When designing a garden it is crucially important to ensure that you’re going for a theme of some sort. However nice the individual aspects of a garden might be, if they are haphazardly placed and mismatched, the garden will end up looking messy to anyone who hasn’t seen it through the eyes of the designer. It is therefore important to not only plan the shape of the garden, but also to match the items that will be placed within it.

So take a look at what layouts are available to you and what items you are thinking
of placing, whether you enjoy sitting by water features on a hot summer’s day, or you enjoy cosying up to your netbook on the bench for a bit of sun and Party poker. A well-designed, natural-looking garden that has both organic contents and an organic, smooth, well-matched look is one that will make the owner very happy, along with impressing any visitors.

Some may favor a more formal style of garden, using plants that are not local to the location, along with detailed things such as figurines, fountains, benches etc. These gardens are usually ‘geometric’ in their plan, with obvious straight lines, normal curves and symmetrical balance. Different people may prefer a more normal look and feel for their garden, using many more original plants and things like the rocks and stone naturally available in the region.

According to the extent of your garden, you could even combine the two styles. This can be achieved by incorporating the formal style close to the house and steadily shifting to the informal pattern further away. It all depends upon personal taste. Just bear in mind nonetheless, that ‘nature’ had the first say. The famous English poet of the 18th century, Alexander Pope, who once studied plants and design of gardens, wrote the given words in his poem ‘On Garden Design’. “To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot; In all, let nature never be forgot”.

Well then, get out your graph book and pencil and start designing your rudimentary plan. In subsequent writings, we can concentrate more at the characteristic aspects to integrate in your garden.

• Will the chosen colors go with each other?
• Will the final size of a particular variety remove attention from the neighboring plants?
• Will the final size be a trouble to buildings, electric lines or telephone lines?

If you are planting trees or large-sized shrubs, you will have to take into account the expanse of the root system, so as not to cause trouble with water and drainage pipes and structure foundations.

You may have visions of wild flowers, colors, or tomatoes, but you’ll have to get your feet wet first.

Possibly, the most general goal of the hobbyist gardener is to create something of splendor that will present pleasure to themselves and to others. Place your garden where you’ll enjoy and see it the most often. This will add some motivation to do more gardening.

Even though it is not totally mandatory to be a specialist, some rudimentary information has to be procured to produce a good end result.

Research

You will, for a fact be required to know which plants are suitable for your characteristic climate, together with the kind of soil and the terrain that is present in your garden location. You must understand too what plants are grow in shady locations, partly shaded, or full sun regions. This know-how is easily procured from the many manuals that are available these days from your neighboring bookstores or library. The World Wide Web also is a quality source of knowledge for the hobby gardener.

Also gardening was the agriculture of previous times, nowadays gardening has taken several directions:

• Recreational gardening
• Botanical Science
• Horticulture and the commercial ventures of farming.
• Art such as Japanese Gardens

These different kinds have consequently ended in creating the number of trades necessary to maintain the ‘garden’. Enterprises such as *} factories to manufacture the whole lot from the most basic garden trowel, to the mammoth harvesting and processing contraptions put to use in commercial farming.

So, though this write-up may strive and include all of those areas, I will confine it to the most commonly recognized face of gardening as a hobby. Here too, I will merely cover the basic preparatory features and in subsequent articles, expand into further specific areas.

Gardening typically takes place in a space at or near a person’s residence and can be located on a roof, balcony or in an atrium or window box.

Gardening can also take place in non-residential locations, including parks, public gardens or semi-public gardens, around tourist attractions and at hotels.

In some situations a staff of gardeners or groundskeepers maintains the gardened areas.

See also

• Types of Gardening
• Artistic Gardening

Container gardening is a type of gardening associated with growing plants in smaller containers or pots. This can include planters and hanging baskets.

Container gardens are generally associated with roof tops, patios, balconies or atriums. Container gardens and other types of gardens are different from farming with respect to scope and purpose.

Farming is done on a much greater scale than gardening and the general purpose of farming relates to the production of saleable goods that are eaten or used by a large number of people.

There is some overlap in terms, particularly in that there is such a thing as market gardening in which a gardener sells some of his or her produce in a market environment. Another variant is community gardening, in which plots are offered to urban dwellers which feed many families.

In Japan, Zen monks are required to build decorative gardens or learn how to make particular flower arrangements known as ikebana.

Earlier, in the 18th century in Europe, country estates had formal gardens taken care of by professional landscape gardeners.

Today, there are landscape architects and garden designers that create artistic and beautiful garden spaces.