When there’s that certain indescribable good feel/vibe you get from a place or thing, often, you can thank good design.

There’s a saying that goes something like “good design takes time and aint cheap. Cheap design is fast and aint good”. I think I made my own saying there but you get what I’m SAYING. A big reason you hire a designer is because you don’t have the experience or TIME to ideate, create, manage, execute what you want.  

What makes good landscape design?

The principals of good landscape design are straightforward. The thing with simple or straightforward is that it’s generally pretty hard to execute. Really great design shouldn’t really feel like there’s a ton of “design” going on, does that make sense? The best stuff out there looks and feels effortless. How it get’s to this point is by honouring some element rules:

Proportion:

The size and shape of elements must jibe with the surroundings. Planting a giant black oak on a postage stamp sized inner city lawn? Maybe not. Keep things in proportion.

Simplicity

This could be the only one if we had to pick. It’s easy to get lost in varieties of plants and planting design for blossoming periods, etc etc. You can really go crazy and your landscaping will also look, well, crazy. Keep it simple. 4-5 plants and complimentary hardscaping with absolutely no neon underlights. Ever.

Pro Tip: Try to avoid too many different types of stones and contrasting borders with stone and pavers whenever possible. There’s some instances it’s necessary but this should be used far less than it is to get a sharp, timeless finish for your space.

Sequence

There’s patterns that make your design come off well. Will there be a repeating swath of grasses lined into to the planting beds? Colours? Textures? Ensure that you’re building a sequence into your overall plan to let yourself and other make the necessary visual connections. Without sequence the design feels lost and confusing.

Variety

You might be thinking this is the same as Simplicity or Sequence and you’d be right…ish. To create the best results the right selection of materials needs to be made in order to deliver on the heart of the design. Going for English Garden…use this…..more Woodland retreat…well then we’ll use these ones over here…..

Unity

Things have to flow. Are you going for a purely symmetrical result or something assymetrical with weighted balance to get some wilder, flowy feel? How do you balance these…ok ok…see? Getting a little complicated

Good landscape design takes a lot of skill and planning. The elements and principals themselves are basic, however, as you can see, they’re not easy. If you are planning to DIY your next project hope …we hope this helped.

If you are like many and just don’t have the extensive time required to learn, test, plan, revise, etc. then you can click HERE and let us design your next outdoor space for you:)