Johannesburg - Winter is a great time to think about the design of your garden. Can your garden be revitalised? Adding a path, a focal point or developing a vista in the garden is the key to turning an ordinary garden into a spectacular one.
Consider these ideas:
Paths
As an integral part in the overall design of any garden, paths link entrances to homes and patios to gardens. They guide visitors, and focus attention on a view or focal point.
Paths can be used to create a particular mood by their direction, their shape, and by the material used in their construction. When deciding where to make paths, think of them as main roads, secondary roads and country byways, each serving a particular function and each having its own character.
Paths can delineate beds and borders and divide the garden into different areas. Paths for strolling and for pleasure allow the visitor to walk at a leisurely pace and appreciate his surroundings. Curves should be gentle and not have too many “ins and outs”.
This winter, plan a path in your garden that instils a sense of anticipation and mystery. A path, or a network of paths that disappear behind shrubs, through an arch or gateway, may lead to the discovery of a bench, a sundial or a view.
Vistas
A glimpse of a garden through a door set in a wall, a rose-covered archway, a tunnel of fruit or a pergola shaded by a vine is an invitation to enter and explore.
The eye is easily directed to a vista if it is framed by an avenue of trees, viewed from beneath an overhanging branch of a single tree, or framed between conifers or shrubs that have a slim, columnar growth habit.
An archway is perhaps the most-used frame in a garden, while at the same time displaying the beauty of the flowers and foliage of climbing plants. An arch can be cut into a hedge, made of brick, steel or timber and placed over a gate, down a path, a flight of steps, or as a division between parts of the garden.
A series of arches that form a green “tunnel” becomes a pergola. The simplest of these follows a straight path, but more elaborate pergolas can be built in a curve or L-shape. While their original purpose was to provide a shady place to walk, pergolas can also be used to direct the visitor to a particular place, or to a vista. At each end of the pergola there should stand something of interest – a statue, a large urn or a stunning view.
Focal points
Study your garden from different angles to see if and where permanent features can be used as focal points to draw attention to a view, or emphasise a favourite spot. Whether you decide to position an ornament in a prominent position, or where it will be “discovered”, it should blend with the overall design.
A summerhouse where family and friends gather can be a focal point. When it is partially concealed in a secluded part of the garden it is more suited to reading and spending quiet times. A bench placed in an arbor or facing a colourful border is an invitation to relax.
Containers holding colourful flowers will draw attention to an entrance or a flight of steps. Where a path changes direction, a cherub perched on a plinth creates a charming focal point. Obelisks are decorative garden features, whether standing alone or used as supports for climbers.
Focal points don’t need to be expensive. A grinding stone makes a perfect birdbath; a hollowed out log becomes a birdhouse; a piece of driftwood a dramatic sculpture. Depending on the design of the garden, a focal point may be as simple as an old plough surrounded by meadow flowers, or a mischievous concrete rabbit peeping from a row of vegetables.
A chimney pot becomes the base for a sundial; the curved interior of a Victorian fireplace a niche on an exterior wall as a frame for a statue. A tiered pot stand makes excellent staging for a collection of pot plants on a patio; a rusty birdcage given a coat of paint becomes an unusual focal point when hung in a tree, and an old iron garden gate an attractive support for a rose.
A formal pool sited in the open becomes an instant focal point, while an informal pond glimpsed through a leafy screen of shrubs and trees will tempt the viewer to investigate.
Paint can be used to disguise an undesirable feature or draw attention to a pleasing aspect. Gates and doors painted grey or green tend to merge into the background, but paint a door pumpkin-yellow or a bench periwinkle blue and they become decorative accents.
GENERAL TIPS
* Pansies are great in pots, containers and window boxes. They will flower throughout a cold winter. They are best planted in full sun during winter and are oblivious to freezing cold nights and early-morning frost.
* Tall conifers are useful on perimeters, where they act as windbreaks and protect gardens from cold winter winds. Shapes can vary from narrow and columnar to pyramid, round or groundcover. Some conifers assume subtle shades of gold, bronze, silver-grey or purple in winter, but it is really for their different forms that they are most valued in the landscape. - Saturday Star