1-26-08 12:30pm: Zach went to work with me to do some work around the office

4:00pm: Zach cleaned out the car

We are starting a ‘castle’ project. The goal is for him to learn all about life in medieval England and then design a create a castle, providing for all the needs of the castle community. He was quite excited and started his research immediately. I prepared thirty or forty pages for him to read as well, and he can take that notebook to school.

I also picked up a book titled 1,100 Words You Need To Know. There is a worksheet for each day. I love the way it’s set up. He reads a paragraph and tries to figure out the definition of each word from the context. I think he will enjoy that too. I have a math workbook too, but I’m not sure what to do about science yet. Problem is, that while he IS learning, and that’s important, it’s not curriculum. Well, we’ll see what happens in the meetings this week. I have no doubt that I could get him far in advance of his grade level, but . . .

First ya put some grease in a frying pan, best kind is a cast iron, ‘course.  And the best grease is leftover bacon grease.  Then ya cut up some taters, slice ‘em up real thin, and some onion too.  We like them sweet Texas onions, got some number er other.  Throw ‘em in the hot fat, and let ‘em start cooking with plenty of salt and pepper.  Meantime, go ahead and make ya some ranch dip.  Now, you know ta be turnin’ the taters over pretty frequent, right?  Long a bout now,ya turn the heat down, and ya kin pour a little beer o’er the top’m.    Don’t hafta, iffen ya don’t do that, but the alcohol, what some folks likes too much, it burns off, and jest leaves that good ole flavor soakin’ inta them taters.  I genally slice up my tamaters now.  Put ‘em on a small plate, salt and paper like ya like ‘em.  Now ya slice up some smoked sausage, best kind comes from Chapel Hill, ‘course.  Everbody knows that.  Let that fry up – it goes purty quick.  After the taters get done through, ya wanna turn the heat back up an crisp up the taters.  Stick ya a coupla pieces of bread in the toaster, and put the sausage on a nice big ole plate.  Iffen there ain’t enough grease in the sausage pan, add a slab a butter to it.  Crack a coupla eggs in it, but don’t be breaking the yolks.  Fry ‘em up, sloshing the butter/grease o’er the top.  Meanwhile, butter up yer toast real good.  Take yer taters now, put ‘em in two piles on yer big plate.  Slop the eggs o’er the top of one of them piles, and sprinkle some Zaterain’s or Tony Cercheres (them’s Louisiana spices, but we borry ‘em fer special occasions).

Take yer plates to the table.  Dip yer spicy taters and yer tomaters in the dip, and mush up the eggs and the other pile a taters together right good.  Use the toast to push it up on yer fork with the toast, makin’ sure ta get that toast all full of runny yolk and good stuff.

Enjoy!

I had the word ‘dead’ once. Not sure why. Perhaps referring to a plant? I’m boring. I must write some bloody murderous posts . . . (wonder if this will do it?)

At the exotic zoo on spring break:

6-23-07:

GORGEOUS GWEN

GRUMPY GWEN

You’d like to remake your landscape or garden design, but you need some ideas to get you started? You’re not sure what style of garden design you prefer — for now, you just know that you’re tired of looking at the existing garden design, or tired of lawn care? You know what you like when you see it in someone else’s yard, but only at a gut level: you’re not experienced enough in garden design to translate your likes into a plan?

Believe it or not, a quick history lesson might be just the thing to help you better define your own tastes. Understanding how garden design styles have evolved can clarify for you exactly what it is that you expect from your landscape. Perhaps, without even knowing it, you fall into one of the two major landscaping schools of thought — formal garden design with geometric patterns or informal garden design that treats such geometric patterns as anathema and strives for a more “natural” look….

In an ethics history class that I took in college, I was particularly struck by an exchange I had with the professor concerning the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. One encounters a lot of talk about “absolutes” when one studies Kant’s philosophy. Being a skeptic regarding such highfalutin terms, I challenged my professor to justify all this business about absolutes. The professor’s response to my challenge was succinct, if nothing else. “That 2 + 2 = 4,” he replied, “is an example of an absolute: it was a true statement thousands of years ago, and it will still hold true if we’re speaking it on another planet thousands of years hence.”

While I’ve never been sold on the idea that such a statement has anything to do with ethics, admittedly the link between mathematics and philosophy has a long and distinguished pedigree. None other than the very fathers of philosophy, the ancient Greeks, were the first to establish it. Perhaps you’ve heard of “Euclidean geometry,” and you probably remember “the Pythagorean theorem” from high school geometry class. Well Euclid and Pythagoras lived in ancient Greece, and the latter was one of her foremost philosophers. Pythagoras, in turn, influenced Plato, Greece‘s most famous philosopher.

In mathematics, and particularly geometry, the Greeks discovered a world of perfection, purity and beauty that could never be sullied by the realities of daily life. It was a sublime refuge from the imperfect world around them, a refuge in which irrefutable absolutes could be summoned at a moment’s notice. Straight lines, level planes, perfect circles: they’re so clean, crisp and definite. Yes, 2 + 2 = 4: there’s something so reassuring, so powerful, so magical about mathematics. Armed with an orderly mindset disciplined by mathematics and in love with geometric patterns, we can even sometimes impose our will upon nature, which is a central theme in Western history, including formal garden design history.

Yes, the design ramifications of the Greeks’ love for geometry have extended far beyond the geometric patterns for decorative borders that we know as “Greek-key” geometric patterns. As an example, on Page 2 I’ll introduce formal garden design history and its use of geometric patterns. Although that may sound very complex, you may actually end up seeing quite a bit of yourself in all this….

The English Revolt Against Formal Garden Design

One way to impose one’s will upon nature is by constraining the plants in one’s landscape or garden design to conform to a layout that has the kind of geometric precision discussed on Page 1. The natural landscape, by contrast, is rather chaotic, from an artistic standpoint: nothing is even, there are lots of rough edges, and one type of plant grows willy-nilly right next to another, regardless of proportion or other garden design considerations.

By the very definition of garden design, we work to improve upon this arrangement when we engage in landscaping work. But the geometric style, or what is better known as “formal garden design,” goes beyond mere improvement: one might characterize it as improvement “with an attitude.” Georgene A.

Bramlage provides excellent photos on her garden design site both of what I mean by a layout with “geometric shapes” and of the garden design style that opposes it.

In formal garden design, content becomes subservient to form. That is, nature supplies the plants (the content), but we apply such rigid guidelines in their arrangement (the form) that most of the attention is drawn to the form. Our own handiwork becomes the star of the show, while the plants play merely supporting roles. The plants chosen to support such a composition traditionally have been — predictably — the ones that are easiest to work with.

One plant that conforms well to a pattern of geometric patterns is boxwood: boxwood shrubs can easily be molded into well-behaved hedges that conform to whatever form we wish to impose upon them, be it a circle, straight line, etc. In formal gardens a series of carefully arranged and maintained boxwood hedges can be the whole garden: it is not a style much given to variety, nor do flowers assume a central role.

The Romans, those practical pupils of the Greeks, have left us in their literature an early example of this use of boxwood hedges to impose unity on the chaotic natural landscape. The example is provided by Pliny the Younger (General Letters, Part VII, Letter LII, To Domitius Apollinaris), describing the garden design of his own estate in Tuscany. Pliny speaks of trimmed boxwood hedges expertly deployed to partition off segments of the landscape in a precise manner. In addition, boxwood was sculpted into topiaries depicting animals — a further assertion of mastery over nature (turning a plant into an animal, as it were!).

As Europe transitioned from Roman rule to the medieval period, the wealth, technical expertise and culture that were the prerequisites for an estate such as Pliny’s were sadly wanting. But the tight structure of formal garden design was at least passed on in the form of the knot garden style employed in medieval monastery gardens. Renaissance Italy brought back formal garden design on the grand scale, and the reign of Louis XIV witnessed the emergence of the classical French garden at Versailles — perhaps the pinnacle of formal garden design.

Kirk Johnson explains how the formal garden design style finally met its match — with the rise of English landscape garden design in the eighteenth century. Johnson cites English poet Alexander Pope as an instigator for an informal garden design style. “In an essay on gardening in the Guardian (1713), he [Pope] urged a return to the ‘amiable simplicity of unadorned nature’ in place of the formal garden,” writes Johnson. “And in his Epistle to Burlington he proclaimed what was to become the cardinal rule for the English landscape style,” Johnson continues, quoting Pope’s cardinal rule: “In all, let nature never be forgot…. Consult the genius of the place”.

From Peasants to Monet – Triumph of English Cottage Gardens

The beginnings of the English revolt against formal garden design in the time of Pope (mentioned on Page 2) received an additional impetus later from the Romantic movement in literature and art — a movement against Classicism and its appreciation for order, discipline and moderation. In garden design the influence of Romanticism translated into an emphasis on using plants to inspire us emotionally rather than intellectually. In the minds of many Americans, the defining moment of the English revolt against formal garden design is the evolution of English cottage gardens. With their mystical charm and romantic aura, English cottage gardens exhibit a style that is the direct result of having been born of these historical movements.

Romanticism not only focused on the emotional, but also placed the hitherto despised peasantry up on a pedestal.

And it was originally the peasantry that had planted and maintained English cottage gardens. They had done so before it became trendy with more affluent groups. The true English cottage garden of the peasantry was practical, as well as aesthetically pleasing. Thus herbs were common components, used both for medicinal and culinary purposes; and fruit trees, too, were often included.

But after English cottage gardens caught on outside of peasant circles (and outside of England, too), their aesthetic properties received most of the attention. One of the most famous English cottage gardens was designed by none other than the French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet (1840-1926). As already mentioned above, art and literature influenced the historical course of garden design in Europe. No discipline exerted a stronger influence on garden design than did landscape painting. It was a case of “life imitating art,” if you will. Monet is a particularly interesting case, being not only an artist who painted landscapes but also someone who was active in garden design. With Monet, the influence went both ways.

English cottage gardens, with their wild abundance of rose bushes, perennial flowers, vine-covered arbors, and plants tumbling over walkways, are widely emulated in the U.S. This is an informal style meant to evoke a mood of light-hearted gaiety. The eye feasts on a diverse jumble of flowering plants, distributed in a seemingly haphazard manner, evoking thoughts of a “natural landscape.” The plants themselves are just as important as their use in the overall composition, and the wildness of the arrangement is meant to suggest a closer communing with nature.

But while English cottage gardens are popular in some American circles, there can be no doubt that the lawn is the dominant element in American landscaping — the subject of Page 4….

Edwin Budding and Lawn Mower History

The emergence of two giants must be considered in discussing the history of lawns in America. Their names are Frederick Law Olmsted and Edwin Budding. Olmsted is much better known, but Edwin Budding holds a unique place in the history of lawn mowers — and, consequently, in the history of lawns in America. For in the love affair between Americans and their lawns, lawn mowers played the role of the indispensible matchmaker.

As David Quammen humorously points out in “Rethinking the Lawn,” the history behind the American lawn is more complex than one might think. On the one hand, there is an element of democratization. When pioneering American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted laid out the Chicago suburb of Riverside in 1869, open, monotonous lawns linked the homes of the community together into something that smacked of collectivism.

But at the same time, an opposing dynamic was also at work.

In 1830 Edwin Budding had invented a gadget for mowing lawns. Lawn mower history had begun, and the grass-eating beast continues to evolve to this day. Prior to this invention, only aristocrats could maintain lawn grass, so lawns were rare. When the lawn mower came along, suburban homeowners seized the opportunity thereby created for having a lawn of their own, thus elevating their social status (until everbody else did the same, that is). Consequently, it is fair to say that the American lawn has elements both of democratic and elitist tendencies.

I suspect, however, that there’s something more basic behind America‘s obsession with lawns than is accounted for by either of these historical trends. Once again, our desire to impose our will on nature would seem to be the predominant factor behind the hegemony of the lawn. As with the examples of formal garden design previously discussed, the lawn is meant to showcase the diligence of the person who owns it, not the plants themselves. It’s form over content all over again. Indeed, a blade of grass is about as boring as the plant world ever gets, so there is little chance of any of the components in this arrangement stealing the show at the expense of the arrangement as a whole. Unlike the playfully helter-skelter style of the cottage gardens discussed on Page 3, lawns represent the rule of law and reason. And we thumb our noses at nature by extending the indoors outside, rolling out a green “carpet” that will allow us to transition freely between outdoors and inside without even tracking dirt into the house!

Furthermore, the lawn is another landscaping composition with a satisfying bit of geometry in it, however simple: it is the poor man’s answer to a formal garden with neat lines of boxwood-hedge. For what is a carefully manicured lawn supposed to represent, after all, if not a horizontal plane? No one would brag about a lawn whose grass was 5″ tall on one side of the driveway, and 2″ on the other. The whole point behind a lawn, aesthetically speaking, is its uniformity. It should be uniform not only in height, but also in composition (no “weeds”) and in color. The more precision, the better.

Which school of thought do you agree with, formal or informal? And what’s your impression of the chore of lawn mowing? Do you consider lawn mower history to be a tale of progress or the story of a noisy beast that you’d rather not have to push around? Before undertaking a landscaping makeover, it is helpful not only to answer these questions, but to consider the reasons behind your answers — which is the thrust of Page 5….

For Low Maintenance , Use a Minimalist Design

If you’re contemplating a landscaping switch from lawn (discussed on Page 4) to a more informal, “natural landscape” (or vice versa), consider carefully which school of thought you subscribe to — formal or informal garden design. You may even discover that what you crave is more properly called a “minimalist design.” Remaking a landscape is expensive and is a lot of work. Before you begin, you want to be sure that the new design will truly reflect your most deeply felt convictions on the subject and will also make sense on a practical level. If the need for low maintenance is one of your most deeply felt convictions, seriously consider a minimalist design.

I place quotation marks around “natural landscape” to indicate that, although heard often, this terminology can be deceiving.

There’s some work involved in maintaining a well-groomed, yet natural-looking design; it doesn’t come naturally. If you’re looking to virtually eliminate yard maintenance (or come as close to that goal as possible, at least), what you need is a minimalist design (see below), not a “natural landscape.” Of course, if you use the terminology “natural landscape” in a different sense, to indicate not doing any work at all, well…clearly, you don’t need the advice offered by this, or any other Web site!

Some Considerations If You’re Thinking of Replacing Your Lawn With an Informal Garden Design:

1. A practical consideration first: if your property might be placed on the real estate market at some point in the near future, it might be safer for you to stick with lawn and more conservative plantings, such as the traditional foundation plantings. By and large, potential buyers are more likely to go for a formal design than for the informality of the “natural landscape.”
2. If your motivation for the change is to get closer to nature, make sure that this is your heart-felt conviction and that you’re not just giving in to a fad. Remember, “imposing our will upon nature” isn’t all bad: we’d still be living in caves if our ancestors had thought so. Philosophically speaking, it could also be argued that a minimalist design, too, will bring you closer to nature.
3. If your motivation for the change is to save on yard work, you’ll have to tailor your design and plant selection carefully to achieve precisely that goal. Specifically, what you’ll need is a minimalist design (see below), which won’t necessarily satisfy you aesthetically. The cottage garden style may offer the feel of a “natural landscape,” but it is not a minimalist design: you can easily spend as much time on a cottage garden as on a lawn (especially when you factor in the installation). If you feel comfortable with a lawn that is less than perfect, then lawn care needn’t consume an inordinate amount of your time. Of course, the true lover of cottage gardens will want to spend a lot of time working in one.

Minimalist Design and Replacing Your Informal Garden Design With Another Alternative:

1. If saving time on maintenance is a major consideration for you, you’re best bet is a minimalist design. For instance, you can achieve the sort of clean, crisp look associated with formal garden design through a generous use of mulching and hardscape features on your landscape. Instead of a hedge, use stone walls to achieve the desired geometric shapes. Build an extended brick patio or flagstone patio to take up space that would otherwise have to be maintained. Use ground covers instead of grass, and link the sections of your landscape with broad masonry paths. Without sacrificing aesthetics to an intolerable degree, a minimalist design essentially focuses on getting more out of less — less maintenance, that is.
2. Consider the environmental impact of your lawn care regimen. Even if you eliminate herbicides and chemical fertilizers from your lawn maintenance regimen, you’ll still probably be using a gas-powered lawn mower. Very few people are willing to use the old muscle-powered, manual push mowers to cut lawns of any significant size, despite the fact that gas-powered lawn mowers are noisy, dangerous and emit pollution. Another option, however, is represented by the new battery-powered lawn mowers, on which I have written a consumer product review.
3. What if you care for neither a “natural landscape” nor a minimalist design? If the foregoing reflections have convinced you that you prefer the formal garden style, why not make an even bolder statement of your love for orderliness than would be possible merely with a lawn? In addition to lawn, install hedges. A landscape design with a well-maintained lawn set off by crisp hedges is a bold expression of your landscaping tastes.

“Landscape design.” Sounds rather imposing, doesn’t it? And, to be sure, one could spend years studying all the ideas in the field of garden or landscape design. But what about the do-it-yourselfer who wants to give a lawn a makeover, or wishes to tinker with designing a garden? If you need to spruce up the landscape design of a house that you are about to sell, or if you simply want to enjoy an enhanced beauty in the privacy of your backyard, you could profit from a straightforward, no-nonsense look at the ideas behind designing a garden, supplemented with hands-on project guides. Let’s begin with the former:

Landscape Design Explained Through Pictures

Ever wonder about the secrets underlying the magic art of the landscape designer? Well, this resource translates that “magic,” making it understandable for the do-it-yourselfer.

Study these photos illustrating landscape design ideas and learn about the concepts the pros employ.

View pictures: Landscape Design Explained Through Pictures

Landscape Design Projects in Pictures

Or perhaps you’d rather skip the concepts and get right down to some projects that will beautify your yard? The following resources will allow you to do just that, providing precise instructions and lots of pictures:

• How to Build Garden Fountains
• How to Build Rock Gardens
• How to Plant Flower Beds
• How to Plant Hedges

Understanding the Language of Landscape Design

Whenever you put something together yourself, you are engaged in designing, however humble the project. Sometimes we take our designing skills for granted, because what we’re putting together is so commonplace for us that we are no longer conscious of the designing process. For instance, you are employing designing techniques when you compose a letter to send to somebody. Your basic “elements” to accomplish such a task include vocabulary, spelling and grammar. Somewhat more complex elements, or “principles” build directly on the basic elements. Letter-writing principles include conveying your ideas clearly and coming across as a courteous, intelligent individual. Your success with these principles will largely determine whether or not your letter achieves its ultimate objective.

And so it is with landscape design. Do-it-yourselfers must first learn the basic designing elements that underlie the discipline of landscape design. These fundamental elements will then serve as building blocks for learning and implementing the more advanced principles for designing a garden in the backyard. These tried and true principles are the cornerstones of the world’s picture-perfect gardens.

The basic elements of landscape design are:

• Color, as defined by color theory.
• Form (see picture above).
• Line (see picture on Page 3).
• Scale.
• Texture (see picture on Page 2).

These five elements must be considered in designing both the hardscape and softscape of your property, the latter consisting mainly of gardens, lawns, shrubs and trees. I discuss form, line and texture in this article. I explain the use of color in my article on color theory. As for scale, it is simply the size of one component relative to adjacent components.

Form, Line and Plant Texture in Landscape Design

You may wonder what seemingly abstract terms like “form” have to do with backyard landscape design. You may object that you’re not painting a landscape, after all; you’re just putting plants in the ground. Yet it is not coincidental that backyard landscape design shares some terminology with the world of art. The backyard is your canvas; your landscape design skills will determine the beauty of the resulting picture.

The element of form is defined as the shape of a plant and the structure of its branching pattern. For a picture illustrating form, see Page 1. Trees come in many shapes (especially if pruned), including columnar and globular shapes. Likewise, tree forms range structurally from having the stiffly upright branches of Lombardy poplar trees to the droopy quality of a weeping willow.

The form of individual components of a plant also needs to be considered. For example, the leaf form of one type of tree can be very different from that of another type of tree. Relative leaf size, meanwhile, helps determine plant texture (see picture).

Since texture is primarily a visual matter in landscape design, we often rely on the relative size of a plant’s leaves to draw conclusions about its perceived texture. Yes, plant texture is highly relative: it refers to how the surface of the object is perceived, relative to the objects around it. Thus the plant texture of one bedding plant, for example, might be considered more or less coarse than that of an adjacent plant, due to differences in leaf size.

The element of line refers to the fact that the viewer’s eye movement or flow can be governed by the arrangement of plants and their borders. Eye movement is unconsciously influenced by the way plant groupings fit or flow together, both on the horizontal and vertical planes. For a picture illustrating line, see Page 3.

Enough about the basic elements, you say? Good: let’s move on to the principles you’ll apply to your backyard landscape design. Because the effective application of these principles in your own backyard can raise the value of your real estate signficantly.

With the basic elements defined, it is time to put them to practical use. In planning a landscape design it is necessary to work with the “principles” that stem directly from the basic elements. How effectively you implement these principles will determine the impact of your landscaping upon the viewer — be it yourself or a prospective buyer.

Since this introduction to backyard landscape design is meant as a practical guide, the goal is not to provide abstract definitions, but examples that the do-it-yourselfer can implement immediately in a backyard landscape design. In the following discussion of the principles of landscape design on Page 3, note how often the basic elements from Pages 1 and 2 appear. If you understand these five basic elements from Pages 1 and 2, then the following examples on Page 3 should demystify the process of using those elements to apply the principles of backyard landscape design….

Arranging Landscape Plants With an Eye to Proportion, Transition, Unity

Three principles of garden design apply to the overall “feel” of the landscape: namely, proportion, transition and unity. Landscape plants should be arranged so as to conform to these principles. Proportion is the sense that the size of the individual components (the landscape plants) or groups of components in a landscape is consistent with the landscape as a whole. In other words, the idea behind proportion is very similar to that behind the basic element, scale. But the difference is that, while “scale” is a neutral term, “proportion” is based on the premise that something is either “in proportion” or “out of proportion.” A garden design that is out of proportion is one that is marred by abrupt transitions or by the lack of transition.

For instance, a five-foot high stone wall might elegantly set off a large home, but would make a small home look all the smaller. The landscaping of the latter suffers from a lack of transition: the height of the wall is too close to that of the house. Transition, simply put, refers to gradual change.

Conforming to a sense of proportion is, in turn, one characteristic of a landscape or garden design that exhibits unity. Unity, or “harmony” has been achieved when the viewer senses that all the landscape plants in a garden design complement each other and have been chosen with one over-arching theme in mind. The placement of landscape plants in a thoughtful manner regarding their form is one method for promoting a unified feel. For instance, small trees flanking a driveway or an entrance should have the same form. Repetition also promotes unity. Like all good things, however, unity can be pushed too far. Introduce some variety, or “contrast” into a landscape, too. One way is through the use of landscape plants that vary in texture. The element, texture is subtle enough that it can be employed to inject variety into a garden design without destroying unity.

Rhythm, Balance and Focalization With Landscaping Plants

The next triad of principles for home landscape design, like proportion, transition and unity, are interrelated: namely, rhythm, balance and focalization. They all pertain to controlling a viewer’s eye movement. Rhythm in general is the patterned repetition of a motif. In your home landscape design, the motif could consist of the landscaping plants used, for instance. Landscaping plants of one type could be planted in a row or hedge, effectively channeling the viewer’s gaze in one direction, rather than another. The essential element here is line, since nothing controls eye movement more readily than a straight line.

The objective of utilizing such a motif is to direct eye movement, unconsciously, in a manner that is most conducive to appreciating the home landscape design in question.

The objective of utilizing such a motif is to direct eye movement, unconsciously, in a manner that is most conducive to appreciating the home landscape design in question.

For instance, perhaps the situation of your land holds the potential for a magnificent vista, but your current home landscape design does not take full advantage of it. Or perhaps you have a piece of statuary in your front yard that you want to show off. But if your front yard is full of other interesting items, it might be too “busy” for that item to receive sufficient focus. These and other problems of rhythm can be solved through an understanding of balance and focalization.

Balance refers to consistency of visual attraction and applies to all five of the basic elements: consistency with form, with texture, etc. Understanding balance is, in turn, important for an understanding of focalization. Focalization is the forcing of the viewer’s perspective to a focal point. While it can be achieved through various means, more intense focalization is created through the use of balanced, consistent arrangements of elements.

Let’s return, then, to the two problems of home landscape design introjected above. The first is a problem of framing and can be solved by using bold, straight lines. In the photo on Page 3, for instance, a wall serves this purpose (a row of trees could also have been used). The second, a problem of drawing attention to one component in a busy front yard, could be solved by reducing clutter, opting instead for a minimalist style; and through the use either of color or of line. The statue could be surrounded with color that would direct the viewer’s eye (focalization) unconsciously to that area. Using landscaping plants with flowers that are red or yellow en masse would do the trick nicely. So would an appropriate use of line. For instance, a straight path of paving stones leading up to the statuary, or bedding plants arranged so as to form a straight edging that will focus the viewer’s gaze in the intended direction.

It will be seen from the foregoing discussion that the principles of home landscape design refer to nothing more ethereal than simply arranging the landscaping plants selected in combinations that bespeak a well-reasoned plan. While not pretending to be an exhaustive discussion, the above examples should nonetheless serve to allay the do-it-yourselfer’s fears that home landscape design is the exclusive province of wizards with unfathomable powers. Home landscape design is the province not of wizardry, but of planning, problem-solving and a “principled” approach.

Let’s begin answering the question with a basic definition that considers both aesthetics and energy conservation. Further, let’s call this a definition specifically of do-it-yourself landscape design, so as to keep our discussion distinct from professional concerns:

Definition of Do-It-Yourself Landscape Design:

The art of arranging or modifying the features of the grounds around a home to improve the property from an aesthetic and/or practical standpoint.

This definition, however, raises the questions, “Aesthetic for whom?” and “Practical for whom?” The issue of aesthetics, in particular, is fraught with subjectivity.

Frankly, what I find to be attractive landscape designs might not excite you at all. But this does not mean that nothing needs to be said about landscape aesthetics for the do-it-yourselfer.

You may have your own distinct tastes, but there are still useful guidelines to discuss that will help you achieve maximum aesthetic impact on your landscape. If your property is destined for the real estate market, please consult my ideas on home landscaping to learn specifically about sellers’ guidelines; essentially, you will need to take into account the tastes of potential buyers. If, instead, you are landscaping simply to suit your own tastes, you’ll want to keep in mind the general design guidelines for landscape aesthetics discussed in the following pages.

Practical Do-It-Yourself Landscape Design: Energy Conservation With Trees, Land Use

How will your yard be used? Do you have children who are active outdoors? Will you be landscaping with dogs? Do you yourself plan on using your yard for exercise, sports, or entertaining? Answering these questions will help narrow down the possible landscape designs best suited to your needs. Extensive lawn space is useful in a yard that will see a lot of social barbecues, badminton and ball playing. But if you are more interested in turning your yard into a retreat meant for serenity, solitude and contemplation, the role of turf grass may be reduced drastically in favor of trees.

The various aspects of practical landscape design are too numerous and too complex to discuss at length here. Undoubtedly, however, one aspect that warrants inclusion in any introduction to landscape design is energy conservation. A well-planned incorporation of trees and shrubs in your yard, as in the following examples, is an effective means of energy conservation:

• Deciduous trees can be planted to the south and west of a home to serve as shade trees, reducing summer air conditioning costs. Because such trees will drop their leaves in winter, they won’t deprive your home of sunlight when you need it.
• Evergreen trees planted to the north and west of a home can serve as windbreaks. By breaking the wind, such trees will reduce your heating costs in winter.
• Likewise, shrubs used as foundation plantings can reduce heating costs, creating an insulating dead air space around the home. Plant the shrubs a few feet away from your foundation.

But after such practical concerns have been addressed, you’ll still want to make your landscape design as aesthetically pleasing as possible. An introduction to aesthetics is as much a part of do-it-yourself landscape design study as is an introduction to its practical side. Page 2 begins by laying the groundwork….

Patios, Decks and Other Hardscaping Provide the “Backbone”

Turning from functionality (addressed on Page 1) to the aesthetics of your landscape design, you first have some decisions to make regarding hardscaping (or “hardscape”), existing trees, and what you’ll have as a view when you gaze out the window. Getting the hardscaping part of the project right will make implementing the softscape refinements relatively easy.

Two of the most labor-intensive hardscaping projects are the building of decks and patios. Yet as potentially large and beautiful outdoor living spaces, decks and patios are also two of the more common and rewarding hardscaping features. Other hardscaping features include:

• Fences and walls
• Stone or brick walkways
• Gazebos and arbors
• Statuary, water gardens and fountains

If you were giving a room a total makeover, you wouldn’t start by hanging pictures and arranging knickknacks, would you? Of course not: such fragile refinements would get damaged as you did the heavier work, such as stripping the walls and moving furniture.

The way to begin a landscape makeover is not so very different, in principle. You do your hardscaping first, saving the refinements for last.

Hardscaping will constitute the heavier work in a landscape makeover, forming the backbone for your landscape aesthetics. Leave such icing on the cake as the planting of beds of perennial flowers for last — they’ll just be in your way during the hardscaping phase. Some basic guidelines follow for getting your landscape design project underway.

Unity, Vistas, Privacy Fences

• Your landscape should be in harmony with your home, to ensure unity in the overall appearance of the property. One consideration influencing unity is proportion. Large trees are in proportion with large homes, but are out of proportion with smaller homes. When in doubt, however, leave the tree in place — provided that it doesn’t pose a safety hazard.
• Accentuate desirable views. If you live on a rural hillside with the potential for panoramic views of a valley and surrounding hills, you probably won’t want your home to be entirely encased in trees that will obstruct your view. Don’t cut down all the trees, though. Determine what your finest vistas are, clear the trees in just those areas, and use the remaining trees to frame those nice views. When set off like a picture by grand trees to the left and right, nice views become truly spectacular views!
• By contrast, you’ll want to block out undesirable views. A suburban home with close neighbors is an ideal candidate for some sort of privacy fence. Privacy can be achieved via either inanimate fencing (i.e., hardscaping) or “living” fences. If you prefer living fences (composed of shrubs), your main decision is between planting a hedge or a loose border as a privacy fence. If you prefer hardscaping to screen out prying eyes, some of the options for privacy fences include the following hardscaping features:
  • Wooden fences
  • Vinyl fences
  • Masonry walls

With the hardscaping already in place, it will be easier later to integrate the softscape with it in a seamless fashion. In the case of some hardscaping features, complementary softscape elements are so commonly used in conjunction with them as to come to mind immediately. Let’s look at these briefly.

Integration of Hardscaping and Softscape

Water gardens, particularly those with fountains or statuary, can supply your landscape design with a focal point. Because such a water feature is, by itself, so impressive, the softscape needed to make it a true “garden” is rather minimal. A few container-held aquatic plants would be sufficient to supplement your hardscaping. But certainly more elaborate softscape treatments are possible as well.

Similarly, in installing gazebos, arbors, decks and patios you are laying the groundwork to display your softscape elements in a more favorable light than would be possible without hardscaping. A vine on a well-located arbor becomes more than just a vine: it becomes a festive garland beckoning us to pass under its arch. Nor is building a garden arbor all that difficult. Gazebos, patios and decks are all excellent choices for showcasing window boxes and potted specimen plants. For more on patio construction, please see my resources on building patios. To provide an introduction to deck construction, I relate the essential steps in building decks elsewhere.

Now that the hardscaping is in place, you have a firm structure on which to build. On Page 3 let’s shed some light on the next step — literally….

Outdoor Lighting in Landscape Design

Outdoor lighting extends the time that you may appreciate hardscape and softscape features — namely, into the night. Outdoor Christmas lighting is a great way to spruce up your winter landscape design, winter being the toughest time of year to keep the landscape interesting. Not only are there fewer daylight hours in winter, but there is also inherently less visual interest on the landscape — so you have to make the most of everything at your disposal, including outdoor Christmas lighting.

Nor do you have to restrict yourself to outdoor Christmas lighting, per se. A simple spotlight can do wonders. Picture a spruce tree, rising up out of a blanket of pristine snow, with a stone wall as a backdrop. By throwing a spotlight at night on this scene to highlight it, you create a winter wonderland.

Outdoor Garden Lighting

Of course, outdoor garden lighting is what you’ll want during the summer months. But for outdoor garden lighting, you’ll probably want more subtle, decorative lights rather than spotlights. The idea is to be able to enjoy your garden more fully, rather than to show it off to others. You’ll want to install a garden bench and enjoy the ambience while dining outdoors.

Here in the 21st century, we tend to assume that outdoor garden lighting means electric lighting. Laboring under this assumption, many people of modest means forgo the pleasures of outdoor garden lighting altogether; hiring an electrical contractor for the installation is just not in the budget. And most of us are sufficiently wary of the mysterious powers of electricity to deter us from undertaking such a project ourselves. But all is not lost. Don’t forget that our ancestors lit up the night for millennia before electric lighting was developed. Don’t laugh, but have you ever considered candlelight?

In an age surrounded by electric, the luxury of candlelight has taken on overtones of romance and serenity. This is just the sort of mood you’re looking to create with outdoor garden lighting. Yes, you do have to take precautions when using candles outdoors. You don’t want the wind knocking your candle over and starting a fire. But decorative glass candleholders are available on the market for just this purpose. Mexican tin candleholders are also sold for your outdoor garden lighting needs, and they’re a great fit into a Southwestern theme. For an Oriental, meditative flavor, Chinese lanterns can be purchased in various colors. Any of this outdoor garden lighting can be hung from shepherd’s hooks, available at most nurseries. Simply insert votive candles and close up the lantern securely. A few of these placed strategically around your favorite garden patch will light the area sufficiently to make for an ideal spot for a late-night snack in the spring or fall. For dining in the summer garden, add a few stakes armed with citronella candles.

Speaking of gardens, you have a decision to make in landscape design concerning how much space should be devoted to gardens, as opposed to lawn areas. To reflect on this matter, we turn to Page 4, which also considers various garden styles…

Garden Styles From the Practical to the Exotic

Now that your structural elements are in place and lit up, it is time to turn your attention to the softscape, and especially to garden designs. Typically, your softscape will include at least some lawn. But the percentage of your softscape to be taken up by lawn will depend partly on practical considerations, as discussed on Page 1, as well as on aesthetic attitudes. If a flat expanse of grass just isn’t inherently interesting enough for your tastes, you’ll probably want flowering trees (see photo at right) in your softscape, and you’ll probably derive a great deal of satisfaction from choosing between the different garden designs to be considered.

A Cornucopia of Garden Designs for Your Softscape

There are, of course, vegetable gardens, which are eminently practical.

• But do not underestimate the aesthetic potential of vegetable gardens. Evenly planted rows of leafy vegetables, for instance, can be very attractive. Cucumber plants can be trained up a trellis or over an arbor just as any other vine can.
• Another garden type that can yield aesthetic as well as culinary delights is the herb garden. The knot garden, pleasing to the eye for those who enjoy geometric patterns, is often composed of herbs.
• Cottage gardens typically rely heavily on perennial flowers. Evocative of the traditional English countryside of the peasants, cottage gardens represent the informal design style.
• The formal landscape design style has traditionally relied heavily on shrubs tightly organized into hedges, forming geometric patterns.
• Water gardens have already been mentioned. Other garden styles that rely heavily on a natural element other than plants are the rock garden and alpine garden, the latter being a rock garden planted with alpine plants.
• Westerners have become increasingly interested in Japanese gardens. Exotic Japanese gardens rely heavily on both rocks and water, as well as wooden elements.

The Principles That Underlie Garden Designs

Regardless of garden style, let yourself be guided by the principles that underlie all garden designs. It is easy to overlook one or more of these principles, then look at other people’s garden designs and wonder, “Why do these garden styles look so much better than mine, even though similar plants have been used?” Very likely, the answer to this question lies in adherence to the principles of design. For a full treatment of landscape or garden design principles, please consult my article on landscape design theory for beginners. The elements that underlie the principles of garden designs, which are defined in that article, are as follows:

• Color
• Form
• Line
• Scale
• Texture

Supplied with an understanding of these elements, one is then able to utilize the principles used in garden designs (also explained in my article on landscape design theory for beginners), which include:

• Proportion
• Transition
• Unity
• Rhythm
• Balance
• Focalization