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More and more often, the owners of garden plots are shifting the focus from the possibilities of growing vegetables and fruits to decorating their land, designing a garden plot. Money is earned in the city, and people come to the dacha to rest. Of course, fruit trees and shrubs, vegetable beds – all this may be present, but they also obey the rules of landscape design. Entrusting a project to a professional is, it seems, great … but too ordered, cold landscapes often come out of the hands of professionals. Self-decorated gardens, although not ideal, are much more comfortable and feel much better in them.
Where to start: planning
It all starts from the stove: you need to correlate your desires with realities. To do this, first sit down and write what you need on the site. Just a list of what you and your loved ones want to have. Then you take a site plan with dimensions and start placing something that you simply cannot refuse. Usually this is a playground or a carport, some kind of garden – at least a few beds, if there are children – a playground.
Put the carport closer to the gate – less space will go to the driveways, the playground in direct line of sight from the windows, and most likely from the windows of the kitchen: it’s not all the time to sit with them, but so, and the children are supervised, and you do. With the placement of the playground, you will have to be smarter: it is necessary that there is no draft, and part of it is in the shade, part in the sun. To have the best conditions.
The garden can be made decorative, so it is not necessary to hide it. It will still be a decoration of your site and you will be proud of it. Here for him you need a sunny piece of your site.
Now you need to find a place for technical and auxiliary premises. You will definitely need a barn, as well as a compost pit. They can be taken to the backyards, but better – closer to the garden. If the house is planned for heating, you need a place to store firewood. For this, firewood workers are made, and they can be attached to the barn, or they can stand separately, and some specimens can also be a decorative element. Somewhere in a secluded corner you will need to put a toilet and shower. It’s also a hassle with the toilet: you need to take into account the distance to neighboring areas (at least 2 m), and also the prevailing wind direction so that smells do not bother you.
Next comes the turn of what you really want. Usually it is a gazebo, a pond or a fountain. A pond and a fountain can be combined, a gazebo can be placed nearby. Up to the point that with one of its edges it can hang over the water. On the other side, you can put a bench by placing an arch near it or by building a pergola (the same arch, but more solid). Near the gazebo, you can make a small canopy and put a barbecue. Metal or brick – optional. Under the reservoir, it is best to take the lowest area or where the groundwater is closest. Everything else will fall into place.
It seems that these are all the main objects. If you managed to fit them all into the site plan – great: you can plan garden paths. You need to manage and make the minimum number of tracks, but they must connect all the main buildings. Paths can lead to auxiliary facilities. It’s even more romantic that way. And along the way, look for places for flower beds, flower beds, rock gardens, decorative slides. You can even specifically bend the paths to block out a place for a flower garden. This, by the way, is one of the favorite tricks of professionals. They don’t use straight lines at all. Only on elongated sections to visually bring the far edge closer.
Do not forget about trees and shrubs. By the way, they can serve as a screen for an unsightly fence. And you will have it around the perimeter. Partially it can be decorated with hanging flower beds, partly covered with shrub trees. While the trees are growing, you can put a grate in front of the fence, along which you can put climbing roses, clematis, any other similar plant.
Garden plot design: choose a style
In most cases, the style of garden design is very difficult to determine. Most often it can be described as “modern”. Interesting solutions of different “nationality” and different styles are used, and sometimes these combinations are very, very successful and interesting. That and self-design is good, that intuitively you can create beautiful landscapes. But designing a site in a certain style is, in a sense, easier: you know for sure whether this idea will work or not. Let’s look at some design options for a garden plot in a particular style. The easiest way to work with ethnic areas.
Oriental
Chinese and Japanese cultures have significant differences, but regarding the design of the garden plot, it is difficult for a non-specialist, it is almost impossible to distinguish between these two directions. For ease of perception, let’s combine them into one style: oriental.
For these cultures, achieving maximum harmony is inherent. What is good about Japanese or Chinese style garden design is that they use a lot of rubble and pebbles. If it is difficult or expensive to get pebbles in the right amount, then there are much fewer problems with crushed stone. Maybe you are lucky, and you can even agree on a color – the meticulous Japanese use pebbles of the same size and the same color in the backfill, or form different shapes from them.
Large stones, near which boxwood bushes are planted, a small fountain of traditional form. A very interesting idea with a painted gravel border. Only if you do something like this, make sure that the water that drains from the formwork has somewhere to go: under the pebbles and rubble there should be dense soil with a slope towards plantings or access to the drainage system – this is how water drainage is organized.
To make the design of the Japanese-style garden plot really traditional, you can use bamboo. A small fence and a gate are made extremely simply. A couple of stakes are driven into the ground, bamboo crossbars are tied to them, and thin bamboo is tied to the crossbars. It turns out such a bamboo picket fence.
The paths are very characteristic – rounded stones at a step distance from each other, stone slabs, or even concrete slabs, but they are not square, as we are used to, but long. Please note that the gaps between the stones / slabs are overgrown with grass, moss, or covered with pebbles.
Fountains are often present in Japanese gardens. But these are not pompous structures with sculptures and jets hitting upwards, but combinations of bamboo and stone, over which a small amount of water flows. It is easy to make them even on your own, but how, read here.
Several photos of Japanese-style garden design are collected in the photo gallery. There are interesting ideas that are easy to implement with your own hands. And the costs are minimal.
Country style (rural or country)
The more urbanized our cities become, the more we want something simple, natural, without clear lines and edges, which are already boring in the city. Therefore, many houses began to be built from logs: they exude comfort. If your country house is built from a log house, the design of the site in a rural or rustic style will be a natural continuation of the idea. In this case, the characteristic features are the use of various kinds of old utensils and its elements in the decoration of flower beds and flower beds, wattle fences, simple benches, often deliberately rough, made of logs.
On a rural plot, by no means can everything be too even and orderly. Paths – overgrown with grass, with stones laid for convenience, abandoned boardwalks. And so that the “boards” always look like new, you can use decking – this is a wood-composite material that looks and feels very similar to wood, but does not rot, does not darken, retains its original appearance over the years.
Fences inside the site can be made from dead wood chopped in the forest. Fences made of birch or otkhi with its light green bark look very decorative.
Wicker fences are traditional for this style. They can be made for beds, flower beds, fence off areas within the site, and even as the main fence that separates the garden from neighbors and from the street.
In the same vein, you can arrange a reservoir – a small mill or a bridge next to a long pond will not hurt. And if there is a height difference on the site, you can make a cascade of watering cans-buckets – a very original idea.
Even the toilet can be made in the same style. Of course, it is unlikely that anyone will bring it to the fore, even in a stylish design, but you won’t have to take too much care that the building is not visible.
Rustic garden design is not demanding on geometry or selection of plants. It is important that you feel comfortable and cozy, the plants feel good. Then even the simplest compositions will delight the eye and heart. See the photo gallery for a few design ideas for different zones.
Garden plot in a modern style or modern
The design of the garden plot in Art Nouveau style is international. It has elements of different cultures. The main rule is a harmonious combination of shapes and shades. Most often, straight lines and rounded shapes are combined.
Is it difficult to create such a corner in your own garden. Tiles can be replaced with concrete or stone slabs or wooden flooring, as long as the geometry is preserved. Flowerbeds of an unusual shape – smooth edges both at ground level and high. Seats are installed between two high flower beds, and to make it really convenient and comfortable, you can make the curb higher and nail the back board. All this cubism is broken by a round ceramic pot with a plant. Instead of a pot, you can make a small fountain in the form of a stone ball, along which water flows.
As you can see, the fountain is close in style to the Japanese style. Slightly modified, it fits perfectly into the modern design of the garden. And it’s not the only stylized element. For example, wicker furniture is often used. But it has a different shape – either cubic or with curved surfaces, but only in one plane. Looking at the photo below, you will understand what I mean.
And again, pay attention, hard straight lines are broken by rounded ones: in the lower photo these are pyramidal thujas, in the upper one there is a round flowerbed table (an extraordinary solution, by the way) and curved lines of chairs.
This is where the expanse is for lovers of high beds, it is precisely when decorating in this vein: it is more convenient to set straight lines with the help of high boxes. They are made of wood, stone, concrete. The material should be combined with the main finish or be an addition.
Approximately in the same traditions, the adjacent territory and areas near the reservoir are made out. To make flooring from boards, planken or decking, put up characteristic furniture – part of the garden is framed.
By the way, you can make a gazebo in an unconventional manner.
There are a lot of ideas, and all of them are interesting in their own way. Check out some photos in the gallery below. Might be useful for your garden.
Ideas for decorating the fence and walls
Like it or not, there is always a fence. And far from always it is a decoration of the garden. More often it is quite the opposite: it is the owner’s headache: how to disguise it or give it a more acceptable look. There are actually quite a few solutions, and for different tastes.
If you can draw, and the fence is at least relatively even, paint it with some scenes. It is clear that choosing a suitable plot is not easy, but you can rely on the general style of the design of the site.
You can use the fence as a time for a vertical flower bed or vegetable garden. It’s beautiful and useful. This idea will especially please the owners of small plots. That’s just a fence from a profiled sheet so you can only use it if the summer in your region is cool. In all other cases, plants burn on it.
Approximately the same idea is useful for decorating the wall of the house. Only here flowers are planted more often, and mostly ampelous ones, but nothing can prevent you from planting, say, aromatic herbs or just beautiful flowers in such baskets or boxes in the lower tier, and let there be hanging ampelous lashes at the top.
Very often, uncomplicated decorations or some unusual elements distract attention from the not very attractive surface, which is a fence. It can be homemade flowers made of colored plastic or a whole cascade of different boxes in which you can either plant flowers or put them in pots.