English Garden Design – Giving an Elegant Old World Charm
An English garden has a certain charm and elegance that is indigenous to it. You can transform a part of your garden or landscape into one such exquisite space by incorporating typical designs and create a relaxed atmosphere for you and your family to lounge.
English Garden Design – The Basic Principles
The main idea of an English Garden Design is to combine formal and informal components, tasteful color schemes and beautiful artwork and furnishings to complement the design. An English garden encompasses English themes, like a carefully manicured formal garden or one filled with wild and colorful flowering trees and hedges. Your basic pointer is to use styles that are dominant to England. Lay the outlines of the garden around a formal framework and then fill in with informal elements, like bold perennial flowers, shrubs and hedges that can help to break the rigidity of the formal atmosphere. An English garden design is based on the compartmentalization or division of the garden into different segments. These divisions or rooms are separated using several layers of hedges. The outside of this boundary is decorated with formal designs, while the inside is then decorated informally.
English Country Garden – Classic Elements
When it comes to designing an English country garden, the fundamentals remain same, combining the formal and informal and blending them well, so that none of it looks too rigid. Fill the garden with an outer hedge line of small shrubs, preferably non-flowering ones. You can even use a low-height stone wall or fencing to surround the garden, create beautiful formal pathways leading inside, arches, etc. A gazebo in the center is a great way of adding some formal beauty and then surrounding the structure with flowering bushes, low planters, lamp lights, etc. Informal designs can include ornamental pots and planter beds, wooden benches and seats, trellises, lush grass, etc. An English country garden can also consist of a carpet bed lined by pleached trees, a central pond with a fountain, arbors or pergolas, etc, if your garden size permits it. You might want to tone down the grandness a little as there might be space constraints. Look up pictures of 18th Century English gardens, add picket fences, rose trees, a sundial or birdbath and maybe a small brick pathway for extra elegance.
English Cottage Garden – Accord Details
A typical English cottage garden has to be compact, small and full of colorful cottage plants. It should typically enhance the surroundings of your cottage rather than overwhelm it. Don’t stick to too much formality here, as rigid lines will spoil the charm of the cottage garden. Surround your porch, veranda or yard with flowering plants that are in full bloom during all seasons, and rather than using strict pathways, line the walks with bricks or mish-mash of stones, gravel, shell, etc, that flow through the flowers and plants. If you feel the garden is too haphazard, trim the hedges and plants regularly. Add climbing roses, ivy or wisteria on one of your cottage walls, or on a metal arbor. They add elegance and height to your garden and also serve great backdrops to various summer flowers like Daisies, Poppies, Delphiniums, etc. You can read up in detail about how exactly to create an English garden as the internet serves a great source for such information.