Garden Styles
Here is a quick overview of different garden styles that you can use. You'll find a style here that works for you. You can make your home unique and stylized to your taste.
These are quick looks at what you can do. Don't be afraid to try new styles or mix n match where it would work.
Productive Garden
Design Elements
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Containers
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Decorative Varieties- Foliage, fruits, flowers
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Wall-trained fruit
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Productive baskets- mixed displays of herbs, edible, and trailing flowers
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Raised beds
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Crop covers
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Edible flowers
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Herb garden
Crops & English-style
Family-Style Garden
Design Elements
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Raised beds
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Hard-wearing lawns
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Consider children ages play spaces
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Wide paths with gentle inclines
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Casual seating dotted around garden in wilder parts
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Built in storage for toys and equipment
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Private corners with a Gazebo or simple shelter
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Wet-weather play with a sheltered area
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Narrow paths through flowers and a boardwalk over bog
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Grow flowers that attract butterflies/bees
Play & Usability
Easy Care Garden
Design Elements
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Colorful evergreens for longer lasting displays
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Drought-proof containers
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Raised beds for no digging and seating area
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Living carpets
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Decorative ground cover and ornamental features
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Hard landscaping made with clean lines and patterns
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Handy storage, wild ways, simple lighting
Evergreen & Ornamental
Formal Garden
Design Elements
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Symmetrical balance achieved at any scale
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Contemporary figurative subjects and abstract works as focal points
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Topiary provides architectural definition and patterns
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Ornaments elaborate decoration reduced
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Paving gives architectural element for pathways and terraces
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Contained, imposed geometry and structure
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Clearly recognizable ground plan or pattern
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Organized around central axis or pathway
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Material and plant palette kept to minimum
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Gravel and paving most frequent
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Add height and frame focal points
Human Dominance over Nature
Contemporary Formal Garden
Design Elements
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Far broader range of designs
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Planting part of architectural element
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Aim for composition as whole, forming, beautiful, and elegant space
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Adapts well too different scales and locations
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Designs may feature symmetry or be asymmetric
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Central axis common
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Materials emphasize precision of manufacturing process
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Range of diff plants limited and often planted in large blocks of masses
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Outdoor furniture classically styled for tone of elegance
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Create unruffled surfaces and bring light into space
Emphasize leisure and outdoor living
Informal Garden
Design Elements
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Planning may require maintenance and skillful association of selecting species
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Wood furniture changes organically over time
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Shelters for seating and link different areas
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Materials provide textures surfaces
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Productive borders seen
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Abundant planting and apparent confusion
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Simple and regular in layout with a central path
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Generally intimate, sometimes even restrictive too movement
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Self-seeding encouraged
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Hedges frequently used to divide yard into series of enclosed spaces
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Hard materials for use are natural stone and brick
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Gravel used for pathways
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Simple patterns can be more free flowing with pathways carving up space
Profusion and sheer romance
Natrual-Style Garden
Design Elements
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Focuses primarily on sustainability
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Incorporating plants and materials that don't diminish resources
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Include recycled and renewable materials
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Flourish with little maintenance
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Adopt organic approach to controlling pests and diseases
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Noninvasive exotic plants attract insects and wildlife
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Green roofs
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Rainwater harvest
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Rustic garden furniture
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Naturalistic ponds and planting
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Large pools/streams
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Hedging/screens
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Views into landscape
Emulate natural world
Small Space Garden
Design Elements
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Things really have to earn keep
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Detail vitally important and quality of finish
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Everything well thought out
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All hard landscaping cohesive and high
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Choose plants with great care
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Dramatic containers
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Sculptural furniture
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Lighting
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Preached trees
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Stylish materials
Vast choice for style
Statement Style Garden
Design Elements
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Breaks design conventions and frees up designers to make own set of rules
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Celebrate new technology and employ human made materials
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Create impact and visual interest
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Lighting used in great effect
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Sculptural qualities that may emphasize color, texture and movement
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Modern materials
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Sculptural plants
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Water cascades/fountains
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Electric floor plan
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Vibrant colors
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Some start w/bare bones of idea and build on that
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Narrow down plant list to about 20 varieties
Influenced primarily by art or other creative industries
