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Part 1: Garden design techniques

10. Composition

The technique of composition is to make the garden appear to be all one, single, unified design rather than a series of separate features which are unrelated to each other.

This would not be a good composition; the shapes and layout do not relate to each other:

Rough sketch using circle and squares to outline areas of proposed design.

These would be better examples of compositions using the same shapes:

Rough sketch moving circle and squares about to outline areas of proposed design. Rough sketch moving circle and squares, adding larger square, to outline areas of proposed design. Rough sketch using circles to outline areas planting and water in proposed design.

Repeating shapes and overlapping them is a simple way to unify a composition.

When shapes and features in a design overlap it is called interlock.

Another technique is to repeat materials, so instead of having a wooden deck, stone path, brick wall and rendered house you use the same material in several places in the garden which ties the design together like in this example:

Sunken patio with wooden decking and curved steps leading down from raised area.

Pixabay / Licence

The decking and use of wood is on both sides of the garden, tying the design together.

Maintaining a similar planting style throughout a design also improves the composition, this can be done by sticking to a texture, such as large leaved jungle planting or spikey architectural planting:

Bright red, upright tropical flowers among long green leaves.

Pixabay / Licence

Upright white-yellow clumps of flowers on top of tall, thick stems among spiky cactus plants.

Pixabay / Licence

Or sticking to a colour palette such as cool, or hot colours:

Purple flowers and other shrubs bordering a path running alongside tall leylandii hedging.

Mussklprozz via Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 3.0

Vivid mixture of green, yellow and orange shrubs and flowers growing against a garden wall which has ivy growing over the top.

Peter Barr via Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 2.0

Activity

Use a piece of blank paper, anything without lines or squares on it.

Draw a square on it, any size and in any position.

Draw more squares, some the same size, some different sizes. Some on their own, some overlapping e.g.

Sketch using overlapping squares to map out design.

Choose a section from your drawing that you like and copy it (or trace it) onto another piece of paper – it doesn’t have to be perfect, a sketch is fine.

Example:

I like this section of my sketch:

Sketch using overlapping squares to map out design with some sections highlighted in red.

So I would copy it out like this:

Highlighted section of previous sketch has been copied into a new sketch.

Feel free to move some of the squares if something about them bothers you.

Example:

I have lined up my two small squares with the edges of my big one and moved one over into the empty space and enlarged it a bit:

The same sketch with a couple of squares moved.

Now decide what these shapes could be if this were a garden.

Example:
Colours and text notes added to complete the sketched garden design.

This is very basic, but it is a great way to learn about combining shapes.

Repeat this process with circles.

Repeat this process with any other shapes you like, for example, ovals, rectangles, triangles.

Repeat this process with a mix of shapes, for example, squares and circles, or ovals and rectangles.

Activity
  1. Find an example of a garden on the internet which uses materials to tie the composition together e.g. repeated use of wood, stone or white rendered walls. Use Google Image or Pinterest searches to help you.
  2. Find an example of a garden which uses shapes to tie the composition together. Use search terms such as ‘garden circles’ or ‘garden squares’.
  3. Find an example of a garden which uses planting to tie the composition together. Use search terms such as ‘blue garden’, ‘red garden’ or ‘cool colours garden’.