Landscape, like any other kind of design, is influenced by changeable fashion, which wave after wave rolls on the brainchild of gardeners. Recently, the so-called natural and ecological gardens are often in favour. In Western Europe, their passion is primarily associated with degradation, and in some cases with the almost complete disappearance of natural vegetation, so it is understandable desire to reproduce the natural complex on a private plot of land.
This attempt is reflected in many modern design projects. Here are some of the most, I think, eloquent examples, including — with one of the exhibitions in Chelsea, traditionally considered a trendsetter garden fashion.
House in the village
The best works of landscape designers — “village” gardens. Lawns are completely replaced by meadow grasses. The most common cereals are colored with colorful splashes of all the familiar chamomile, cat, calendula. The meadow is crossed by a dirt path with a slight bend leading to a rickety village fence.
A log house with a roof covered with green turf, climbing roses cling to the walls, a roughly hewn wooden table and chairs, a few fruit trees at a distance. The Windows have a high mallow combined with delphiniums and peonies, lavender, covered with a soft cloud of gypsophila. Geranium and Myosotis peek out from under the openwork fern in the cool shade.
There is a garden. This pastoral, created specifically for the nostalgic nature of urban residents. One could say that almost every suburban area can argue with the exhibition garden, but something still keeps from such a comparison.
Fisherman’s hut
A slightly different type of ecological garden is not just a “house in the village”, but a house on the shore of the sea or river, at the first glance of which it becomes clear that a fisherman’s family settled here.
In the courtyard are drying nets, an overturned boat, a row of oars, old wooden barrels for salting fish, a small chest, clearly suffered more than one storm. Instead of a window — porthole. Copper ship’s bell, the path is covered with small pebbles. Plants a little, planting concise, simulating coastal vegetation.
Chalet on the hill
Another example of an ecological garden: on a hill there is a house-Chalet, at the foot of a garden, the idea of which is in the diversity, the riot of wildlife. A wide range of perennials meanwhile picked up with great taste and tact. The purple plant in common with matching studs. A powerful accent of the composition is a blooming rhododendron.
From the stone bench, standing at the border of the garden, bypassing a small terrace, covered with emerald turf, you can climb a fairly steep path (sometimes with steps from large fragments of stones) to the threshold of the house. The garden and the house are surrounded by a thick hedge, along which several fruit trees are planted. It is assumed that such a garden will attract insects, birds, small rodents, hedgehogs.
And other interesting gardens
Quite simple, but very nice garden takes us to the South of France. Well-kept grape-vines, a few cherry trees. There is also a tiny garden with semicircular beds of cauliflower and lettuce, there is a wicker of flexible willow branches and a small pond, almost overgrown with coastal vegetation. The composition is completed by a low tower, entwined with a white braided rose. The tower is built from an old large VAT, which once crushed grapes. The path is paved with rough stone in combination with the dumping of river pebbles and coarse sand.
Very popular motif of the old, overgrown, perhaps even running, garden. Its main skeleton consists of several trees with a high crown.
Under the canopy in a dense planting — so that the tree trunks are hidden — there are shrubs. In the depths of the evergreen rhododendrons. To the garden was interesting and winter, planted junipers pyramidal blue and open, creeps into the track, down from the low retaining wall onto the stony frame of a small pond.
It would seem that there is no place left, but no — every piece of open land is planted with perennials. Through the foliage of ornamental perennials sprouted arrows of various bows, topped with blue and pink balls of inflorescences. In full sun a lot of tall grasses.
The path in such a garden is usually unpaved or rocky, lined with rough flagstones. The cracks between the stones are overgrown. Paths do not have clear outlines, along the borders of the pebbles or sand.
Design techniques that should be adopted
The feeling of “wild” garden is transmitted not only thickened planting, but also its uneven. Perennials are planted in 3-4 irregular tiers, which creates the effect of natural sub-or meadow vegetation. Despite the fact that along with natural species used conventional garden plants, this method of planting is difficult to call a traditional mixborder.
There are really quite unusual for our perception of plants. For example, designers quite actively include in the garden range Heracleum sibiricum. Despite the fact that it is quite rightly attributed to the weeds, it can not be denied decorative. It should be noted that the umbrella in the gardens are increasingly found, especially tall, because they create the upper tier of “meadows” — very soft in outline, drafty, filled with air and sun. The effect is achieved by a highly raised inflorescence-umbrella, consisting of small white or pinkish flowers. Such landings are reminiscent of Alpine tall.
Given the fashion for ecological gardens, work and breeders. In the field of their vision were grasses and sedges and, of course, meadow and forest herbs. The range of varieties of cereals and sedge is replenished with variegated forms, and white and Golden spots can be localized both along and across the sheet. Very interesting shape with the enlarged decorative, sometimes brightly coloured, in drooping or erect inflorescences, panicles or spikes.
Selection of meadow and forest grasses is aimed primarily at obtaining a wide range of flower color and abundance of flowering. A separate group is represented by ferns. Not less attractive and diverse set bows, in abundance represented in exhibition projects.
It is obvious that small architectural forms are solved in the style as close to nature as possible. A lot of wood, old or artificially aged, natural stone, non-tidal ceramics. Garden furniture of rough shapes, deliberately referring to the village benches and tables, clay containers in the form of pots, jugs and bowls are also associated with rural life. Even the supports for tall perennials are proposed to be made not of metal or plastic, but of ordinary dry branches.
In our view, this is something like an ordinary janitor’s broom, disassembled into component parts, which are still installed in the spring of a tent around a perennial that is beginning to grow. All spring, until the plants will not completely close these structures. But in the summer everything looks fine.
Funny garden sculptures of different animals, ranging from easily identifiable frogs and toads to ducks, geese, chickens and even sheep, pigs, cows in full size — all imbued with the spirit of the village. Elves with lanterns in their hands and beautiful stained-glass wings are knocked out of the General system. But they do not contradict the secret corners of the forgotten and overgrown garden.
Of course, natural, ecological, rural, forgotten gardens are in the lead today, but there are other, no less interesting areas, the finest hour of which is yet to come.
Leave a Reply