Planning for an Outdoor Wedding

Garden landscape design is fun, but it is also hard work. You can have more fun and suffer through less drudgery if you focus on the following tricks for producing a beautiful garden landscape.

Layers

Think about a garden and the surrounding landscape as an open space you can walk through and look at. You won't just see a batch of flowers in a circle. Instead, you'll see the things in front of and behind the flowers, too. Gardens exist in layers. Every section of the garden should have a foreground, middle area, and background.

Likewise, a garden should have top to bottom depth. You might place a shade-loving plant like a hosta at the low level and some tall flowers at the next tier. A plant with an even taller stalk, such as a sunflower, can produce the top level. This makes a garden more diverse and interesting.

Colors

You never want to see a garden dominated by a single color. There's a reason the world has been crazy for tulips for centuries.

Use the color wheel to consider contrasting plants. For example, you might have purple and yellow flowers near each other. If you do use similarly colored plants, consider also employing near complements. A red next to a brown can look very classy and subtle.

Also, remember that greenery is great. Brown is fine, too. It's a garden. Let the leaves, grass, soil, and mulch play a role in the aesthetics.

Plan

By this point, you can see a lot is going on. You need to have a plan. Use garden landscape design solutions like software and graph paper to plan the space. Work through ideas before you put a shovel in the ground so you won't be caught off guard.

Allow for Growth

Plants grow. Don't pack them in too closely, or they may compete and stunt each other. Give the growers room to expand. Keep the shy plants away from the aggressive ones.

Embrace the idea that the garden will change as the plants thrive. Avoid fighting with the plants any more than is necessary to encourage their growth.

Love the Seasons

No garden should grow for just one season. You shouldn't have a summer or spring garden. Develop a garden that will have early and late bloomers. Take advantage of leafy plants that change colors in the fall to extend the visual excitement into the later months.