Show Notes

Today’s links: ely.how/episode109

• How to create a landscape vision
• Find your landscape design style
• How to design like a pro
• Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder Tool
• Ask Ben a Question for Free!
• Easy Living yards can help you create your beautiful yard, no matter your budget or location.
  • Create your eco friendly yard today.
• Find me on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest

How to Design a Beautiful Garden Bed Like a Pro

When you’re looking for eco friendly landscaping ideas, it can be difficult to come up with a design that looks good.  We want easy DIY landscaping, right?  These design basics will help you design low maintenance landscaping that will look great and require less work.

Topic Outline:

• Goals  for your landscaping
• Functions in a good landscape design
• Design Basics
• Low maintenance plant selection

How most people design a garden: We usually want to start with the plants.

The wrong way to design a garden: wanting to start with the plants!

The right way to design a beautiful low maintenance landscape:

• Landscape Design Goals
  • Start with your goals for your garden and entire property
    • What does your garden do?
    • What does your garden mean to you?
    • What do you want your garden to say about you?
• Functions in a good landscape design
  • What functions does your landscape perform?
  • Providing access
  • Welcoming guests
  • Visual barrier
  • Bringing beauty to your life
  • Providing a relaxing space
  • Others

How to design a landscape like a pro – The basic essentials

• Your landscape design should be:
  • an expression of your landscaping goals
  • an implementation of your landscape functions
• Form in a landscape design
  • The structure or backbone of your design
  • You can see structure and form by looking at a landscape in black-and-white
  •  You want variation in your form to not be monotonous
• Texture in a landscape design
  • Texture is your differences in leaf patterns, lighting, shadows, branching, etc.
  • You also want varied texture to avoid dull landscapes
• Color
  • You consider color after focusing on form, structure, and texture.
  • This is the last bit – like decorative icing on a cake
  • Color is usually a temporary, changing process in the landscape
• Balance
  • How various elements across your design are distributed
  • In form, structure, texture, color
• Symmetry
  • Provides some sense of intent
  • Does not need to be entirely symmetrical
• Repetition
  • Use of similar elements across your design
  • Plants, colors, texture

Plant Selection (woo hoo finally!!!!)

• Plants should
  • fulfill your goals and design intent
  • be adapted to site conditions
    • Moisture, sun, soil, etc
  • sometimes provide a funtion
    • foot traffic, sight lines
  • be available for you to find (duh – I promise you might get hung up on a plant and not be able to find it)
  • Meet design needs
    • Evergreen, bloom time/color, mature height/width

Good luck!  Let me know how it goes!

Note: Some of the links on this page contain affiliate links.  If you click on these links to make a purchase, I may obtain a small commission at no charge to you.  All of these products are either products I own or have researched and would like to own.  You can read my full affiliate disclosure here.