This is not to say that everyone, but many dream of having their own garden. However, when a person buys expensive plants and plants them on his garden plot, somehow the expected satisfaction does not come. It turns out that there is no harmonious environment, something has been done not as seen in dreams. What is the mistake? Before you take on a shovel and planting trees and shrubs, you should take a pencil and draw a plan of the site and a promising drawing that will help realize your dream. Let's talk about this in our article.
Where to begin
At the initial stage, it is necessary to translate the plan and design of the garden on paper. With your own hands, this is quite doable. It is necessary to decide how each family member sees this garden. Having made a detailed plan of what will grow on your site, you can avoid many mistakes, and you will not redo several times what you think is wrong.
It is necessary to think through to the smallest details how to use the space rationally, taking into account the characteristics of the soil and climate, in order to turn an ordinary piece of land into a paradise. Indicate on your plan the main focal points - the places where you will place the main internal objects of your garden (barbecue gazebo, flower beds, artificial pond, alpine slide and outdoor shower, etc.). Garden paths should go to these objects, which also need to be drawn in the plan of your garden.
Choosing a garden design style
To beautifully decorate your garden, you need to decide what style of landscape design you and your family like. Following it, it is easier to achieve a result. Let us dwell on what styles are and what you can create a design with your own hands in a garden on 6 acres.
The concept of "style" is collective, including both the planning decision and the use of certain plants and their combinations.
Classical or regular style implies symmetry and orderliness in everything. Trees with small crowns. The paths in the garden are straight and without bends. The beds and flower beds have a geometric shape. In all severity. As a rule, this style is mainly observed in suburban areas that have a rectangular shape. As usual, a central path is made in the garden, on both sides of which the beds are symmetrically formed, bushes, trees are planted and flower beds made.
Country style
The original design of a country-style garden created by do-it-yourself on 6 hundred parts will look original. Sometimes it is called a village or country house. This style does not require thorough planning and is distinguished by its simplicity and harmony. It is characterized primarily by the chaotic planting of trees and shrubs, the alternation of lawns with wildflowers and flowerbeds with home gardens, planted with your own hands. Garden design will benefit if they bloom at different times.
The originality of this style lies in the fact that fruit trees and bushes with berries must grow on the site. The beds are neat, even. They should not take up much space, they need to be done exactly as much as is enough to plant the necessary vegetables and herbs. In the garden, you need a well and other household equipment, up to pots and hedges made of fences, wooden barrels, wheels from a cart, a bicycle and old furniture. When creating a country style in your garden, remember the main thing - you need to use only natural materials, wood or stones.
French Country - Provence
For a small garden, the best option would be a style such as French Provence. Many people like this simple, easy, without elements of luxury, but with a delicate palette of colors style. Despite its simplicity, it is quite elegant and harmonious. The landscaping created by the hands in the garden consists of a large number of all kinds of decor, which is small in size. These are mainly small sculptures, beds with fragrant herbs, small pools or fountains. The main decoration of this style, of course, are fragrant flowers and herbs: rosemary, lavender, thyme.
Those who are used to keeping the lawn in order should either give up their habits or choose a different style. Grass acts as the exterior of the site in the above styles.
Forest style for a large plot
For many landowners, their gardens are a place where you can relax from the hustle and bustle of the world and just enjoy nature. It is absolutely not surprising that they want to create the garden of their dreams. Forest style is a fusion of garden and forest. It is perfect for sites with a long elongated appearance and located along a forest belt. If there is no forest belt, it is created artificially. To do this, you need to plant deciduous fast-growing trees and shrubs on the outskirts of the site, and forest grass can serve as a lawn.
You can create a garden design with your own hands from improvised materials, which include stone, cobblestone, sand, wood. The cobblestone man-made pond fits organically into the site design. An original geyser fountain located in a makeshift pond will look original in the garden.
Japanese garden
The owner of the Japanese-style garden, first of all, creates for himself a secluded, hidden behind the walls and boulders cast of a more grandiose landscape, in which there are components of all the elements. This is a garden for reflection and contemplation. Anyone who knows how to create such a garden design with their own hands is familiar with Japanese philosophy firsthand and most likely had the opportunity to visit a traditional garden in Japan.
There is nothing superfluous in the garden. Its asymmetry is the basis of the layout of the site. A required attribute is a rock garden. A stone bowl with water and a pond - the element of water. Step-by-step cobbled paths, pagoda arbors, lanterns and dry streams, bamboo hedges and a tea house. Over artificial streams, curved bridges, benches made of sawn wood, driftwood. All this, being symbolic attributes, helps a person in the garden to plunge into meditation and engage in contemplation.
The Japanese style of the garden is, first of all, its independence from changing seasons. A thought garden should have evergreens. Flora - pine, maple, bamboo and sakura (you can cherry). Flowers are planted in the garden that are scarlet, crimson or crimson.
“It's hard to understand the Japanese garden. You need to go through it, hear a crunch under your feet, smell it. Only through immersion in it and contemplation can you feel the harmony of man and nature, ”the owners of such amazing gardens share their impressions.
What other styles are there?
The options discussed above can be implemented with your own hands. Garden design is not as complicated as, for example, made in English, Dutch or Moorish styles, which are suitable for large summer cottages or gardens.
It should only be taken into account that you cannot set a specific style only for your garden without touching the home. Works will be in vain if there is a high-tech building in a country-style garden, or an English cottage suddenly finds itself in a Japanese garden. To avoid this, it is worth paying attention to the recommendations of landscape designers.
Home and Garden Connection
To create a single exterior, there must be a connection between the house and the garden. It is not established at the expense of organizing front gardens or plants, lawns and flowerpots winding around the house. First of all, it is the repeating motives of the house on the site and in the design of the garden. You can do this with your own hands, having worked with the finishing material, color and shape of the finish. The presence of transitional elements such as stairs, terraces, paved walkways connects the garden to the house. As a rule, such transitions are made smooth, and then all this is beaten by landscaping.
The entrance group to the garden is a business card that gives the first impression. And if the house, plants, wicket, accessories are in harmony with each other, then everything is done correctly.
Site zoning
In landscape design, zoning is an indispensable element of any of the styles. Moreover, the functional significance of each garden zone should be specified. So, if you create with your own hands the design of a garden, a garden and other areas that will not have a connection, the whole composition as a whole will not look harmonious, but fragmented.
Functional areas on the site have boundaries. In places where these zones meet, crossings are arranged. It can be partitions, hedges, stone slides. They should create coziness and a microclimate, whether it is a resting place or an area where trees or flowers grow in the garden. And be sure all zones must be connected by paths.
The choice of partitions for zoning
With partitions in small areas, the main thing is not to overdo it. On sale now you can find a huge assortment of frames and nets that are used for vertical gardening. Such constructions are good in that they are transparent and do not limit the perception of the space behind them. Good for distinguishing areas of the partition in the form of arches, made by yourself. In the design of the garden and the garden, twined pergolas and arches can become a real highlight. Flowers are often planted at the base of the arch. It can be curly annuals or perennial tea roses or ivy.
But not always partitions, even in the form of transparent walls, are good. Professional design division finds expression in the form of conditional boundaries, which can be transitions of paths from one type of material to another, a brook and a stone path, the intersection of a lawn and a flower garden. Creating a garden and kitchen garden design with your own hands (photo above), you need to make these borders noticeable, to highlight some interesting element. It can be an arch located on the border of two zones, a bridge in the Japanese garden, several large boulders in the stone garden, a sculpture or a large amphora. There are many such elements, the main thing is to be able to apply them correctly.
Ability to create compositions
To make your garden look attractive, all objects must be correctly located in it. In the language of landscape designers, there should be a composition in the garden. This is not symmetry and not the selection of colors, namely the correct location and commensurability of objects. Someone is endowed with a sense of composition from nature, while someone is not. For example, the ability to dress stylishly, combining garments - this is the composition.
The composition always has a center around which objects commensurate with the garden are formed. This is not the center of the site, it is some kind of structure, a group of plants, an artificial pond, a fountain. The composition must be catchy in order to attract the eye with its harmony. If its elements are chosen incorrectly, it cuts the eye. If there is a small house on a small plot of 6 acres, and a bulky arbor rises not far from it - this is precisely the wrong planning.
In the same way, trees must be correctly selected for each specific site. They should be about the same height and proportionate to the house and the garden itself.
Garden Decorations
Each owner of a suburban area wants to see it beautiful, creating their own design in the garden. Flowers, planted trees, shrubs are always pleasing to the eye. Wicker furniture evokes pleasant emotions, and the Alpine slide and an artificial pond delight. In addition to all this, many people like to decorate their garden with figures and all kinds of accessories. However, you should pay attention to the advice of landscape designers who do not recommend overloading the garden with them. Sometimes it’s enough to have one well-chosen figurine.
Any garden figure should not suppress living plants with its presence. Returning to the composition described above in the garden, it should be noted that there should be a system in the selection of decorative figurines. If this is a fairy garden, then fairy heroes, gnomes, mushrooms, etc. will be appropriate.
About virtual mirrors in the garden
What is garden mirroring? This ability to reflect on its territory what surrounds you off-site. For example, a river flows near the garden, plan to make a brook on the site. There is a lake nearby - make an artificial pond. Learn to include in the composition of your garden that which grows beyond. For example, in a neighboring garden behind a fence, a weighty tree grows. You can plant a group of ornamental shrubs from the side of your garden, and the tree will become part of this composition.
It is worth paying attention to such an interesting accessory as large glass stones, scattering which in certain areas of the garden, you can create the effect of raindrops. And the assembled houses and already unnecessary CDs should be used as reflectors for garden lamps. By the way, they will also help save the harvest of cherries and currants from birds. You need to hang them on the branches, and they, gleaming in the sun and spinning in the wind, will scare away the birds.
The article has a lot of interesting and useful tips from landscape designers. We hope that, given them, many will be able to avoid mistakes when arranging their gardens.