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Garden Design Sites to Savor

© Susan Ward

I won't be able to do any earth-moving for several months yet, but that doesn't mean I don't have big plans for the coming year. Like most plant-loving people, my garden is a work in progress that I not only tend lovingly, but shape and enlarge! This year, as in every past year, I'll be putting in a new bed and/or extending one of the existing beds. January is the ideal time to start planning; there's time to browse through books and sites and harvest ideas, and when you look out or bravely wander through your yard, you can see the shape of beds and plants unobscured.

Kirk Johnson's Suite101 Garden Design site at http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/gard... is an excellent starting point online; here you can gather inspiration by reading about Chinese, Renaissance, Islamic, or any other type of gardening that strikes your fancy, and Kirk has also collected a bundle of useful links to get your design going.

For instance, http://vg.garden.com/cgi-bin/v2/gemag/PI... will take you to Virtual Garden's "How to Be Your Own Landscape Designer", where you can find out about important concepts of design such as unity, balance, and rhythm. Another good article on design basics, "Garden Design 101: The Hardest Part" by Deborah Simpson, is available at http://gardening.about.com/home/gardenin... ; I like the utilitarian approach of this one. After all, what's the point of designing a garden and then discovering that it doesn't suit your needs?

I think M.A. Powell says it best in his outstanding article, "Residental Landscaping" (http://ipmwww.ncsu.edu/urban/horticultur... ); "Landscape design is the conscious arrangement of outdoor space for human enjoyment and satisfaction. A well-designed home landscape is aesthetically pleasing and functional. It offers pleasure to the family, enhances the neighborhood, and adds to the property's resale value." This article presents a clear, easy to use four step plan that will ensure that you think about your family's needs and create a landscape that you'll all be able to use and enjoy.

Once you're ready to put your pencil to graph paper or sit down at your computer, Better Homes and Gardens has a useful collection of garden plans available at http://www.bhglive.com/bhggarden/gardenp... . Choose a property line bed, side garden, patio garden, or walk to front door, for instance, click on the icon, and you'll see the actual garden design and the list of plants. Best of all, you can print it off, if you want to. Personally, I'm not fond of "pre-picked" plants, but this is a great starting point, especially for "troublesome" areas such as narrow side yards that you'd like to do something with.