Designing in specific styles
How do I design a mediterranean garden?
The short answer
Use warm gravel or terracotta tile as the base (never a manicured lawn), plant olive trees as anchors with lavender, rosemary, and santolina in loose drifts at their feet, and add a pergola over the seating area with grape or wisteria growing across it. White stucco walls and terracotta pots in clusters of three finish the look.
Mediterranean gardens are built for sun and drought. The defining quality is whitewashed surfaces bouncing light, terracotta pots holding drought-tolerant plants, and pergolas wrapped in vines providing shade. The look is relaxed but unmistakably structured.
The ground plane is gravel or terracotta tile, never lawn, both for the look and because lawn is incompatible with the dry climate the style is built for. Olive trees act as structural anchors, ideally one large or three smaller specimens. At their feet, plant lavender, rosemary, santolina, and bearded iris in loose drifts that ignore strict rows.
The pergola is the social heart of the design. Cover the seating area with a wooden or steel pergola and grow grape vine, wisteria, or jasmine across the top for shade. Underneath, place a single long table with mismatched chairs and a string of festoon lights.
Finishing touches are what make the style read: white stucco or lime-washed walls, terracotta pots in clusters of three (always odd numbers), a single citrus tree in a large pot near the door, and wrought-iron lanterns hung from the pergola. Avoid anything that looks brand new, sun-bleached wood and weathered terracotta is the point.
Related questions
How do I design a japanese garden?
Begin with the ground plane, gravel, moss, or stepping stones, never lawn. Place stones in odd-numbered groupings and bury them partly so they look settled. Add one water element (a stone basin, a shallow stream), one specimen tree (Japanese maple or pine), a lantern, and a low bamboo screen. Empty space carries as much weight as the elements in it.
How do I design a modern garden?
Start with a flat, geometric hardscape (large pavers in a grid, single material edge-to-edge), limit your plant palette to three or four species repeated in mass, and add one architectural focal point, a feature tree, a steel planter, or a black water feature. Use lighting to wash walls and uplight specimen plants rather than spotlight everything.
How do I design a cottage garden?
Forget straight lines. Wind a brick or stepping-stone path through deep borders packed with foxgloves, delphiniums, hollyhocks, roses, and lavender. Layer heights aggressively, tall at the back, mid-height in front, low at the edge. Add one structural element (an arbour, a bench, an obelisk wrapped in clematis) to stop it descending into chaos.
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