Landscape Design Tips

Good landscape design starts with plants. The visual characteristics of plant size, form, texture, and color should be blended in a way that is pleasing to the eye. Here are some tips for combining plants effectively in your landscape design.

• Size. Large plants, such as shade trees, should get first consideration in the landscape. Smaller trees, shrubs, and ground covers are secondary, and can act as a framework to the overall design. You can use tall shrubs to create screens, enhance privacy, or provide a neutral background. Small shrubs are also used to define edges and spaces, but they have the advantage of not blocking the view.
• Form. Tall plants have vertical form. Low, spreading plants have horizontal form. If you place vertical plants together so that as a group they are wider than their height, it has a horizontal appearance. A grouping like this could be used for a windbreak, or a way of dividing up the landscape.
• Texture. This has to do with a plant’s coarseness or fineness. Texture up close is different than texture at a distance. At a distance, texture is the overall effect of plants and the patterns that light and shade create among them. Up close, texture involves the coarseness of the leaves, the number of leaves and branches, and the changes the plant goes through during the seasons. You want to strive for textural variations, to avoid monotony in the landscape.
• Color. The color of a landscape is affected by the quality of light and shadow, the season, and even the texture of the plants. To increase depth in a landscape, bring dark and coarse plant material to the foreground and place fine textured and light colored plant material in the background.
• Balance. Good balance comes from arranging plants carefully. To get symmetrical balance, you plant basically the same elements on each side of your landscape. Asymmetrical balance uses contrasting elements to achieve an effect of balance -- a willow tree on the left may be balanced by a gazebo on the right.
• Emphasis. When an element in the landscape contrasts sharply with what’s around it, that is emphasis. A single tall tree in a flat landscape can have great vertical emphasis.
• Proportion. Proportion comes from paying attention to the three dimensions of length, breadth, and height. Good landscapers try not to let one of these dimensions dominate a landscape.

Landscape design has many parts to it, and it’s always a good idea to consult a professional, who can give you good advice and ideas about the best way to design your landscape.