Winter is best for garden design

When it comes to garden design, winter is where it’s at. Summer is the season we associate with gardens, but winter is the best time to really look at them. Without all those swaying leaves and blowsy flowers, you can see the single most important thing for great garden design - structure.

Structure is all the masses that make up a garden - trees, shrubs, walls, fences - plus the stuff you can see beyond the boundaries. If you get the structure right, the garden will look harmonious, whether you fill it with exotic, spiky leaves or soft, swaying grasses. Good garden design creates a space with a balance of masses and voids. It leads the eye around the garden, directing it towards attractive features, and away from the neighbour’s basketball hoop.

Sustainable garden design takes advantage of all those different spots in the garden, valuing them the opportunity to create something beautiful that works just as well for nature as for people. Instead of trying to drain a damp spot so you can grow sun-loving echinacea, embrace it as the perfect place to encourage more frogs. The frogs will eat the slugs that like to munch on echinacea, so everyone’s a winner. You can still have your sun-loving flowers, and putting them in the right spot will save you money and heartache. To work out the right spot in your garden, you need to sort out the structure. And now is the time to do it.

Image by Liana Tril'