33 Garden Design

[00:00:20] keith:

[00:00:41] We're always talking about garden design and how we're gonna, how we're gonna do things, how we're going to mix plants up and different colors and textures and One of the things that I think comes naturally to me and not necessarily utilizing functional way, but just the natural curves and the things that make it feel easy to walk through a garden not straight lines and no sharp turns.

[00:01:05] Not having plants come over the edge of a walkway and make you feel like you've got to lean away to, make it down. Nice, open, airy, inviting gardens. There are a few simple guidelines to help you bring more beneficial energy into your yard. No matter the size.

[00:01:23] Size really doesn't matter. In a small garden, you can work with the garden that you have. You can apply different scales to your garden. Having walkways or paths that just have a slow-flowing curve. And not, I'll find a lot of times when I look at a house that people try to follow the house, they try to square everything up with the house.

[00:01:44] And so they'll have a walkway that just follows straight down the side of the house or having occur in a nice curve to it. But on the other hand, people start putting curves in a landscape and. They'll put too many curves in the landscape. So it's got to be a kind of a really soft, gentle curve.

[00:02:02] Something that you're going to enjoy, walking down. And then have a focal point either a bench or a fountain or a fire pit a big specimen plant and those All bring something different. A bench with plants around it, maybe a birdbath gives you, I find a lot of times people don't even sit on the benches, but it gives you that kind of inviting, walk down here and sit on the bench.

[00:02:25] Kind of feeling which relaxing, takes your mind off of everything else. And it just gives you this serene water a lot of times. It, it muffles sound. So if you've got road noise or if you've got noisy neighbors sometimes the sound of water just has really soon.

[00:02:41] So adding water to and having that as a focal point. So you see the water, it's a cooling effect. But, it also kinda mellows that space. And then fire, I think always warms the space up or gives you something, a space for entertaining, but again, it can be a focal point.

[00:02:58] We just put in a big, hard. And before the Arbor was in and we had a fire pit out there, but the fire pits the center of the Arbor. So when you look out into the yard, it's, it looks like a space that you want to go sit in and cool evenings. Cool, cool.

[00:03:12] Saturday. It's a perfect time to have a fire and have that, inviting you to get people over it. It really pulls people out of the house and out to a fire pit. But all of those things, great focal points, they all do something different. And, I've got a friend that I've worked with for 25 years and.

[00:03:32] His yard is probably, it's the most intensely landscaped yard I've ever seen. And I left there one day and I was like, he's got something everywhere. Literally something everywhere. And the interesting thing is, you could, you can shift your head and there's a focal point and somebody might say it looks cluttered.

[00:03:53] But to me, it was like every time I turned a corner, there was a focal point. There was something else. To look at, which was very interesting to me. It was, I left thinking and it's not cluttered to me at all. It's, there's something else to look at. There's something else to walk towards.

[00:04:09] Something else that, engages your mind, which is interesting when you're out in a garden it's not just a boring space. It really pulls you out there and it has energy. And a flow to it. functional way. Doesn't have to be any great science or anything that's extremely complex.

[00:04:26] I think sometimes, just the simplicity of a garden and then creating some focal points and having a nice flow to a garden is what functional is all about. The flow or cheek or you have life, it's like an energy force almost. But it's not something that you got to spend a whole lot of time on.

[00:04:44] I think you when you've done it, you kinda know it, and if it's not right, shift stuff around or move stuff, sometimes having a really large plant to close, close to your space. It's like Evan wide aisles in the store, it doesn't feel comfortable to walk down a tight then I'll, or having big plants or overgrown plants, sometimes it's time just to cut them back and give yourself some more space.

[00:05:06] Too many plants in a garden I think is always a, a negative because you don't have the space and you don't really have any negative space to, feel like there's room to move around or you just see-through. The other thing I think is that. The yin and yang of a garden.

[00:05:20] The yang is soft, the plants the flowers and the yang would be the hard, structures and boulders and that kind of thing. Having a good balance, there are the key boulders to me we were in the plant business, but boulders to me are one of the most interesting things in the garden.

[00:05:37] And they really do play, when you've got a flower sitting up against a Boulder, they really do play well together, and it's the contrast of the two that really make the whole thing work and thinking those things through and making sure that you've got good flow in your garden, nice steady curves, and then focal points I think will give you what you're looking for.

[00:05:57] In the funky functionary world without making it any more complex than that.