Garden Vegetable | Gardeners’ Dirt: It’s All About Garden Design
~li~By Kathy Klein – Victoria County Master GardenerEdited by Charla Borchers Leon
Zen gardens incorporate empty space to assist with focusing on the basics of design. The Zen garden at VEG includes line elements with its border and raked gravel. Form, mass and structure are evident with the rocks and small lantern, and color is faint with shadowing. In its simplicity, it is a very basic garden design.
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The VEG water garden illustrates a distinctive feature with various design principles. It has a rounded shape with a miniature waterfall made of small rocks that are flanked with those of larger mass. Texture and color are in the plants, and there is overall empty air space. Don’t overlook the black swan garden accessory.
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Line – Visual paths for the eye to follow, and edges of surroundings
Shape – Form of garden plants and objects
Mass – Bulk, size, impact of garden elements; the space used
Texture – Feel, touch, surface, consistency, …
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Design starts in the brain and can be sketched on paper, long before the first shovel of dirt is moved.
Designs can have evolution and be done in stages.
Line is often a matter of taste. Some …
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It’s all about trees . and more
Sept. 24
8 a.m.-4 p.m.
VEG Pavilion, 283 Bachelor Drive, Victoria Regional Airport
Eleven speakers including Heidi Sheesley, owner of Treesearch Farms, Houston; Dr. Jerry M. Parsons, professor and …
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For the purpose of this article, design is differentiated from style. Garden styles, to name a few, include English cottage garden, herb garden, vegetable garden, water garden, Zen garden, xeriscape garden and cactus garden. Each style brings to mind a specific mix of vegetation and accessory features, but each of these styles has an underlying structure that is the garden’s design.
BONES OF GARDEN DESIGN
The bones of garden design incorporate some elemental principles of design including line, shape, mass, texture, color and empty space.
Hidden within the style is elemental design, the bones of the garden. For example, if you want a square foot garden, do you want 3 square feet by 3 square feet, or 2 square feet by 4 or would you prefer 5 square feet by 5 squares? If you are designing a water garden, will you have one level or more so that you can incorporate a water fall?
SQUARE FOOT GARDEN
A garden, such as a square-foot garden, is built on shapes, and in this case, squares, that are combined in usually a rectilinear fashion to produce the designed structure. Next, the mass, texture and color, and in this case the functionality come into the picture. Tall plants are placed to the rear or center to allow proper light for closely planted neighbors. Texture and color are incorporated by the distinct differentiation produced by the variety of plants, such as ferny-topped carrots, red tomatoes and peppers, a few marigolds adding color and other green leafy vegetation.
HERB GARDEN
An herb garden is sometimes a closely planted mixture of many interesting herbs, and other times it is meticulously designed as a medieval, intricate, interlaced garden near the kitchen of a castle, manor or estate. In the latter case, lines may intertwine to form the appearance of shapes, such as knots and chains of plants. Colors may vary from the palest sage green, to the darkest purple basil, and mass will also be identifiable
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