Know the Most Popular Garden Styles for Your Home

Garden magazines never tire of detailing the styles of landscape art and immediately convince us that styles are not so important when it comes to a family garden. Does it then make sense to study them? Sure! Although it is true that it is impossible to mindlessly copy garden styles created by a gardener from a country and era far from us. Nevertheless, with the study of what other people have done, cognition of oneself as a designer begins.

Comparing various design options, landings, “peeping” at the work of the best masters not only of our time, but also of the past, you begin to better understand what you like and what will be convenient for your family.

Well, everything is possible in creativity! Combine the elements of different styles you like and make up your mind. The main thing is that you feel comfortable in your garden.

5 Rules For Choosing A Garden Style

GARDEN STYLES:

• Formal garden
• Moorish garden
• Mediterranean garden
• Naturgarden
• Udolfian style
• Rural garden
• Cottage garden
• Modernism

1. Try to learn more about the style, the elements of which you want to use.

If it is historical, try to find out something about the events, life and customs of the era. Sometimes in this information come across the most valuable clues that open the eyes to your own garden and your life, giving impetus to the imagination. Perhaps, as a Japanese fencing master, you like to indulge in thought, concentrating on a certain idea?

Or delight guests with music and other sophisticated amusements like Lorenzo the Magnificent? Or learn natural secrets like a medieval pharmacist? Through books and magazines, these people will share with you their secrets of the perfect garden for this purpose.

2. Pay more attention to the style of space organization.

The first thing that always catches your eye is the decorative details. But they are not enough to build a garden. It is important to understand how the paths of your movement through the garden will run. By the way you can create you patio or garden waklways with concrete molds and a bit of endevor.

You also should decide where there will be open spaces, and where there will be secluded corners. Each style offers its own solution. For example, lovers of lavish feasts, the Romans, and behind them the Arabs, arranged a garden in the courtyard: why carry countless dishes with treats tens of meters from home?

The Japanese were of the opposite opinion: the teahouse, where guests were invited, was located in a remote, secluded corner. Getting to him is already a whole ceremony! In all cases, people acted very rationally, based on their beliefs and life priorities. Take their example and you.

3. Adapt the style to the natural conditions of your garden.

Use inexpensive local materials, replace traditional materials with more affordable modern ones. Change the balance of light and shadow if you find that shady southern gardens in our conditions will look too gloomy. Of course, there are elements specific to each style. But in practice, the color scheme, the assortment of plants are not immutable rules.

4. Match your choices with the needs of family members.

Children may not like all their free time to meditate in the rock garden, and the grandmother may not imagine a garden without a bed of cabbage. You can surely find a solution that suits everyone, especially since no style is worth your family well-being.

5. Don’t be afraid to mix styles.

Relatively recently, in the vocabulary of landscape designers, the fashionable word “fusion” appeared, meaning a mixture of styles (most often two). If you think about it, it does not contain anything new for landscape art, it is a common, even traditional practice. A garden is not a garment – it can be used for tens and hundreds of years.

From time immemorial, the owners have gradually made changes to the landscape: they changed aged plants, created flower beds and gazebos in a new fashion, keeping their favorite corners unchanged. At the same time, the garden that is comfortable and reflective of the family style never looks ridiculous. Nowadays, already from the very beginning, when planning a garden, it is often conceived as a multi-style, built on a mixture of traditions.

The most common options are:

• elements of Japanese style and high-tech;
• modernism and exotic motives (Moorish, Japanese, Chinese garden);
• the architectural basis of the Italian garden and the vegetative “neglect” in the natural style.
• Much of what is recognized as classics these days was born in this way. For example, the famous gardener Gertrude Jekyll reconstructed the image of a medieval country estate, adding romance to it: pergolas from Italian Renaissance gardens, lush flower beds … Now all over the world this style is called “cottage garden”, it became the standard and synonym for the phrase “English garden”.