Principles of Landscape Design

Whether you’re looking to update your current yard or just moved into a home in need of a landscaping makeover, there are a few primary principles your landscape designer needs to know. When you get together with a contractor to go over the plans for your yard, make sure you know what to look for. Here are three tips to get you started.

Eliminate the Monotony of Repetition

Even if you vary your yardwork with trees, flowers and bushes, if they’re all the same color or shape, your yard will look boring. While it is important to have cohesion among your different landscape elements, the human eye gets bored if everything looks the same. If there’s too many of the same kind of plant or the same shape, see if there’s any way t break the pattern with a flair of something unique.

 

Understand the Importance of Contrast

Along the same lines of avoiding monotony is to embrace contrast. Two things that seem vastly different, such as a cactus and a rose, can look beautiful together in your landscape design. The different qualities of two contracting elements serve to elevate their differences and point out where they’re similar. While a rose is delicate, it’s thorns can hurt as much as cactus needles, while cactuses do have a flowering period.

 

Apply the Aesthetic of Transitions

After you and your landscape designer have struck a balance between contrast and cohesion, be sure to work in some transitions. If your yard has more than one focal point, make sure there are intermediary plants and decorations between them. This creates a feeling of movement in your design.

 

A good landscape designer knows the principles behind crafting an aesthetically pleasing yard. By playing cohesion and contrast against each other with suitable transitions, your yard design can look modern, traditional, rugged or delicate without looking bori