We are novice gardeners who have just moved into a newly built home with a blank canvas for a garden. (Just earth, not even any grass). We would love to design it ourselves, but are looking for some pointers to make sure we start off in the right direction.
Although most garden design web articles and books that we have reviewed seem to tackle the problem of long, thin gardens, we have the opposite problem, in that our garden is very wide, but not very deep (22metres wide by 14 metres deep).
How can we best design the garden to make it appear narrower and deeper than it actually is? The garden is completely flat and gets sun all day long. It is surrounded by a wire mesh fence, but through the fence we have uninterrupted views over open fields.
How high is the fence? That is, do you have to look through it for the view, or can you look over it? The reason I am asking this is that, if you hide the fence with vines and shrubs, the view becomes an extension of your garden, making it appear much deeper.
I would not rely entirely on vines, which turn the fence into a green wall. That is why I also suggested shrubs to create an irregular image.
In any case, to ensure you get the design you want and a plant list that is suitable for the climate in your area, I would use a professional to design the garden even if you plan to plant it yourself. A good landscape designer will work with you to get the results you want.
I designed the garden for my first house. It was beautiful but required so much maintenance that, in the summer, I was gardening by moonlight. For my second (current) house, I had someone design the garden. It too was beautiful. The area was larger than for my first house, but it required less maintenance.
One other piece of advice: Be careful if you plant trees. For my current house, the design included a shade tree for the back. After about 30 years (we are this house almost 40 years), the tree grew so large and created so much shade that we had to redo the entire back yard with a new design, switching from plants requiring full-day sun to plants that thrived with part-shade.
Although I live in southern California, my garden has design elements characteristic of an English perennial garden: informality with color, carefully planned to look unplanned, a theme that is quite subtle.
Plant all the plants and flowers and whatever you want in your garden into long side of the garden... Like with sides to 22meters. By which your garden will get a long narrow shape of 22 meters long and 14 meter wide... Make footpath in center of it for walk... This will provide you ease to walk in and check each and every thing easily.
"It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves." - Robert Louis Stevenson
I'm presuming that this is strictly an ornamental garden, and not a vegetable garden. With a vegetable garden, you don't want the rows more than 4 ft. apart.
You may want to google "ornamental gardens, pics", or "garden designs, pics" to spark some idea of what you'd like to see in your garden.
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