers. This forest is second growth, about 50 years old. Most of these conifers can grow to over 200 feet tall, so as the trees mature, the scale that they will impose on my garden will be grander and grander. Next to 200-foot tall trees, a saucer magnolia is tiny.

Another reason why my garden isn’t out of scale is that it relates to large outbuildings, the greenhouse is 48 by 72 feet, next to it is a pole building which is 30 by 40 feet. These are on the south side of a long, broad driveway, the garden is on the north side of the driveway. A 20-foot wide driveway sets a rather grand scale, and the garden is open to the driveway. I use the driveway as a garden walk.

The forest surrounding my garden doesn’t necessarily call for a grand garden, most of the area which is occupied by my garden could just be a clearing in the forest. There could just be a small dooryard garden next to the house, the rest of the clearing could be a meadow.

Before I expanded my garden, most of my clearing was meadow. When the pole building to the east of the greenhouse was constructed, it felt out of balance with the house, it seemed too far away from the house.

Now that the garden has been expanded, the pole building no longer has that feeling. The garden is an extension of the domestic area of the house; by extending it, I integrated the pole building into the domestic area. This is part of the reason for my garden’s formal structure, the formality makes it clear that the garden is a domestic area.

In order to create a unified garden, it is important that you be aware of the entire environment that your garden exists within; don’t just focus on details. Also be aware that as trees grow, the scale of your garden may change. The challenge of garden design is to design a garden for the future that looks good in the present.