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Design Principles to Enliven (continued) : YOUR Outdoor Room #5

February 19, 2013

We’re celebrating 40 years in landscape design! Join us for a special garden design event in Charleston, SC…Come take YOUR garden to school!

The Design Principles : #6 Light and Shadow , #7 Proportion and Scale & #8 Reflection

6. Light and Shadow. Going along with color, light and shadow playing off one another has its own emotive language. Dappled light filtering onto a lawn or forest floor creates an ever-changing wash of patterns. An environment like this releases you from prosaic thoughts and evokes a feeling of serenity and inspiration. The animated light quality reduces the feeling of enclosure and encourages peaceful thought.

7. Proportion and Scale. Most of the western world’s greatest architectural achievements demonstrate a mastery of proportion (i.e., the relationship of parts to the whole). In architecture, proportion has been traditionally founded in the rigors of mathematics and geometry. This is why geniuses like Andrea Palladio in the Renaissance took the trouble to learn the numerical proportions of the Roman builders.

The more formal designs in landscape architecture also have their historical roots in classical proportions, although now they are rarely taught. For most landscape architects working on residential projects, determining proportion is largely a matter of sensing and intuiting, through training one’s eye, how to create harmonious spatial relationships between the parts of a design and the whole. If you study the most renowned sites and classic examples of architecture and landscape design, you will internalize a feeling for proportional relationships that look and feel right.

Scale relates a bit more to the size of elements in relationship to their context. Out of scale refers to an overly large object placed in a too-small setting. Under-scaled is a tiny object lost in an ocean of space like an acorn on a lawn. In general, we find that people tend to under-scale statuary and pots in relation to where they are being used. For those two categories of objects, we tend to advise, “When in doubt, select a more generous rather than a smaller size.” This is especially true of pots.

8. Reflection. When there is a possibility of using it, reflection adds depth and a sense of mystery to a scene. The reflection of light across water draws the eye and makes a space lively in the sunshine and soothing in the evening. Trees beside a pool seem taller and assume more importance. The effect of color is doubled.

The creative use of the tools of visual art lies in designing a visually stimulating landscape using the four art elements (line, color, form and texture) and the broader principles of design such as proportion, scale and focalization. By visiting notable landscapes, photographing, sketching and studying the plans, you will build a strong foundation for your design.

Join us in Charleston, February 25-27, 2013 as we share the recipes for these timeless outdoor rooms.
In honor of Dargan Landscape Architects 40th Anniversary in 2013, Elements of Outdoor Rooms, harkens to our early design practice in Charleston, SC. Full time for decades and continuing on today, we’ve tested art elements & client needs on the canvas of this historic city. Dargan archives at the South Carolina Historical Society house hundreds of our courtyard and outdoor room designs, many of which exist today and hold lifestyle tools useful to properties anywhere.

Design Principles to Enliven (cont) : YOUR Outdoor Room #4

February 14, 2013

We’re celebrating 40 years in landscape design! Join us for a special garden design event in Charleston, SC…Come take YOUR garden to school!

The Principles of Design (continued) : #3. Symmetry and Asymmetry & #4 Repetition and Rhythm

Charleston, SC Garden 3. Symmetry and Asymmetry. Chaos and order. Be it a house or landscape under construction, chaos results. Even the most ordered man-made landscape in picturesque or formal style goes through a learning curve involving earth moving and revegetation. A master landscape plan helps navigate the rough road to perfection. Look to Mother Nature for clues involving environmental concerns to make the ultimate landscape ordered by both man and natural processes.
In landscape design, symmetry refers to a method of placing shapes of equal volume, size or form on either side of a central point or along an axis. What is on the left side is mirrored on the right. Symmetrically placed forms add stability and balance.

The formal gardens of the geometric period in France in the seventeenth century were founded on symmetrical design. The picturesque English landscape gardens of the eighteenth century reacted against it and celebrated the naturalness of asymmetry. In contemporary residential landscape design, we often combine elements of symmetry and asymmetry in different parts of the master plan to achieve formality, informality or, as is often the case, a subtle blending of both.

4. Repetition and Rhythm. When a similar form is repeated at regular or irregular intervals, a certain rhythm results. Bouncing balls of boxwoods have delighted generations of gardeners and are probably one of the most vivid examples of repetition. When similar forms are organized in a single direction, the effect of rhythmic movement is even stronger.

The technique of repeating the same shape gives a landscape design a feeling of unity; the eye seems to like the echoing of a form, and we subconsciously join these elements together into a whole scene. The use of large, repeated forms, such as clipped cedars, takes a bit of conviction because its effect tends to dominate. When done well, few design treatments have more authority or sophistication.

Design Principles to Enliven : Outdoor Room #3

February 12, 2013

We’re celebrating 40 years in landscape design! Join us for a special garden design event in Charleston, SC…Come take YOUR garden to school!

Principles of Design : #1 Axial Design and #2 Focalization

Great gardens have a secret language. Their hidden underpinnings are design principles. This lexicon is critical to your success as a designer. With these words, you can describe why a garden visually works.

1. Axial Relationships. An axis is simply a straight line, like a path or an alley of trees, extending from a starting point to an ending point that’s usually punctuated with a visual element such as a building or fountain at the end. Intersecting the line with another one, at right angles, produces cross-axial design. Few other visual techniques produce such a strong grip on the landscape. With this elegantly simple device, many wildernesses have been tamed and many gardens given their structural bones.

Cross-axial design created the shape of the cloister garden in medieval monasteries. A walled space was divided into four sections by two intersecting paths. A fountain, well, basin or tree was usually placed at the center point, or node, where the two paths crossed; in the four resulting planting beds, the monks tended fruit trees, herbs and flowers.

Beginning in the seventeenth century in Europe and England, four planting beds—or the four-square form—created by the intersection of two paths became the standard plan for kitchen gardens. Its application continues to this day, and we often find a place for it in landscape designs in a variety of settings.

Both axial and cross-axial designs suggest rationality and spatial discipline. When used within a small walled space, such as the cloister or kitchen garden, they create a calmly ordered and balanced environment. When let loose on a very grand scale, axial and cross-axial designs become extremely powerful psychologically because they seem to dominate nature. In the seventeenth century, for example, axial design structured vast properties that underscored the power of their owners; the longer and straighter the lines, the greater the sense of domination, power and authority. The gardens created for Louis XIV at Versailles are the ultimate example.
In addition to making a small space crisp and thus visually larger, axial design can divert attention away from an unattractive area on a property by whisking the eye toward a visual element such as an arch or arbor placed somewhere else, along an axis, or at its end point. While, for example, a jungle gym may be peripherally in sight, its impact is considerably lessened when a strong axial statement is taking place somewhere in the opposite direction.

Formality often implies axial and cross-axial design; therefore, in the vast majority of cases, paths in a formal flower garden are predominantly straight lines. Cross-axial designs are used to create parterres for flower gardens and kitchen gardens on properties of all styles and sizes. The four-square form is one of the most beautiful and enduring of all landscape designs. Variations on this form abound through the crafting of differently shaped beds; they don’t have to be rectangular or square.

Focalization. Focalization is a technique for making order out of chaos by providing a focal point that funnels the viewer’s sight line where you want it to go. A statue, pergola or garden gate can each be used to create a strong focus. Something as simple as an urn or birdbath in direct line with the back door is elemental focalization. An entire composition can be created around it.

Focalization also implies using a framing device, such as a rounded arch, to isolate and emphasize a particular sight line or view. This technique has been used masterfully by architects and landscape architects from time immemorial.

Focalization is almost always an ingredient in axial and cross-axial design. An “exclamation point” such as a statue, urn or tree at the end of an axis becomes a focal point that draws the eye.

In small spaces, we sometimes increase the illusion of space by making things seem smaller or closer together as they near the focal point, mimicking the effect of visual perspective and the way things get smaller as they go into the distance. This can be used effectively in small courtyard gardens in which a wall provides the backdrop for a focal point such as a piece of sculpture or a fountain, and the entire composition is organized around that.

Garden Design Event Celebrates 40 years of Landscape Architecture

February 9, 2013

Hugh and I cordially invite you to join us in Charleston, SC where we cut our teeth on courtyard garden design and SEE what makes them tick! Join us February 25-27 for Create YOUR Outdoor Room, Courtyard or Garden Retreat & Live a Live you LOVE!

http://landscapeyourlife.com/charleston/

Workshops, garden design study in private utopias, AND 3 garden makeovers from the stage. This is a design event that celebrates what we’ve enjoyed doing for our entire career and we want to share it with you!

Artfully Structure Your Space: YOUR Outdoor Room #2

February 7, 2013

We’re celebrating 40 years in landscape design! Join us for a special garden design event in Charleston, SC…Come take YOUR garden to school!

Can a garden be a work of art? Most definitely, and it does not take sculpture or even hardscape.

The skillful use of art elements and design principles are what skilled artists and designers use to create a picture of lasting value.

The most important ingredients of a powerful landscape are usually not plants, flowers, buildings or trees. The key to success lies in the basic tools of visual art: the four art elements (line, color, form and texture) and the broader principles of design, such as proportion, scale and focalization. All gardens that have stood the test of time convey the power these tools hold over the human imagination. Crafting a four-part master plan depends on their skillful application—a lifelong pursuit. The following is a small taste of what these tools are and how they work on the land. Meet The 4 Art Elements!

1. Lines and Paths. Line commands power in landscape design because it not only gives form but also creates mood. Arrow-straight lines for pathways are purposeful; they propel you along with direct momentum. Curved paths relax the pace. On large properties, long, curving paths with tall shrubs and border plantings orchestrate the discovery of something hidden around the bend.
Hedges are lines; pleached allees of trees are lines; the curvy or straight raised edges of flower beds are lines. They all create energy in the landscape one way or another—through moving your eye or by moving your feet.

2) Color. Color is the most personal part of a landscape design. Freedom of color choice rules your flower beds and borders, so you can choose to be over the top one year and restrained the next. As a tip, keep color simple. This applies to the plant color green as well as to the more vivid floral spectrums.

The backbone of any garden is green—blue green, leaf green, red green, variegated green or grass green. Take your choice. By merging and mingling greens, a garden can be as cool as a cucumber and as exciting as a Monet. Winter greens are different from summer greens. Gardens with year-round interest have both evergreen and deciduous plants. This lends considerable interest to spring when infant leaves burst forth from the sleeping gray branches.

A floral display that includes a palette ranging from dark to light will interest the eye. In a flower bed, you might try a dark blue theme with light blue, lavender and some pink for contrast, then add a dollop of pale yellow or white to release the colors and make the bed shimmer and twinkle. Successful beds showcase different hues that blend in with one another rather than stand out against each other. Try not to use independent wads of color such as tight clumps of bright begonias; instead, blend colors to luminously fade into one another like a watercolor.

3) Form. Form means shape. Be it a rug of lawn or an upright conifer, the skillful use of form is a path to stylistic success in gardens, especially small spaces. Every element in a landscape has a form. Distinctive forms, such as Italian cypresses, have stylistic reasons for being in gardens and evoke the flavor of Italy. The contours of a shapely lawn, the graceful outline of a large stone urn, or tall boxwoods clipped into whimsical bird-like topiaries demonstrate the variable art element of form.

Plant materials offer you choices in forms that include horizontal, vertical, loose (billowing), tight (compact), weeping, upright, pyramidal, clasping, curving, linear, asymmetrical and symmetrical.
Cemeteries often showcase forms that are elongated (e.g., tall conifers) and have an inspirational or serene effect. They lead your eye skyward. Wider forms, such as low, clipped boxwood hedges, bring you back to earth and emphasize the ground plane. Irregular forms, such as Deodar cedar, are picturesque. Your eye sees the irregular voids between the branches.

4. Texture. Understanding texture is akin to pouring soy milk into a bowl of granola. At first glance, it is a pebbly surface full of interest; the next moment it is a broad expanse of flatness with an occasional iceberg.

Textures in the landscape represent the symbiotic relationship between plant leaf sizes, the size of the space in which they are placed and any adjacent paving textures.

In plant materials, there are three basic textural categories: large, medium and fine. Large-leaved plants, such as fatsia, banana trees, palmettos, magnolias, hydrangeas and hostas, are considered coarse. Fine textures are seen in grasses (especially zoysia) and plants with dainty leaves, such as creeping fig vine, small leaf hollies and small ferns. Medium textures would be exhibited by camellia, azalea indica, ivy and cherry laurel. Some plants may have a specific texture but read more as shape. Boxwood is considered to have fine texture, but that is usually not as important as its form when used in a design.

Textures play a major role in all of the built elements in a garden, be it stone or brick. A path made out of a single smooth surface and hue, such as square limestone paving stones with closely mortared joints, creates momentum; this effect is doubled when the path follows a straight line. On the other hand, a heavier, coarser texture, such as bricks laid in a basket-weave pattern, slow it down. Using the heavier texture on a curved path definitely puts on the brakes and seems to invite relaxation.

Keeping the textures of building materials and plant materials in the same general family defines the character of a property. Skillful use of texture is one of the most powerful elements you have for creating a spirit of place. Each building material and individual plant has its own expressive surface. For example, the coarse texture of weathered cedar used on fences and gates in a mountain retreat differs from a town courtyard garden where a smoother texture of painted ironwork, stucco or wood would be more appropriate.

Next TIP #3 : Design Principles to Enliven : Outdoor Room #3

Join us in Charleston, February 25-27, 2013 as we share the recipes for these timeless outdoor rooms.

In honor of Dargan Landscape Architects 40th Anniversary in 2013, Elements of Outdoor Rooms, harkens to our early design practice in Charleston, SC. Full time for decades and continuing on today, we’ve tested art elements & client needs on the canvas of this historic city. Dargan archives at the South Carolina Historical Society house hundreds of our courtyard and outdoor room designs, many of which exist today and hold lifestyle tools useful to properties anywhere.

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