Landscaping is an art form. To enjoy this living art,
it must be carefully planned and then artistically executed.. Many
times yards are put together with no more thought or plan than a
grocery list. Some people treat landscaping haphazardly as if making
a watch by throwing hands, gears, steal and a little glass into a
clothes dryer and then expecting a watch capable of keeping accurate
time to come out.
A truly remarkable garden, reveals its' unique beauty
during four seasons. Each season decorates outside rooms for the
enjoyment of those who enter. Both function and form of this art
makes all who enter at home.
The place to start planning a four season garden is with
the winter season in mind. Obviously, much of our
The structure of a winter garden will include framing
views through transparent deciduous plants as well as screening
unwanted views with evergreens. This structure is many times called
the “bones” of the garden. It includes things like trees, walls,
fences, paths, evergreen shrubs, patios and water features. When you
look at your landscape in the winter, do you see a garden
appropriately decorated for the season or an empty garden waiting for
a better time of the year? If you answered, a better time,
perhaps this is the time to contact a local landscape designer to get
more information about starting the design process.
Winter silhouettes create great effects in the
landscape. It can be repeating, combining and contrasting vertical
or horizontal shapes that creates effects, especially when snow
falls. I feel there's always something special about newly fallen
snow that dramatically highlights the structure of a landscape that
visually excites us during this season.
When you look at trees in the winter, you can notice how
heavily branched trees with massive scaffolds appear much more
commanding than trees with slender, fine texture branches. Some
trees have interesting curving and crossing branch patterns while
others have uniform evergreen foliage that seems like it has been
painted by an artist. Weird but lovable plants with oddly twisted
and spiral branches really come into their own in the winter. Some
trees have even been adorned with unusual colors of creamy brown,
yellow, red, or purple. These and other observation help us enjoy
the winter season, not just making a season to wait for a better
time.
Even though we may not spend much, if any, time in our
landscape in the winter, we'll notice if the spaces could be useful
for screening an unwanted view such as a neighbors junk pile or
framing a beautiful view such as snow covered mountains. We also
expect our landscape to provide safe and easy access to our homes and
out buildings. On the occasional sunny and warm winter day, we may
want to have a place during the winter where we can enjoy a meal or a
cup of coffee. Is your landscape a winter wonder land or a gloomy
mess that you don't like during the winter? Perhaps it's time to
discuss your property with a landscape designer.
The well planned winter landscape can include flowers
and colorful berries, sometimes attracting beautiful birds and
wildlife for our viewing pleasure. Red, yellow, green and purple
are my favorite colors of winter. They can be seen often if you're
looking at a well planned winter garden.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to be welcomed home with a
sweet fragrance that had been planned in your yard. There are
surprise plants that we rarely notice until they perfume our
landscapes sometime during the dark and gloomy season we call winter.
It really is a refreshing reminder that spring is coming !
Balance in life, for most of us, can be quite
challenging. Balance in our landscape is almost impossible without
proper planning. Whether your yard is formal, mixed beds,
northwestern, cottage, or whimsical in style, there must be some
balance in order for your property to make sense to those that occupy
it. Balance should be evaluated with the contrast of evergreen
verses deciduous, flowering verses foliage, fragrant verses visual,
rounded verses spikey, elaborate verses simple and curving verses
linear. This balance may seem abstract, but, it only starts that way
and then, with much planning, develops into a full scale landscape.
This balance always starts with the landscape in the winter. For
more information about how your landscape in the winter, please
contact us at jeff@americathebeautifullandscaping.com
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