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What Makes A "Good" Garden Design?

© Barbara M. Martin

To me, a good garden design is more than a fancy blueprint covered with beautiful graphics painstakingly drawn to scale. Instead, a good design will empower people to enjoy their gardens.

A good design will be a "good fit" in many ways: life style, interests, gardening skills, budget, manpower, space ... time frame. Not to forget style and taste! I believe a garden can and should express the owner's personality. After all, what is a garden for but enjoyment!

One of the best ways to develop a good garden plan is to use the concept of putting the right plant in the right place, or "right plant -- right place". This is a powerful method. It helps keep the garden looking good because healthy plants are always more attractive than sickly plants. It helps to minimize maintenance chores, and can help reduce the need for chemical use in the garden.

Right plant -- right place goes beyond the practical, and into the realm of aesthetics. It helps maximize the positive aspects of existing features of your site, because the site itself will suggest design approaches. What at first glance seems to be a problem may, in fact, become a positive!

For example, a hot sunny slope can become a wonderfully fragrant herb garden or a butterfly garden or a Mediterranean garden. A tiny shaded nook can become any one of a number of magical places: staging for a Japanese style water basin, or a tiny piece of woodland with ferns and mossy rocks, or a home for toads and hobbits.... Each of these themes traces itself back to the physical constraints of the site itself. The details depend on the surrounding elements and other garden features so that the new enhances the overall effect.

Right plant -- right place, and taking the design lead from the site itself help to ensure a successful garden. I tend to think of it as a way of imposing our needs and wishes in a more gentle manner. This brings me to another aspect of design which I find very important: the concept of "stewardship". I believe we need to do the best we can to take good care of whatever little part of the earth has been entrusted to us. We should guide it, protect it, nurture it. We should also use it and enjoy it.

And that's my final point. Gardening should be fun! To me, at least half the fun is in watching as the seasons change and the plants grow and sharing it with the creatures who live and visit there. Gardens are not static plans on paper!