5 Design Guidelines

When designing your landscape it is important to try and create a harmonious blend with the surroundings. There are five basic landscaping principles that will help you ensure a visually pleasing design.

Unity. A unified landscape appears as all one piece rather than disjointed and unconnected. A unified landscape complements and works with the architecture by integrating it into the landscape surroundings. The use of strong observable lines, and the repetition of geometric shapes will help to achieve a unified landscape. Using a limited planting palette will also help to achieve a unified look by avoiding having to tie too many distinct plants together.

Proportion. In well-designed landscape, all of the structural and planting elements will seem to be in scale with one another. Your house will most likely be the element that determines the proportion of your landscape. Remember when you choose trees and shrubs to consider their mature sizes. It can be easy to overwhelm small spaces as trees mature.

Balance. To achieve balance in a landscape, use mass, form, and color to create an equal visual weight on each side of a focal point in your landscape.

Variety. Unity is good but monotony is to be avoided. To break up monotony use plants that have strongly contrasting shapes, colors or textures. Interest can also be added through the use of structures or hardscapes. Careful planning will help you use plants of different colors or textures to separate plantings that are visually too similar.

Color. Color is one of the most useful tools in creating unity, providing variety, and maintaining balance. By careful planning you can design your landscape so that bloom times for flowers, trees and shrubs are staggered through the growing season, giving your landscape an ever-changing kaleidoscope of color. Often dominant plants can be chosen for colors that complement the architecture or hardscape elements.

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