A GINGHAM GARDEN

I was poking around my previous garden blog and came across this little ditty I wrote in 2011. I just love designing around patterns and hope it will inspire you to look for design ideas in all beautiful things.

Something I love to do is pick a fun image, color scheme or object to inspire me in designing a garden. It's a great way to generate ideas, yet help narrow down your plant choices.

I found this gingham image above several months ago and have been aching to design a perennial bed based on it. This is a simple border that you can place along a sunny wall or fence. The peak bloom time is June to July. I'm in zone 4 so have planned it accordingly, but you can take the same principles and design something with plants in your area. Oh, and I chose all my perennials through a fabulous plant database found on the Midwest Groundcovers website.

Now that we're over the holiday hump, it's time to start garden planning!

If you're interested in more articles like this one, plus would like to receive a free copy of my theme garden eBook, please sign up for my email updates here.

A GARDEN HOLIDAY GIFT

Over the last few weeks I've made a lot of big decisions in terms of how I want to focus this blog and share my love of garden design.

In celebration of my birthday and the holiday season, I'd like to toss in one more twist...sharing my eBook, The Peanut Butter & Jelly Garden with all of you.  This book focuses on my theme garden development process in a whimsical (yet practical) way.  I've been developing this process for a long time and just want to share it with the world (no need to hide behind a price tag anymore). 

Once you read through this book you'll begin to understand me as a designer and illustrator...and hopefully be inspired along the way. The only thing I ask in return is that you sign up to receive my email updates (which really isn't a lot...typically once a week). That's it!

You can read more about my eBook here or just sign up for your free copy by clicking the blue circle below.

I hope you enjoy this new journey into the magical world of garden design...and happy holidays!

If you're interested in more articles like this one, please sign up for my email updates here.

DESIGN WITH ME - CREATE THE PLAN

What?  Could this be true?!  We've finally reached the last step in the theme garden design process!  First a quick review of the five steps:

1. Pick a theme 
2. Brainstorm
3. Research 
4. Translate ideas to physical form 
5. Create the plan (woo-hoo! See below!)

CREATE THE PLAN
All those fabulous colors, hardscapes, furniture, garden ornaments, and plant materials will now merge to create a special space.

Just for fun I've made two garden plans.  One in this post and another that will follow in a day or two.  Of course, there are hundreds of possible combinations and I hope you have many other ideas to make your heavy metal garden special.

Some design hints...

Rather than just plopping elements into your garden, think about how you can create a nice space.

Make sure lawn, patios and bed spaces are all purposeful...not just leftover spaces.  They should all have strong shapes.

Most importantly, keep your design simple. Don’t try to incorporate all your ideas.  Focus on the ones that make the most sense for your garden.

 PLANT KEY

A. Panicum virgatum ‘heavy metal’ (Heavy Metal Switch Grass)

B. Peonia ‘bartzella’ (Bartzella Peony)

C. Concrete Patio (with stage lighting pattern)

D. Sedum spathulifolium ‘Cape Blanco’ (Cape Blanco Stonecrop)

E. Lawn

F. Yucca filamentosa ‘golden sword’ (Golden Sword Yucca)

G. Allium ‘hair’ (Hair Allium)

H. Drum Planters

I. Stachys byzantina ‘Helen Von Stein’ (Lamb's Ears)

J. Rosa x ‘radsunny’ (Sunny Knock-Out Rose)

K. Hypericum frondosum ‘sunburst’ (Sunburst St. John's Wort)

L. Yarrow x ‘moonshine’ (Moonshine Yarrow)

M. Alchemilla mollis ‘thriller’ (Lady's Mantle)

N. Corrugated Metal Fence

O. Magnolia acuminata ‘butterflies’ (Butterflies Magnolia)

P. Buxus sempervirens (Boxwood)

Q. Wood Patio

R. Forsythia viridissima var. koreana ‘kumson’ (Kumson Forsythia)

DO YOU SEE HOW I INCORPORATED MY THEME ELEMENTS?

• The rectangle patio represents music posters and the lines in the concrete represent stage light rays.
• The three patios are linked like a chain, plus represent heavy metal's trifecta of speed, power and precision.
• The furniture incorporates our colors, has a shiny heavy metal sparkle, plus the table is round like a drum.
• The planters are recycled drums.
• The fence is corrugated, shiny metal, plus includes our skull art in wrought iron.
• All the plants are in our color palette (yellow and gray with a hint of red from battle jackets).
• Everything is clean and simple reminiscent of late 1960s/early 1970s landscape style (when heavy metal was born).

Because there are so many options, I couldn't hold back from creating a totally different plan.  That will be posted in a couple of days.  

For those that have been following along and feel slightly overwhelmed with all these theme garden posts, I plan to pull them all together into one video tutorial. You can get the whole process in one swoop and hopefully be inspired to create your own theme garden.  I hope to have the tutorial complete by early July. The free tutorial will only be available to those on my mailing list initially.  If you'd like to sign up, just click here!

I'll see you in a couple of days when I reveal the second plan and give a summary of the whole process once again!

DESIGN WITH ME - TRANSLATE TO HARDSCAPE

Step four of the theme garden design process is a doozie.  It does take a bit of time to pull together all the physical parts of a garden.  Today let's talk about hardscapes.  

1. Pick a theme 
2. Brainstorm
3. Research 
4. Translate ideas to physical form (yes, we're still here!)
5. Create the plan

HARDSCAPES
Hardscape typically encompass non-living permanent materials.  These can include paving, arbors, pergolas, walls, trellises, fences, gazebos, and whatever other garden architecture you can dream up.

Try to think in three dimensions when considering hardscapes, since you are creating a garden space.  An easy way to conceptualize this is in terms of a floor, walls, and ceiling.

Take a shape or two from the last post and try converting those to a hardscape element, plus think about how our colors can be translated to a hardscape material.

Let's start with the garden floor (paving, for instance).  For fun, let's take the idea of heavy metal posters.  I want to show how you can take one of the shapes from our list in garden STRUCTURE then translate it into a hardscape.  I'm picking a simple shape, but you can also do this with the shape of a skull, jeans, chains or anything from our list. 

Here is another example of paving using a drum as inspiration instead.  I also linked them like chains, plus used three of them to represent the trifecta of heavy metal (speed, power and precision).  Hey, why not have symbolism in layers?  It's a great story to tell your friends.

Now let's think about the walls in your garden. Walls can take many forms, but I've included just two simple fence designs.  

There are also lots of options for ceilings in your garden (including none and just enjoying the sky). I've included just one example of how we could incorporate our theme into an overhead structure.  I was inspired by the flying V guitar.

I could go on and on and on with hardscapes inspired by the heavy metal theme.  Again, take a look at our brainstorming and research lists and let me know if you think of other fabulous ideas.

DESIGN WITH ME - TRANSLATE TO STRUCTURE

Today let's move onto garden structure!  This is still part of step four below.  

1. Pick a theme 
2. Brainstorm
3. Research 
4. Translate ideas to physical form
5. Create the plan

STRUCTURE IN THE GARDEN
Before jumping into the structure for our heavy metal garden, I'd like to give you a broad overview of this concept first.

If you want to look like you know something about landscape design...add structure to your garden.  This is the greatest impact you can make on your design.

The structure of a garden is how one gives form to an outdoor space. Rather than placing things willy-nilly, structure will encourage strong lines and reinforce your theme.

To simplify things, think of this structure on the ground plane.  Imagine looking at your garden from above in the winter (when the plants are no longer the dominant focus). What shapes and lines would you see?

Another way to visualize structure is thinking about the shape of your lawn or patio.  This space should be a strong space that can be easily seen.

To establish strong structure think about:

Now let's think about our heavy metal concept once again.  If we look at our brainstorming and research lists does anything stand out to you that might give our garden structure?  This is what I found as possibilities:

ripped jeans/blue jeans = straight lines, jagged lines
stage/lights = half circle or full circle
drums = circles or two circles for double bass drums
chains = interlinked spaces
motorcycles = circles, spokes
walkmans = squares with squiggly lines for wire
tour bus = rectangle, circles
beer bottles = bottle shape or circle for cap
guitar/flying v = guitar or v shape
posters = rectangle
skulls = skull shape
periodic table = grid
t-shirts = t-shirt shape
trifecta of speed, power and precision = use three of something
late 1960s/early 1970s = use a garden style from this period, probably clean, simple lines

This is a long list of possible structure ideas for our garden and we definitely will not use them all, but I wanted to show you what our initial brainstorming and research lists provide for inspiration. It really is amazing. I won't tell you what my choice is just yet. I want to think about it a bit.

Do you have a favorite above?  Or maybe I missed something you think I should add?

DESIGN WITH ME - TRANSLATE TO COLOR

Hello everyone! I am thrilled to finally get to the guts of our theme garden design...choosing colors, structure, hardscapes, furniture, ornamentation and plant materials. Woo-hoo!

Let's continue with step four below...

1. Pick a theme 
2. Brainstorm
3. Research 
4. Translate ideas to physical form
5. Create the plan

The first part of this step is choosing colors for our theme garden. Our color palette will help us choose furniture, plants, hardscapes, fabrics, etc. We do this by sifting through our brainstorming and research lists, then look for clues of color choices. Some are obvious while some are not. I've decided to use this as our heavy metal color palette:

The black is from the dark and moody atmosphere, plus black leather jackets, the gray reflects chains, smoke, silver, and metal, while the yellow is my less-shiny translation of gold and flashy stage lights (it could also be the background of animal prints). I also had a suggestion of red and orange from heavy metal battle jackets...also a great idea.  For now I plan to keep my palette simple, but may dip into these two additional colors if needed.

Something you should know...in the garden world there are two neutral colors: green and white. Of course, green will always be in your garden through lawn and leaves, so just consider this a given.  You can also sneak in a bit of white for accent if you'd like. Make sure you put more emphasis on your main color palette though and don't rely on white too much.

Our next translation...garden structure.  I'll explain this more in my next post, but for now I encourage you to suggest shapes or garden styles that we might incorporate into our heavy metal garden.  Again, look at our brainstorming and research lists for inspiration (are you starting to see why these lists are so important?!).