When we meet new clients they often invariably say,”Oh yes, and we want lots of color.”

Last February, I attended the Virginia Society of Landscape Designers Winter Meeting. where 2 brilliant and renowned landscape designers reviewed the making of four of their spectacular gardens.

I was so moved that I bought a book each of them had authored. Joe Eck’s, “Elements of Garden Design” (North Point Press, 2005), and Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd’s “Our Life in Gardens” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.)  I was so enthralled by both of them that I found myself reading one at lunch and one before bed. They would be so pleased.

The aspect of Eck’s garden design book which really resonated with me was how he recognized color as lovely, but that key features of gardens that are often overlooked are:

·        Intention
·        Site
·        Frame
·        Style
·        Structure
·        Rooms
·        Access
·        Harmony
·        Contrast
·        Scale
·        Mass
·        Symmetry
·        Shape
·        Repose and
·        Time

These points are vital to the powerful feeling one gets in strolling through a garden. To look at it in another way you can look at a garden as a palette for a painting.  Eck states that “Of all the arts…painting and gardening are the most closely allied  …”

I have tried to pull together illustrations from our garden design and execution in demonstrating his points.  All but one is ours. None have any flowers in bloom.

Check out these pictures for an example and you’ll see.

Mass

Structure

Contrast

Harmony

Shape

Access

Framing

Repose

Style

Scale

Symmetry

Get the idea?

Christie lives in Manakin Sabot , Virginia where she manages a 3 acre garden. Her blogs are written from her 35 years as a personal and professional gardener.