Designing a Backyard Garden

Designing a garden may sound simple enough. In essence, it's the creation of a complete scene through the growing of trees, shrubs, bushes, flowers, and other plants in strategic locations. However, before you get started with planting your garden, you need to plan it. You need to envision what you want your yard to look like several years down the line.

The first element of your garden will be the things that you don’t have to grow, such as a pond, rock patch, etc. You should take care of those areas first. After that, you can start looking at the longer term project.

Trees

You can choose between a single tree, or a small cluster of trees. There are many different options when it comes to the type of tree(s) to plant. You will want to choose a tree with an attractive shape, with bark and leaves and flowers that you won’t mind seeing in your yard indefinitely. You might also want to consider a fruit tree which thrives in your local climate. Not only do you get the beautiful tree in your landscape, but you also get some delicious fruits every season.

Shrubs

Shrubs are another important part of your landscape. Shrubs are used to provide focal points across the yard, or you can line them up in a row to create a hedge. Do consider the seasons in which they bloom. If you can plan it correctly, you can have the right varieties of shrubs so that at least one group is in bloom almost all year.

Flowers or Vegetables?

After you plan for any trees or shrubs, you may want to consider a flower or vegetable garden.

Vegetable gardens tend to be less aesthetic in nature and are often the easiest to landscape, as it is a matter of need rather than beauty. If you are planting a flower garden, though, you are planting for beauty. Decide early if you want to keep the flowers and plants within a certain color scheme or if you want dramatic blues and greens combined with bright and vivid reds and yellows. This is a personal decision but will greatly affect the appearance of your garden.

You should also landscape your garden according to the amount of time and effort you want to devote to working your garden on any given week. Some plants require more care than others. If you want a garden that is basically "sow and go," then you need to make sure it is filled with plants and flowers that are suited to that sort of low maintenance. Most vegetable gardens require a good deal of tending in order to flourish and are not acceptable in this sort of situation.

Try Layering Your Garden Landscaping

By layering your garden landscaping beds you will be able to add a whole other level of beauty to your landscaping design. But, what exactly is layering? Quite simply, it's how your garden is laid out, such as taller plants behind the shorter plants.

Layering your garden design is easy to do, but it's helpful to sketch it out first. When layering you should have about three layers. Your back row should face north, if it can, and the back row should have the tallest plants and as the rows descend so should the heights of the plants and flowers. The trick of this kind of garden landscaping is that oftentimes the plants we buy are baby plants. So you will need to talk to those working at your local gardening store about how large the plants will grow to be. You would hate to find years later that a plant in the front row has grown much larger than those in the back, which defeats the purpose of layering.

The layering affect of your garden landscaping design will add depth and make your garden much more interesting to look at.

Plan Your Garden for Year-Round Enjoyment

One thing that is often overlooked when planning and creating a beautiful garden is that the garden be enjoyed year round, not just during the summer months. Unfortunately in the vast majority of gardens there is a huge hole in the garden for the vast majority of the year. Careful planning can help ensure that you are planting flowering plants that bloom during various seasons of the year as well as plants that provide beautiful foliage and greenery even when the flowers may not be blooming.

Plant continuously and groom your garden consistently throughout the year. Obviously the winter months are not great months for planting in the earth, but this doesn't mean that you cannot use flowerpots filled with seasonal offerings to fill the gaps of green within your garden.

You can also add features to your garden that aren't plant related to bring splashes of color to your garden during winter months while preserving the space needed for planting your summer garden when the time comes. Flowerpots are a great example of this but so are lawn ornaments and statues that may be either moved to a different location during summer months or removed all together. Keep the earth warm for the summer garden to come during those long cold winter months.

Synonyms:   grden, gaden, grdening, gardning and gardin are typos and mispellings for "garden" and "gardening."