Design Principles and Elements: TEXTURE

With winter upon us and the garden more or less asleep for the time being makes this a great time to do some planning and design of what you would like to do with your garden this coming year. Having either a professional design on paper or just a personal, thought-out landscape to-do list will help you stay focused and have an action plan for transforming your garden to what you dream it could be.

All successful design incorporates the usage of universal design principles and elements. I believe this is true whether your creative outlet be pottery, painting, sculpture, photography, landscape gardening, or many others.  A few months ago I wrote a post introducing these design principles entitled What language are your speaking?  You can begin now to speak the language of design and use these principles and elements in your garden. As a resource I would like to dedicate a post to every one of them and give helpful examples of each. Lets start with Texture.

TEXTURE

In its basic definition think of texture as referring to how smooth or rough something is. Fine texture would be running your fingers across a glass marble. Course texture would be running your fingers over one of those mouth murdering, yet visually stunning sugar crystal rock candies. Has anyone really every actually eaten one of those? I digress...

                                              Glass Marble by Hans Splinter 12/24/2007 Flickr Creative Commons.                                                                               Rock Candy by Sabrina S. 5/18/2008 Flickr Creative Commons *

Texture also refers to the visual smoothness or roughness of an object (or group of objects) and in landscape design this visual aspect is what we are most often interested in. Even in the example above you can see that visually the rock candy has a more course texture than the glass marble. This course texture (taking color out of the equation, to be discussed in a later post) causes the rock candy to stand out over the marble.

Fine, so what do candy and childhood games have to do with design?  Because course or rough textures stand out and hold the eye longer in comparison to the more subtle, consistent, softness of fine textures we can play back and forth between fine and course texture in order to create interest, variety, excitement, and focal areas in the garden. Successful garden designers have mastered the use and balance of texture...... and probably how to play marbles as well. 

IN YOUR GARDEN

Although texture is considered and used in all garden materials including water, stone, wood, paving, and plants the most inexpensive and easy to manipulate and enhance are arguably plants. Don't misunderstand that to mean that other media carry more weight, plants are likely the most commonly used textural element in the garden.

So lets put plant texture to use in real terms.

Fine Texture Plants:

• Have small leaves and stems that are closely packed together
• Are relaxing rather than stimulating
• Recede into the distance creating a sense of more space in the garden
• Area of light, airy, expansive and soft character

Coarse Texture Plants:

•  Have the largest leaves and thickest stems
• Are bold, dominate, attention grabbers
• Advance into the foreground
• Create striking patterns of light and shadow
• Are solid, stable, anchoring plants in the landscape

In your garden try combining fine and course texture plants together to create more interest and appeal. If you would like to make your garden feel a little larger try installing course texture plants up a little closer and fine textures plants in the distance.  Perhaps if you have a birdbath, stone water feature, or bench help it to stand out by surrounding it with finer texture plants.  If your garden seems for some reason just to be too boring and monotonous no doubt you're lacking variety of plant texture.

BY WAY OF EXAMPLE

Bloedel Reserve, Skyler Westergard 5/5/2012

In this picture I took at the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, Washington you can see how the course texture of skunk cabbage is used along the boardwalk to create visual interest and dominance in contrast to the fine textured hemlock tree in the center. The skunk cabbage also contrasts with the fine texture of the boardwalk timbers.

Bellevue Botanical Garden, Skyler Westergard 7/5/2012

At the Bellevue Botanical Garden near a waterfall I snapped a picture showing a good example of the contrasting textures of Ligularia (right) and Artic Willow (left). Notice how the striking patterns of light and shadow are much more magnified on the coarse textured Ligularia making it stand out strikingly.

Flower World, Skyler Westergard, Summer 2013

On one visit to the the nursery I grabbed a couple container plants and threw them together for a picture showing another example of how texture can be used in the garden with plants alone. The smaller, fine textured leaves and soft feathery flowers of the pink Astilbe contrast near perfectly with the bold glossy course textured leaves of the Bergenia. This would be a great combination for any garden.




Take time to let your creative juices start flowing this winter and set aside a few enjoyable hours for some planning and design work on your garden. Next time you are out visiting your favorite nursery consider what plants you could combine to add more texture and a bit more zing and flavor to your outdoor space. I promise it will be well worth your time.


* http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/