Dargan Landscape Architects

Create Nourishing Flourishing Home Utopias

mary palmer dargan

Reality Courtyards

My perfect life is a series of outdoor vignettes. A meal al fresco with a good book, unplugged and breathing fresh air; that night grilling with friends under a canopy of stars.  But until the early ‘80’s, when I moved to Charleston in my early thirties to marry Hugh, I didn’t know about outdoor rooms and courtyards…I mean, really know them.

Our house at 47 Tradd was too small for entertaining, and hardly large enough for a double bed. Built in the dawn of the eighteenth century it was only two rooms wide x two rooms tall. This ancient, pink-stuccoed kitchen house was tiny; the central heating system replaced the original fireplace in the center of the building.

Our courtyard was larger than the house and far more flexible. Wedding parties, guests dropping in for a drink and puppies to raise kept it busy, plus we gardened up a storm.

How do you live life to its fullest while enjoying seamless integration of household spaces truly joined at the hip?  In today’s world, this is hard. Parking takes up waaay too much room, the house footprint is too large for its lot and the neighboring homes loom close at hand.  So we decided to hold our first design studio in Charleston in 20 years!

Our students came from California, Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina and loved the experience!  We’re planning another LIVE event in June in Cashiers, NC from June 16-18, 2013. STAY TUNED as we unfurl our plans.

LYL charleston 2013 group

A Courtyard Wedding in Charleston: YOUR Outdoor Room #6

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!

Charleston, SC GardenWow. I didn’t know the value of an outdoor room until a client called with a wedding emergency early in my career. In Charleston, SC, a 18th c single house built for a family of four, had a set of rooms downstairs for business. Today, a family of two might comfortably squeeze into its narrow, one-room footprint. The classic single house, usually has a two story piazza, or balcony running alongside its long, attenuated body, but this one was strictly all building.

So, where to put the guests? The exquisite 2 tiered cake with elegant sugar petal flowers was okay in the foyer, but the dancing and merriment needed more elbow room.

Hugh and I eyed a  small garden patch, 18 x 15′ = approx 270 sq, ripe with potential. It was wildly overgrown with bushy breath of spring (Lonicera fragrantissima) occupying half the space. A hidden birdbath buried 6′ into its interior indicated this once was a small garden.

The rest of the patch was an L shape and surrounded by a tall, brick wall of mellow old brick and obscured by fig and ivy. We love fig vine for its greening effect, but this one now had knobby vines 2″ stems from decades of build-up.  Another foot of space gleaned form garden maintenance archaeology was ours!

Ragged indica azaleas and a very spindly, loquat with very messy fruit, occupied the rest of the space.

Spring cleaning came first. Once the onion was pealed, how to design for maximum use and beauty after the party was over? A circle space, outlined with a brick sailor edge, 12′ in diameter sodded with grass, created a tippy-toe spot for a garden tent with musicians. The dancing worked its way out to the parking court and the pathways.  A new courtyard garden where there was none, and now a PLACE to be.

3o years later, guess what is has become…a children’s play area, paved and ready for the next party!

The allure of the courtyard and outdoor rooms brings Charleston, SC immediately to mind.  Join us 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 (continued) : YOUR Outdoor Room #5

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

Charleston, SC Garden6. 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

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 Garden3. 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.

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 : Outdoor Room #3

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 gardeCharleston, SC Gardenns 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.

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.