Side Yard Garden Design Ideas for Spring
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Exterior Worlds Landscaping & Design
A local Houston art collector hired us to create a low maintenance, sophisticated, contemporary landscape design. She wanted her property to compliment her eclectic taste in architecture, outdoor sculpture, and modern art. Her house was built with a minimalist approach to decoration, emphasizing right angles and windows instead of architectural keynotes. The west wing of the house was only one story, while the east wing was two-story. The windows in both wings were larger than usual, so that visitors could see her art collection from the home’s exterior. Near one of the large rear windows, there was an abstract metal sculpture designed in the form of a spiral.
When she initially contacted us, the surrounding property had only a few trees and indigenous grass as vegetation. This was actually a good beginning point with us, because it allowed us to develop a contemporary landscape design that featured a very linear, crisp look supportive of the home and its contents. We began by planting a garden around the large contemporary sculpture near the window. Landscape designers planted horsetail reed under windows, along the sides of the home, and around the corners. This vegetation is very resilient and hardy, and requires little trimming, weeding, or mulching. This helped unite the diverse elements of sculpture, contemporary architecture, and landscape design into a more fluid harmony that preserved the proportions of each unique element, but eliminated any tendency for the elements to clash with one another.
We then added two stonework designs to the landscape surrounding the contemporary art collection and home. The first was a linear walkway we build from concrete pads purchased through a retail vendor as a cost-saving benefit to our client. We created this walkway to follow the perimeter of the home so that visitors could walk around the entire property and admire the outdoor sculptures and the collections of modern art visible through the windows. This was especially enjoyable at night, when the entire home was brightly lit from within.
To add a touch of tranquility and quite repose to the stark right angles of the home and surrounding contemporary landscape, we designed a special seating area toward the northwest corner of the property. We wanted to create a sense of contemplation in this area, so we departed from the linear and angular designs of the surrounding landscape and established a theme of circular geometry. We laid down gravel as ground cover, then placed large, circular pads arranged like giant stepping stones that led up to a stone patio filled with chairs. The shape of the granite pads and the contours of the graveled area further complimented the spirals and turns in the outdoor metal sculpture, and balanced the entire contemporary landscape design with proportional geometric forms of lines, angles, and curves.
This particular contemporary landscape design also has a sense of movement attached to it. All stonework leads to a destination of some sort. The linear pathway provides a guided tour around the home, garden, and modern art collection. The granite pathway stones create movement toward separate space where the entire experience of art, vegetation, and architecture can be viewed and experienced as a unity.
Contemporary landscaping designs like create form out of feeling by using basic geometric forms and variations of forms. Sometimes very stark forms are used to create a sense of absolutism or contrast. At other times, forms are blended, or even distorted to suggest a sense of complex emotion, or a sense of multi-dimensional reality. The exact nature of the design is always highly subjective, and developed on a case-by-case basis with the client.
Jon Eric Christner ARCHITECT INC.
Garden Entry -
General Contractor: Forte Estate Homes
photo by Aidin Foster
California Waterscapes
Welcome to our design space at the Pasadena Showcase House of Design. This “oasis” features a beautiful collection of koi fish, gracefully swimming in a 5’x8’ pond.
Our modern, clean-cut paver patio is customized to intertwine with large seating boulders. By bringing the pathway right to the edge of the pond, we showcase our favorite cantilever effect. Softening the design, California-friendly plants and a stunning live plant wall surrounds the area, while lights can be seen hanging from the trees, extending the ambiance into the evening hours.
Urban Oasis Landscape Design
Large picture windows looked out onto the empty narrow side yard. Our solution was to create a dramatic 3D modular installation with CorTen Planters filled with low maintenance cacti.
Paul Maue Associates Landscape Architects
The crused shell driveway is traditional surface that is bordered by a bluestone walk that connects to both the front and back house entries. The relocated tool shed has an outdoor shower on the backside for cleaning up after coming back from the beach. Paul Maue
Schmechtig Landscapes
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A side yard patio border and plant bed ideas in Barrington Hills, Illinois by Schmechtig Landscapes featuring boxwood plant bed border and lilac trees.
Gorski Landscaping
Low mainteance with a touch of pink ton help illuminate Japanese lace leaf maple tree
Exterior Designs, Inc. by Beverly Katz
A flagstone walkway, custom arbor and iron-gate complete this New Orleans courtyard perfectly.
SullyScapes, LLC
Eastern redbud, cersis canadensis, native to the many areas east of the Mississippi. This one is the traditional green leaved redbud.
Photo by: Karen Sullivan
Eden Garden Design
Scented star jasmine vines twine through the perforations of this custom steel screen that provides privacy to the outdoor dining area. Pocket planting on the stair treads includes a variegated Silver Dragon lilyturf and the bromeliad Queen's Tears (Billbergia nutans).
Photographer: Greg Thomas, http://optphotography.com/
Side Yard Garden Design Ideas for Spring
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