Principles of Design - Dominance - Page 2

In floral design, dominance is often achieved by allowing one color to be dominant. For example: red might be the dominant color with lavender blooms playing a subordinate role. This can also be done in gardens. Lavender is a great blender which works well with all colors but true blue. You could have various colors dominant during the year - red one month and yellow the next. if you were concerned about having two dominant colors at once, you could intentionally plan a lull between red and yellow so there would be a period when the garden was entirely shades of lavender.

As I have written above, dominance is often achieved by editing. This is what you are doing when you remove certain plants in a mature garden so that other plants can be more dominant To achieve dominance, you need to make a clear decision about what you want your garden to say and then find a way to do that as simply and clearly as you can. In my own garden I found myself creating two gardens in an area that should have been one garden. To the east of my bedroom I created a simple parterre garden inspired by 16th century Dutch gardens. On the north side of my bedroom I created a Japanese inspired pond garden. I did create a woodland garden at the north end of my parterre garden and this did blend into the trees backing my Japanese inspired pond but this link felt a bit forced. By the time that I decided to expand my garden into a large garden at least three times the size of my original garden, I was very aware of the design flaws of my original garden and one of the most glaring was that my garden was like a canvas on which I was doing two different paintings. To a certain extant, the original part of my garden still feels that way. I have softened that feeling by allowing my pond garden to have a more natural feel than most Japanese gardens. It is now a woodland pool with a few Japanese touches. When I expanded my garden I decided on a theme of parterre, water and woodland because this is the basic theme of classical French gardens, which were closely related to Dutch gardens. My expanded garden is dominated by simple geometric patterns. This geometry is softened by the woodland to the north. In fact, my garden is surrounded my native forest. I live in a large clearing in this forest. I suppose that the forest is really the dominant element, but because it is a natural forest which coveres a huge area, the geometric design stands out more than the surrounding trees.