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    Southern Living Essential Garden Guide
    Southern Living Essential Garden Guide
    Southern Living Essential Garden Guide
    Ebook311 pages1 hour

    Southern Living Essential Garden Guide

    By Meredith Corporation

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    About this ebook

    Grow the prettiest flowers, tastiest vegetables, and the lushest landscape with expert tips and gorgeous inspiration that Southern Living readers know they can trust. This handy guide offers advice for gardeners of all skill levels to ensure success, and dozens of exciting ideas to turn garden dreams into reality. Garden and landscape tips for the South in every season of the year make this a reference you'll be glad to have on hand.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMeredith Corporation
    Release dateFeb 21, 2020
    ISBN9781547850938
    Southern Living Essential Garden Guide

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      Book preview

      Southern Living Essential Garden Guide - Meredith Corporation

      does.

      Chapter 1

      DESIGN BASICS

      All great gardens begin with a dream. Here’s how to combine plants and structures to create the harmonious outdoor escape you have always wanted.

      A formal courtyard nods to classic design, befitting Brenda and Bruce Nichols’ Fredericksburg, Texas, Victorian home. Antique bricks and ironwork enhance this outdoor space’s old-world, Hill Country patina.

      Good Bones Make Great Gardens

      It doesn’t matter whether you have a big yard or a small one, a little money or a bundle, or if you’re working on your first garden or your twelfth. As the following examples demonstrate, focusing on a few key elements can make the difference between a garden you love and one you won’t show the neighbors.

      1 Build Structures, First, Then Add Plants

      Elements such as arbors, pergolas, walls, paths, edgings, and seating spaces help determine where you can plant. They are the garden’s bones. Carole McWilliams framed her Atlanta garden with a white picket fence and arbors that complement her cottage-style plantings.

      2 Go Formal

      This sophisticated style focuses on geometric shapes, symmetry, and neatly defined spaces. Allen and Brooke Oser worked with landscape designer Todd Dorlon to balance their layered borders, above, with manicured boxwoods and a diamond-pattern bluestone walk befitting their traditional Birmingham home.

      3 ... Or Go More Relaxed

      Informal and cottage-style looks rely on curves. Lay appealing paths and beds with pockets, bends, and swells. These strike the eye as looser and more carefree. Barbara Webb’s undulating grass paths, lead visitors on a journey through her colorful Richmond, Virginia, front yard.

      4 Add a Focal Point

      REPEAT KEY FEATURES SUCH AS AGED BRICK OR BOXWOODS FOR BALANCE.

      Usually placed in the garden’s center or at the end of a walk, path, or vista, a focal point draws the eye and gives it a place to rest. Focus a space with benches, birdbaths, containers, boulders, or a sculpture. Marianna Barber centered a gazebo at the end of a brick path in her Zachary, Louisiana, cut-flower garden.

      5 Define Spaces

      Think about your garden in terms of separate areas. Do you need a lawn for kids or pets to play? Do you entertain and want room to gather? Do you like to have a place to relax? Define each of these areas with some type of structure. Gail Norwood created a small brick patio off her Chapel Hill, North Carolina, deck, above, so she can host both small and large gatherings. Brick steps lead up from the patio to the lawn and a fountain. A white picket fence defines the yard’s boundary.

      6 Separate Spaces

      Once you define the spaces you want, think about how you need each one to function and how to visually separate areas into smaller rooms using hardscaping and structures. Gravel paths define Mark Ragland and Scott Norton’s Prince George, Virginia, tea garden with raised beds. A potting shed anchors the garden and gives them a nearby place to stash tools and supplies to tend their plants.

      DESIGN CHECKLIST

      As you plan your garden, answer some basic questions:

      ACCENTS LIKE BOTTLE TREES ENHANCE A GARDEN’S PERSONALITY.

      Denny and Georgina Werner designed their North Carolina garden to attract birds, butterflies, bees, and other pollinators. They brought in fun garden accents and built a covered patio so they would have a retreat to take in all the wildlife.

      WHAT ARE YOUR GROWING CONDITIONS? How much sun and shade fall on various parts of your yard? What’s your soil like? How wet or dry is your climate? What are the record low and high temps? The answers will help you pick the best plants and structures for your site.

      WHAT LOOK DO YOU WANT? Formal, country, English cottage, Colonial?

      WHAT’S YOUR REGION’S STYLE? What sort of plants and hardscaping materials look at home in your area? Lush, tropical plants? Drought-tolerant natives? Mountain wildflowers? Weathered wood? Brick? Bluestone? Do you want to include these regional elements in your design?

      WHERE DO YOU VIEW YOUR GARDEN? From the patio? From a particular window? From a path leading from the garage? Think about what you want to see from your view.

      WHAT ANIMALS WOULD YOU LIKE TO ATTRACT OR DETER? Birds and butterflies are welcome guests, whereas deer and rabbits are usually not. How do you want to welcome or deter them?

      A meaningful garden has a sense of place, speaks to your loves, and is a true retreat.

      7 Frame Views

      If you have a view or feature you want to draw attention to, think about how to accentuate it. Arbors and open sections of walls or fences help direct the eye.

      Mike and Lee Dunn laid out a brick path in their Atlanta side yard that leads through a gate built into a pergola. Together these structures frame both the entrance to the kitchen garden and the change in elevation behind their home.

      8 Be Consistent

      Whatever style you go with, repeat the materials and colors to create a seamless look. To keep it interesting, change up the scale of the materials, using similar items in various sizes and heights. Repetition feels harmonious and links different areas of the garden. To tie the entry to his Leighton, Alabama, Italianate home Fennel Mauldin echoed the trim color on the front gate and fence panels.

      9 Create Movement

      Bring in elements such as wind chimes, kinetic garden art, or water features to capture the outdoors’ dynamic changes and sounds. By tucking in a fountain or laying out a dry-creek bed that can turn into a stream, you can revel in water’s rippling effects. In Austin, Pam Penick converted a stock tank into a pond to attract birds and butterflies to her oasis.

      10 Make a Destination

      A patio tucked in under the trees, an inviting bench at the end of a walk, or even a birdbath placed by a path creates a place for people to go out to and explore. Carve out a destination like garden designer Daniel Keeley did in his Fayetteville, Arkansas, backyard. Keeley converted architectural salvage into a patio table set off by a mix of chairs.

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