Landscape Gardening: Winning Guide
A building often needs the help of vines or flowers or both to tie it to the grounds in such a way as to create a harmonious whole. Vines lend themselves well to this work. It is usually best to plant a perennial vine, and so let it become a permanent part of your landscape scheme. The Virginia creeper, honeysuckle, wisteria, a climbing rose, the clematis and trumpet vine are all excellent choices.
Close your eyes and picture a house of natural colour, that mellow gray of the weathered shingles. Now add to this old house a purple wisteria. Can you see the beauty of it?
The morning-glory is an annual vine, as is the moon-vine and wild cucumber. Now, these have their special function. Often, it is necessary to cover an ugly thing for just a time, until the better things and better times come. The annual is ‘the chap’ for this work.
Flowers may well go along the side of the building, or bordering a walk. In general, though, keep the front lawn space open and unbroken by beds. What is more uplifting in early spring than a bed of crocuses close to the house? Tulips and hyacinths too, form a blaze of glory. These are little or no bother, and start the spring well. You can make of some bulbs an exception to the rule of unbroken front lawn. Snowdrops and crocuses planted through the lawn are beautiful. They do not disturb the general effect, but just blend with the whole. One expert bulb gardener says to take a basketful of bulbs in the fall, stroll about your grounds, and just drop bulbs out here and there. Wherever the bulbs fall, plant them. Such small bulbs as those we plant in lawns should be in groups of four to six. Daffodils may be thus planted, too.
The place for a flower garden is usually at the side or rear of the house. The backyard garden is a lovely idea, is it not? Who wants to leave a beautiful looking front yard, turn the corner of a house, and find a dump heap? Not I. The flower garden may be laid out formally in neat little beds, or it may be more of a careless, hit-or-miss sort. Both have their good points. Great masses of bloom are attractive.
You should have in mind some notion of the blending of colour. Nature appears not to consider this at all, and still gets wondrous effects. This is because of the tremendous amount of her perfect background of green, and the limitlessness of her space, while we are confined at the best to relatively small areas. So we should endeavour not to blind people’s eyes with clashes of colours which do not, at close range, blend well. In order to break up extremes of colours you can always use masses of white flowers, or something like mignonette, which is in effect green.
Always remember the grounds are a setting for the house or buildings. Open, free lawn spaces, a tree or a proper group well placed, flowers which do not clutter up the front yard, groups of shrubbery these are points to be remembered. The paths should lead somewhere, and be either straight or well curved. If you starts with a formal garden, you should not mix the informal with it before the work is done.
A pergola can make an excellent addition to a garden. It can add height, be a focal point, lead you from one area of the garden to another. And of course pergolas make a great place to entertain family and friends. Discover more
pergola kits
diy pergola
How to build a pergola