Garden design is an art and procedure of creating and designing landscapes and garden structures for planting and design. Garden design can be performed by the backyard owner themselves, or by experts of differing degrees of expertise and experience. It also involves coming up with a balance of plant species that will thrive in the particular environment and soil conditions. The end result will be a garden or landscape that adds beauty and value to the surrounding area and blends in harmoniously with its surroundings. In order to come up with a garden design, the designer must consider how the garden will be used and designed as well as what types of trees and plants will be suitable for the area.
There are four main key elements of successful garden design. These are functionality, aesthetics, social aspects and coherence with the landscape. All these need to be considered in equal measure in order for the garden design to be a success.
The aesthetic aspect of garden design focuses on how the plants look and the overall effect of the garden design. This is very subjective and differs from person to person. One of the main issues with aesthetic garden design is the selection of plants that will thrive and grow best in the specific environment and soil type of the area where the garden is to be located. For instance, some plants will require full sunlight to other plants will require partial to full shade.
Landscaping is one of the more important aspects of garden design and an important part of landscape architecture. Landscape architecture is used to describe the design patterns that support the different parts of a garden like the roof, the foundation, wall structures and flooring etc. A landscape architect considers a lot of factors while designing a landscape. They include materials, lighting, ventilation, wind-fall etc. Other factors that landscape designers take into consideration is the comfort and ease with which one can move around the area.
The last but not the least is hard landscaping. Hard landscaping involves the construction of walls and patios. Hard landscaping is different from soft landscaping because it is much more labor intensive. It is generally done only by experienced hard landscaping garden designer.
As a matter of fact there is a debate going on whether or not plant size should play a role in the garden design. Some people feel that plant size should be selected based on the amount of light that they receive. However, most professional garden designers strongly oppose this idea as they believe that the amount of light the plants receive should also be taken into account. Basically the only thing that we can say about plant size is that the larger the plant the more exposed to the sun it receives.