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How Can I Design a Seamless Landscape? The Four Part Master Plan

February 18, 2015

A seamless landscape design ensures beautiful and comfortable experiences for your household members and any visitors to your property. This type of design is not only aesthetically pleasing but is intuitive for easy and safe navigation.

Approach & Arrival Sequence: Usually at the front of your property, it’s the welcome mat you put out for your friends and family. A thoughtful approach and arrival sequence seamlessly shows visitors how they can enter your property and where they can park cars. It also leads them gracefully to the landing of your front door where they can be greeted. And finally, it may also include starting points for garden experiences or pathways to outdoor rooms. This is where sustainable building materials can be employed such as gravel and other permeable pavers.

Hub: The middle portion of your property, known as the hub, is – of course – the house. It’s the epicenter around which all parts of your property revolve. The style of the house often inspires and dictates the aesthetics and layout of the landscape. Taking cues from the home’s colors, textures and architectural details is essential when designing a seamless landscape design.

Perimeter: This part of your property is situated outside, behind or on the sides of the house. It can be designed to be a multi-purpose environment for relaxing in and entertaining. It can include a sun pocket, an outdoor kitchen, an outdoor dining area or an expansive lawn. An outdoor social environment should be safe and accessible for both people and pets.

Passages & Destinations: These are the pathways and gardens of the property. The passages are the steps and walkways that allow us to get to and from different garden areas. The destinations can be a koi pond, a fountain, a bench beneath a willow tree or a series of garden statues.

Whether you are looking to add onto your landscape, make it more sustainable or give it a whole new look and feel with a complete renovation, our experienced and passionate team here at Dargan Landscape Architects would love to help. Contact us to learn about our landscaping services.

What’s the Best Way to Create an Outdoor Social Setting?

February 16, 2015

Outdoor rooms rank among the top requests with homeowners and homebuyers. And it’s no wonder because there are so many purposes and benefits that can be enjoyed with outdoor living spaces.

Maybe you want an outdoor venue for entertaining guests and throwing fabulous parties or an intimate space for dining al fresco with close family and friends. Maybe you envision an outdoor space that enhances the look and feel of your home while providing a safe and convenient place for your children to play outside. Perhaps you just want a space that will encourage you to spend more time in nature and find better ways to entertain. With the right landscaping, you can achieve a gorgeous outdoor room that brings beauty, style, health and pleasure to your home.

Ensuring your home has a space for gathering outdoors can bring wonderful health benefits to your household. After all, social interaction is healthy for all individuals at any stage of life as it promotes healthy physical and mental development.

Outdoor social settings are usually designed within the perimeter of the home, which means around seventy to a hundred feet from the house. These spaces are most popularly used for social activities and entertainment but can also be strategically designed to serve as multipurpose spaces. For example, a dining terrace can be decorated with vegetables planted in pots, all of which could be adjacent to a small outdoor spa. With the help of a professional, your outdoor room can be carefully planned to take advantage of every spatial opportunity.

Outdoor rooms for socializing can include decks, terraces, pavilions, loggias or lawns. They can include grills, wet bars or even entire outdoor kitchens. They can be more subtle such as a bench niche in a shaded area under a large tree or an outdoor fireplace or firepit to allow you to use your outdoor space year-round.

We’d love to help spark some ideas for your very own outdoor room for social gatherings. Feel free to browse through our photos for inspiration or contact us at Dargan Landscape Architects to begin discussing a potential project.

How Can a Waterfall Environment Enhance my Landscape?

February 12, 2015

As the essence of life, water can become the heart and soul of your landscape with a well-designed waterfall feature. Bringing your landscape to life with movement and sound, a waterfall environment can stimulate more than just your sense of sight. You’ll quickly find how a waterfall goes far beyond beautifying. The personal benefits of a waterfall feature can actually far exceed the aesthetic impact it has on your landscape.

There’s nothing quite like the sound of a waterfall. It is nature’s symphony. Creating a beautiful sounding waterfall, however – just like creating a beautiful sounding symphony – is more complicated than you might think. When water separates and hits different surfaces, it creates different tones. The acoustics of a waterfall feature, therefore, must be properly tuned to optimize the positive impact it has on your senses and emotions.

A thoughtfully-designed waterfall can also stimulate your sense of touch. It often goes overlooked, but interacting with waterfalls can be just as enjoyable as the experience of seeing and hearing them. Close your eyes and imagine the soothing feeling of the liquid moving around your hand after a stressful day of work, or imagine the refreshing feeling of the mist subtly hitting and cooling your skin on a hot summer’s day.

The movement of a waterfall certainly brings landscapes to life, but it also draws wildlife to your landscape. Birds, butterflies, and other majestic creatures and beings will grace your landscape and your life when there’s water flowing. Water features additionally open up your landscape to a diverse world of plants that you would otherwise not be able to include in your landscape. A waterfall can coalesce into a pond featuring spectacular water lilies, lotus plants and other blooming plants that require water.

No need to worry about wasting water or energy. A self-contained water feature can consistently and sustainably run 24-hours a day, 365 days a year.

Let us help you achieve a landscape design that stimulates all of your senses. Contact Dargan Landscape Architects in Atlanta to set up a consultation for a water feature installation or other landscape architecture project.

Meet Lisa Zielger, Creator of “The Gardener’s Workshop”

February 10, 2015

Meet Lisa Ziegler, a home gardener turned cut-flower grower who began growing field-grown cut flowers in 1998 on less than one acre in Newport News, Virginia.

I was totally inspired by her lecture form The Garden Symposium in Williamsburg, VA.

In 2010 Lisa’s garden grew into a farm, now close to 4 acres. During the growing season this farm yields 8,000 – 10,000 stems each week. Her flowers are sold to up-scale florists, at farmers markets and through her programs, “Friday Flowers Garden Share” and “Subscription Drop-off” that are in their 9th year.

Lisa shares her knowledge and passion for gardening through programs. Her audiences have included flower and gardening show guests, radio listeners, garden clubs, master gardeners, horticulture groups, civic growers, commercial growers and others.

In 2005 Lisa launched a mail-order catalog business, “The Gardener’s Workshop,” offering gardening and flower arranging tools and supplies she uses in her own garden and cut-flower operation. Lisa’s programs incorporate her simple methods of gardening that inspire and delight.

Lisa’s book, Cool Flowers, tells how to grow hardy annuals and shares her firsthand experiences for growing such flowers as Snapdragons, Sweet Peas, Bells of Ireland and many others.

Once you learn that “it’s all about timing” your garden will never be without these beauties again.

What Should be Included In a Kitchen Garden? Ideas for Cultivating a Kitchen Garden

February 10, 2015

Benefits abound with kitchen gardens. From healthy sustenance to therapeutic power, kitchen gardens can be customized to provide just what the doctor ordered and more. Here at Dargan, we’ve designed and built several kitchen gardens that do more than offer wholesome ingredients. They enhance quality of life.

A classic approach to a kitchen garden is to create circular design with four pathways leading to four central beds all encircled by a tall wall. The four central beds can be anchored by different types of boxwoods such as Kingsville dwarf, parsley or chives to provide evergreen armature during the winter. For a less formal look, allow nasturtiums to cascade over and mingle with the walkways. Raised beds can be constructed from 12 x 2-inch edging boards with six inches above and below ground to promote proper drainage.

For pathways, bricks or stone set without mortar will prevent storm runoff and add naturally beautiful color and texture. The wall encompassing the garden can be accompanied by a living fence designed out of fruit trees to add to the aesthetics while extending the garden’s harvest.

The interior beds can feature seasonal vegetables protected by exterior beds of tough and tolerant plants such as kale, asparagus, chard and comfrey. Lettuces can be intertwined with annual herbs such as borage and mustard plants. Separate compartments can harbor string and stable root vegetables.

After the beds are strategically designed and arranged, aesthetic accents and features can be added to achieve and personalize the look and functionality. Herbs, for instance, can be planted in cast-iron gypsy kettles at the garden’s entryway for a charming touch. Benches can be positioned in particular corners to provide a place to relax and enjoy the garden as well as provide convenient surface areas for tools and baskets when maintaining the garden. Other features to consider including are birdhouses, fountains and even bee houses and chicken coops.

Are you feeling inspired to add a kitchen garden that will help you with your New Year resolutions to take control of your health and happiness? Contact Dargan Landscape Architects to set up a consultation today.

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