A Garden of Possibilities

Landscape Design Plan

This is my second installment in a series of posts to help gardeners incorporate the principles of good landscape design into their gardens. (click here to read the first installment).  The principle of unity means the individual elements (the trees, shrubs, perennials, hardscape materials, furniture, etc) of a designed landscape will work together in harmony to create a sense of continuity or oneness.  When viewed for the first time, a unified garden  will be seen as a whole, as the sum of it’s parts.  No single element should stand out by itself.  Continuity doesn’t mean boring – it means manipulating pattern, color, texture, form, line and scale to create a sense of purpose and harmony.

There are several ways to create a sense of unity in your garden.  A simple way is by designing a theme garden based on color (shades of blue, perhaps) or plant type (ornamental grasses or conifers) or even an historic garden (check out this blog post about creating a Jeffersonian garden).  Assuming you stick to your theme, your garden will have a strong sense of unity.

Another way to create unity is through the repetition of specific design elements.  If you have a circular terrace, design a circular lawn area or circular flower bed.  If you are using bricks in a basketweave pattern in your front walkway, use the same bricks in a secondary walkway but chose a different pattern such as herringbone.  The use of brick in both walkways creates a sense of unity, even if the pattern is varied.

But remember, you must strike a fine balance when creating a sense of unity.  Too much of the same thing can be boring, but trying to incorporate too many different elements can be jumbled and confusing.  Hopefully this example will help illustrate the ‘boring’ point.  Let’s say you want to design a hydrangea garden.  If you were to use only mophead hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla) your garden would be pretty monotonous.  But if you also planted a few variegated lacecap hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Mariesii Variegata’) and a Snow Queen hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia ‘Snow Queen’) and maybe a Limelight hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’), you’d still have a hydrangea garden but now your unified theme garden would be more interesting because you have incorporated different textures, leaf sizes, bloom sizes, colors, bloom season, plant heights, etc into your garden.

I hope this explanation of the principle of unity in landscape design helps you.  If you have any questions that are specific to your garden, please let me know and I’ll be more than happy to answer them for you.