Menu
If you’re here, you want to grasp some fresh ideas for your garden design, right? With so many tips available online, it seems there’s nothing new left to add on this topic. However, we promise to give you a few inspiring (and practical!) solutions for making your green land beautiful and professional-looking.
In this article, you’ll find nine design tips for big and small gardens. Do your best to consider them all – and your outdoor space will look fabulous and eye-pleasing for your neighbors, guests, and, most importantly, you.
Professional garden designers think about function first. Taking into account all the issues will help you organize everything in the best way possible: a garden’s size, resources available for its maintenance, activities you want to have inside, your pets (if any) walking around, etc. And what about your family members? What do they want to see in the garden to feel comfortable there?
Make a complete list of practical considerations, and build your garden design around that. Will you have time to upkeep a big, pompous yard with different flowers and trees? Maybe it’s better to think of plans requiring low maintenance.
Plan everything before you go to buy garden plants and accessories. Research how large or wide your chosen plans will grow, whether they attract wildlife, and how much sun they need to blossom. Measure your garden beds, and calculate how many plants you need for that space – everything matters here.
Professional-looking garden designs are also about colors, shapes, and texture combinations. Take time to think about how your garden will look: classic green covers with pavings, tropics, bright and bold colors, or a modern style with tidy and straight lines. Go to websites like Pinterest for inspiration and use a mood board template to create the personality of your future garden that would reflect your ideal aesthetic.
You need a mixture of colors, shapes, and textures that, when brought together, create a winning combination! When deciding on colors, also consider your garden’s location, soil, and plants/flower types to choose to maintain its long-lasting color (more on that below).
Short, medium and tall – a variety of flower types adds texture to your garden, makes it more visually pleasing, and helps avoid monotony. Consider flowers of different sizes and forms: daisy-type (coneflowers or daisies themselves), flat-topped (milkweeds or yarrows), flower sprays like columbines, and mounding flowers (coreopsis or lavender).
Space everything according to its mature size to prevent crowding and extra maintenance. Some plants (peonies, for example) have deep roots and won’t transplant well. Consider such details when planning and seeding them.
Plant the tallest plants toward the back of your garden, and place the shortest ones toward the front so you can see everything.
When thinking of flowers and other plants for your garden, please remember their blooming period. Choose those of different seasonality to have something colorful and beautiful all year round. Long-lasting color is not only about the beauty of your garden through the seasons: It will also provide food for birds and pollinators.
Thus, perennials usually bloom for a month in early or late spring, summer, and early fall; so, seed those blooming in all segments and add ornamental grass and shrubs to your garden for texture and movement.
If you don’t plan any colorful flowers because of size or maintenance issues but still want your garden to look professional, consider evergreen plants with stylish seed heads. Thus, milkweeds or coneflowers can help keep your green land charming in the dormant seasons.
As already mentioned, do not ignore shrubs and ornamental grass. Choose evergreen – and your garden will look dazzling all year round.
Some gardeners underestimate ground covers or believe they’re uncomfortable to maintain, but they are what knits all the planting in your garden together. Plus, they bring fragrance, attract pollinators, and serve as weed barriers, which is also critical.
Ground covers are perfect for low-maintenance planting schemes: Planted in the proper distance and spots, they will add color and texture to your garden. And coordinating them with a paving style and the way it’s laid can help create an elegant design:
When designing your garden, it’s essential to consider its impact on wildlife. Do you have bee-friendly plants there? Or, maybe you have enough space and resources to maintain wildlife ponds? What about bird feeders on tree branches or fences?
Think of creating a hedgehog highway in your garden, place log piles or compost heaps if your overall design allows, and remember about plants for pollinators. Connection to the natural world is in garden design trends now, and garden designers predict their further growth in popularity.
If your garden’s size and other conditions allow, why not place some trees there? They screen unattractive views, help filter noise and air pollution from busy roads, provide habitats and food for wildlife, and have many other benefits.
If you already have mature trees in the garden, they can become a starting point for building a design scheme. You’ll see where there’s no place for sun-loving plants, and you can use trees as an anchor for hanging decorations, hammocks, or pendant lights.
Together with shrubs, trees give structure and architecture to your garden. You can place a bench nearby or organize a garden room for working or doing yoga outside. Even if your garden is small, you can choose trees of the corresponding size and shape to fit its design: A little acorn in a pot or a flowering cherry are great options.
For larger spaces, try whitebeams, birches, or hornbeams. By the way, multi-stem trees are a growing trend in garden design now: If space allows, you can create striking architectural showpieces or structural statements with their help.
Your garden design is not only flowers and trees but comfortable places for your relaxation and outdoor activities. When planning a garden scheme, consider zoning areas to create “walls” and build spaces for separate “rooms” there.
Think of plants as building blocks. Invest in garden furniture that would fit your design best, with enough room for all family members to sit together. Fire pits, barbecues, pizza ovens, patio heaters – remember about the space if planning to place these must-haves in your garden. Also, reserve some space for storing all the garden furniture in winter.
What about building a summerhouse in your garden? Depending on your resources and other practical issues, it can be of a different size or design. Organize it as a home office or additional accommodation for your guests.
And last but not least:
Don’t forget the lighting because it’s also essential to your garden design! It creates the overall atmosphere and brings character and ambiance to your space. Consider different garden lighting: wall lights, fairy lights, freestanding lamps, festoon lights – everything that fits your garden style and makes it look appealing.
