Landscape Design - Paper And Pencil Ovals

By Keith Markensen

Any study of landscaping design in America will show many typical properties, some of the most usual types, and various solutions of the problem of arranging the public, private, and service areas in relation to the house will be discovered.

Important Landscape Decision

With only a little thought, these three areas in the majority of cases can be separated on a property. Exactly how big each will be, or where it will be located, will depend on two things. The first is a family's habits and mode of living; the second is the nature and extent of your piece of land and what is already planted and growing nicely on it. Having reached this point in the design process, you are ready to decide on the final design of your property, which is the most interesting step in making your own landscape plans.

The division of your property into these three areas establishes the skeleton or framework of your overall design. Next, you will "put meat on it" by the use of plants, walks, driveways, hedges, fences, arbors, gates, trees, garden furniture, etc.

Designing Your Property

Still sticking to basic fundamentals for your landscape plan, sketch in rough ovals in each of these three areas, The areas outside the ovals indicate roughly where plants, flower borders, etc., will be placed. Anything inside the circles will generally be lawn area, except in the service area which will be devoted either to flowers for cutting or to vegetables or to a children's play area, etc. This does not mean that all the lawn areas will be oval-shaped, but only that an oval usually shows the general location of an open lawn area.

Although these oval areas can start out alike, one of them can in the end up as a formal design and another as an informal one.

Notice how the final open areas are definitely in the central portions of the original ovals. In future articles we shall go into detail about how to fill in these areas with plant material and other items and also how to care of spider plants.

The three most important factors influencing the design of any landscape plan are the relationships that exist between the public, private, and service areas. - 29857

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