Design principles for a planting plan

It is important to emphasise different features or areas of your garden to facilitate easy movement of traffic through the area. A gateway or door should be highlighted by a particular planting and perhaps by garden lighting at night.

Every garden needs some focal points to catch the eye and make the garden an exciting and enjoyable place to relax. Careful planning and preparation are the key to creating successful focal points.

What is a focal point? It is a feature designed and positioned to attract attention. A pool, a seat, a statue, a fernery, a tree trunk or a colourful plant, each of these can be considered a focal point, depending on how it is used in the design. Its type and placement are very important. Focal points are often found around the corners of curves in paths or at the end of a path or large section of plantings. Placed correctly, they can add interest and depth to an otherwise monotonous section of garden. On the other hand, some gardens are very discordant and not relaxing because there are too many focal points competing for attention.

Landscapers through the ages have used all kinds of garden embellishments as focal points. Traditional Japanese gardens put great emphasis on the placement of boulders. Large Italian gardens illustrate the use of a number of statues as focal points. French palace gardens have formal pools with fountains as main features. A clump of established trees with beautiful textured or coloured trunks may be the feature emphasised as the focal point in a native Australian garden.

Imagine that you are seeing your garden for the first time. What focuses your attention? If it is the clothes line or the garbage bins, you need to rethink your design.

An ornamental pool is one of the most popular focal points used in garden design. Pools with their reflections of light and colour draw your attention to a particular spot. When designed with a small fountain or flowing water, they attract attention not only visually but also through their refreshing, relaxing splashing sounds.

Pools can be formal or informal to suit the style of garden. Formal pools are usually square or rectangular and surrounded by regular shaped areas of paving. They are often placed in the centre of an area and provide suitable focus for a quiet courtyard, a fernery or a garden retreat. Informal pools are usually found in the lowest spot in a garden, where they might have occurred naturally. A small protected garden pool or water feature with recirculating water actually consumes very little water but may give an appearance of an abundance in an otherwise relatively dry garden.

Sculpture can be used effectively as a focal point. In native gardens, interestingly shaped logs and boulders, metal sculptures or pottery that blends in with the plants’ style and colour can be used. In a formal garden, a collection of statues or busts on pedestals may be placed informally among the plants along a path or as a feature at its end. A simple piece of sculpture may be the focal point for a courtyard garden.

The proportions of the area, the plants and their design should match the size and form of the sculpture. A formal shape will suit a formal garden, but will usually look completely out of place among the spreading foliage of fine-leaved native plants.

A garden seat or setting can be a focal point and set the mood for your garden. The popular wrought iron settings add a touch of formality to a garden. In a large garden, several seats along a path may create focal points and places to sit and muse, or a seat can be placed at the end of a path or in a pergola or arbor. A bird bath or bird table can be placed to attract the birds and insects so that you make your feature of living creatures!

Many smaller features can help to emphasise a main focal point. The two most common methods of using plants stress their shape or colour. On either side of a doorway or gate, tall upright plants are often used, providing a contrast to the more common rounded, bushy plants. Alternatively, a weeping tree may frame a doorway or an arch covered in roses define the entrance to a path.

A mass of bright colour, especially warm reds or yellows, attracts they eye. Annuals massed together can be replaced at the end of a season, but flowering shrubs and trees may need another plant close by to create the focal point for the rest of the year.

A mass of roses, a wall of trailers, a weeping cherry, a weeping elm or pittosporum can all be focal points.

A group of well-chosen attractive foliage plants of various complementary colours will take quite a while to plan and design but in the long run give you a long-lasting year-round display for your garden. The glimpse of a distant view that is well framed can be a garden focus.