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/

Design Principles and Elements: What Language are you speaking?

Everyone has experienced those garden or landscape spaces that just by being in them makes your heart pound and your creativity level go into overdrive. I would dare say that most of you have also been in those unfortunate and uncomfortable outdoor spaces, hopefully not in your own front yard, that make your left eye close sagging and right eye stare blindly off into space twitching as did my brothers when I asked him to try the homemade salsa which accidentally received double portions of salt and no portions of sugar.

So what makes the difference?  Why when you're in some garden spaces you feel peace, comfort, excitement, rest, beauty, or spirituality and in others discomfort, annoyance, stress, discouragement, or even fear?

The differences have little to do with how many weeds they have (but don't let that be an excuse to not weed your garden). No two landscape spaces are the same, but the truly remarkable ones that I see have the same principles in common. And on the other hand, when I see poorly executed landscapes they lack many of those same qualities.

In design there are universal principles and elements which arguably are shared by every art or design medium. That's right, I am suggesting that gardening is very much similar to oil painting, sculpture, photography, writing, and all others. The understanding and use of these design principles and elements are what makes the difference between success and failure in creating an uplifting, peaceful, and beautiful garden. Although differences exist in the way these principles and elements are described and organized they are:

Volunteer Park, Seattle, WA. A peaceful & romantic garden space.
Here we see the use of  Line in the vertical pillars holding up the roof,
Texture in the gravel pathway, Scale & Proportion in the size of the trees in
 relation to the height of the building and Color in the play of chartreuse
and pink cherry blossoms.

• Texture
• Scale & Proportion             
• Balance
• Rhythm
• Emphasis
• Line 
• Form 
• Color
• Unity
• Variety 

Alright, don't freak out! I promise you don't have to memorize these to be more successful in the garden.  Scott Scarfone in his book Professional Planting Design calls his principles of design the "Language of Design." Over the next several months I plan on writing posts where I will help you begin to speak this language and will show you tips on how to incorporate each one. Understanding even a little bit about these principles will help you incorporate them in your garden and, for some of you perhaps, start making heads turn towards your garden... instead of away. Aren't you excited?

The garden is a three dimensional canvas in which a unique experience is created, either intentionally or unintentionally.   Scarfone teaches that in these garden spaces the mind and eye react to create a highly complex psychological and physical experience.  For me the garden is about so much more than what plant grows in the shade, although that is important to understand. The garden is an emotional, mental, and physical experience, just as Scarfone teaches. To go one step further, I believe that these experiences add so much depth and dimension to our existence to even be crucial to our mental health, happiness, and well being.

No matter how amateur or advanced of a gardener you may be, all may incorporate more fully the principles and elements of design. Stay tuned for the series of posts helping you to speak the Language of Design in your garden work. Begin now to create the sort of landscape experience you would like wherever you might garden. What could be more rewarding?