Designing Your Garden: Defining Structure
This can be the most challenging, yet the most fun part of developing your spatial design. Once you create a bubble diagram to organize your outdoor spaces, the next step is defining the structure of those spaces (this is officially called a form composition study). Will your garden be informal, formal, rectilinear or geometric? Look to the architecture of your house as inspiration or maybe you are drawn to a particular garden style. Structure can also evolve from a theme.
The image below shows how you can take a bubble (functional) diagram then transform them into garden structure studies. I encourage you to explore several options. Originally I only created the two garden structure studies for bubble diagram #2, then realized I needed to stretch myself, so created a couple more options for bubble diagram #1. My second set felt more dynamic.
My next post will show how I create a preliminary design from one of these studies.
If you'd like to learn more about this process take a peek at one of these fabulous books:
LANDSCAPING YOUR HOME by William Nelson
PROFESSIONAL PLANTING DESIGN by Scott Scarfone
RESIDENTIAL LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE by Norman Booth and James Hiss
