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Designing an Intimate Garden
by C. Colston Burrell
An intimate garden is more than a seat or terrace surrounded by greenery. Intimacy comes when a variety of elements coalesce into a harmonious composition. These elements include well-proportioned spaces, a comfortable sense of enclosure, and captivating plants. Perhaps most important is your relationship with these elements, because no garden, no matter how well designed, will feel intimate if you are not involved in the day-to-day rhythms that take place, whether shifting shadow patterns cast by trees or shrubs throughout the day, or the changing of the seasons—from the unfolding of flowers to the ripening of fruits and the turning of leaves.
Getting Started
Sketching out the most desirable places for sitting areas and gathering spaces—as well as the way to get to them—can help you determine how best to configure the garden and what trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants to choose. [Photo: Karen Bussolini]
The easiest way to start designing an intimate garden is to address your practical needs first. One of the most important considerations is deciding where you want to put sitting areas and gathering spaces, which are the heart and soul of the intimate garden. Consider the possibilities: a breakfast terrace located to catch the warm morning sun, an afternoon reading nook tucked under a leafy canopy. On a patio or deck close to the house, surrounded with fragrant and luminous plants, can be the perfect place for a relaxing evening meal. Sketching out such practical spaces can help you determine the configuration of the planting areas and the types of plants that are most appropriate. So, before you start placing island beds and picking perennials, decide where terraces, benches, and other functional elements will go, how much space they'll take, and how you will reach them.
Begin with a map of your yard, including the walls of the house and any existing permanent features such as walkways and trees. Use trace-paper overlays to draw potential shapes, and explore possible placements. Experiment with round, rectilinear, or curving forms of various sizes until you find a configuration that looks right. Next, using a can of marking paint and a tape measure, spray the lines of the space on the ground. (Don't worry: The grass will not be killed and will soon grow long enough that you can mow off the paint.) Once you've sprayed the space, look at it from all possible vantage points. Put a table and chairs or a bench in it to make sure it's the correct size. It's a lot easier to change the size of a painted space than one that has been built, so do your experimenting now!
Marrying House and Garden
Circular shapes, such as this lawn, can be soothing, as they avoid hard edges and give equal importance to every spot along the perimeter. A small lawn does double duty as a play area and a space for occasional large gatherings. [Photo: Lucy Hardiman]
As the round pool in this small garden focuses attention inward, it creates intimacy on a small scale. To draw attention outward, the wall has been painted a striking color, with a display of art adding more interest. [Photo: Lucy Hardiman]
Rectangular shapes blend well with all architectural styles. They are often a good choice for small gardens as they avoid ambiguity: The space is easy to understand as the eyes move easily along the lines without interruption. [Photo: Jerry Pavia]
Outdoor rooms are essentially extensions of our homes, so they should be related to the style, scale, and design of the house. There are many different ways in which a garden can reflect your home's architecture. A traditional dooryard garden in a four-square design would complement an old colonial farmhouse. A symmetrical house with two identical wings would call for a formal, symmetrical garden design, perhaps with an axial layout. A lush planting of old-fashioned flowers around a well-defined space to give order to the informal exuberance would suit a Victorian cottage. A bungalow garden could have straight lines but very informal, asymmetrical plantings. A ranch house with its door placed off center in the facade could be enhanced by an equally asymmetrical garden layout, perhaps with the terrace aligned with the long portion of the facade and low plantings framing the short side.
Whatever style you choose, stick with it. If you have a large garden and you want to change styles to add interest, you can divide it into several smaller, more intimate rooms, but be sure to design the transitions carefully to avoid a piecemeal look.
Shape
To create a sense of intimacy, design terraces, planting beds, or lawn areas as rectangular, circular, or curvilinear spaces, but avoid squiggly curves. Rectangular forms blend well with all architectural styles. They are often the best choice for small spaces because they lack ambiguity: The space is easy to understand as the eye moves along the borders without interruption. What's more, the crisp, uninterrupted lines can make a space seem larger. Rectangular spaces also reflect the shape of most indoor rooms, which adds to the feelings of familiarity and comfort.
Circular spaces, which create an inward focus, can also be intimate. A round garden space is very effective at the end of a visual axis such as a straight path or allée, or placed along a trail where it can be encountered spontaneously while traveling through the garden. Jens Jensen, who pioneered the Prairie style in garden design, believed that a circle gives "order to the randomness of nature." He also thought of the circle as a democratic form that placed everyone equidistant from the center. Jensen used circular "council rings" in all his gardens to achieve a great sense of intimacy.
Sinuous, sweeping curves are especially popular today—they denote a comfortable informality that appeals to many contemporary gardeners. It's worth noting, though, that curves usually work best in large spaces. A space with many curves loses its integrity because there is no well-defined edge. Picture a living room with curving walls of different shapes and different lengths, and you can imagine how curving lines might detract from a sense of comfort in an outdoor room.
Scale and Proportion
Proper scale and proportion, which govern the overall size and shape of an outdoor room, have a major impact on the intimacy of a garden. Your overriding concern should be to create an outdoor room that is in balance with the scale or mass of the house, existing trees, and other elements with which it is connected.
Scale is the relative size of a space or element in relation to the context in which it is placed. Think of a vase on a table and how you can easily see if it is too large or too small for the table. The same relationship exists outdoors. In a small garden, a space that is too large consumes the property and leaves no room for plantings or other forms of enclosure; and without enclosure, there is no feeling of intimacy. Conversely, in a sea of lawn, a small bench becomes lost and looks as awkward and uninviting as a tiny area rug in a large living room—the scale is all wrong.
Finding just the right scale and proportion is vital for creating a sense of intimacy in a garden. This outdoor room is in balance with the building, trees, and other elements with which it is connected. [Photo: Jerry Pavia]
Proportion is the ratio of one dimension to another, such as width to length. The ancient Greeks and Romans developed a highly refined sense of proportion, evident in both the architecture and gardens of the ancient world. They used the rule of proportion known as the Golden Mean, which is represented by the ratio 1 to 1.618. You can easily use classical proportions when laying out your garden: simply multiply the short dimension of the proposed space by 1.618 to determine what the longer dimension should be. In other words, a terrace that is 13 feet wide should be approximately 21 feet long. A quick way to think of this proportion is to use the general rule of thirds. A space should be two thirds longer than it is wide, for example. For a quick look at a shape based on the Golden Mean, get out your credit card, and there it is.
You can manipulate the feeling of intimacy in a garden with the placement of objects. Place a focal point like a bench one third of the way from the viewing point for an intimate feel. For a more expansive impression, accentuate the perspective by placing the bench two thirds of the way into the space from the viewing point. For example, place your bench in a grove of trees, perhaps with shrubs for added enclosure, to give it some context. The bench becomes a destination, and the experience of sitting on the bench is more sensual amid the greenery.
Enclosing Spaces
Enclosure is the key to creating intimacy in any garden, no matter the scale. Enclosed does not necessarily mean walled off, however. Different circumstances require different degrees of enclosure. Vary the height and density of the wall or screen according to your needs. The side of your house, stone walls or fences, hedges, pergolas, or even strategically placed potted plants can all be used to create a sense of enclosure.
As extensions of our homes, gardens should be related to the style and scale of the house. In this Prairie-style planting, the garden also takes its cue from the surrounding landscape, which is rather flat with occasional vertical relief. [Photo: C. Colston Burrell]
The Walls of Your House
An outdoor room adjacent to your house in effect already has one solid wall. It is easiest to create an outdoor room that is in scale with a single-story house. If you have a taller one, you may need to take some steps so the house appears more in scale with an intimate garden room. Try covering the wall with a trellis to create a green screen. To break up a blank expanse, you can display a piece of art or paint a mural. Place a mirror on the wall to make a tiny patio or deck feel larger. If the wall is too overpowering for the space, consider planting a tree or two to separate the space from the house. The trees will form a smaller green "wall" that also provides an intimate ceiling of leafy branches over your outdoor room.
Garden Walls, Fences, and Trellises
Most homeowners think of garden walls and fences, including trellises, when they want to mark boundaries or block unattractive views. These architectural elements can also be used to create a sense of intimacy in an outdoor room. An added benefit is that a wall or fence can double the gardening space in a small area, because it offers the opportunity of gardening vertically with beautiful flowering vines and hanging containers.
Where you want to define space without blocking views, low garden walls are very effective. By surrounding an open space with a low wall that's comfortable for sitting, you define the borders of the space, make it more intimate, and have a pleasant place to sit as well. On sloping ground, a wall can also be used to create a dramatic grade change, which not only offers enclosure but also may be less work in the long run than maintaining a hillside planting.
Where space allows, hedges are wonderful enclosures for intimate spaces. An informal border of mixed flowering shrubs or a more formal shaped hedge, as shown here, gently embraces the garden as it mellows over time. [Photo: Jerry Pavia]
Hedges
Hedges can fulfill the same functions as walls and fences; which to choose is a matter of context and taste. If space is at a premium, use a fence or planted trellis. Where space is more ample, use a hedge. Clipped boxwood hedges are the traditional choice for formal gardens, while untrimmed flowering shrubs create an informal wall. Openings in hedges that allow for views without providing physical access are another nice touch, creating a feeling of enclosure that's not too forbidding and invites peeking. Like a window in a wall, they allow you to see in or out. Hedges are also perfect backdrops for flower borders filled to overflowing with annuals and perennials.
Arbors and Pergolas
Arbors and pergolas can ease the transition from indoors to outdoors and extend a sense of privacy. They are especially effective at screening views from above and can be used instead of trees for this purpose. They create a porous ceiling, but you can make it more solid by covering it with vines or by combining it with trees. Try growing an open-crowned tree like sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) up through the roof of a pergola for dramatic impact and maximum contrast between built and planted elements.
Green Architecture
Another way to achieve intimacy in a garden setting is look to nature as a model, re-creating the vertical layers found in natural plant communities. A forest, for example, has a canopy formed by the tallest trees, an understory comprised of smaller trees, a shrub layer, and a ground layer of ferns, wildflowers, and mosses. The higher branches of trees can form the ceiling of an outdoor room. A ceiling provides shelter and visually screens the infinite realm of the sky. It is certainly possible, and sometimes desirable, to create intimacy outdoors with no ceiling, but often the ceiling really defines the enclosure and sets the mood. Think of the way you feel in a concert hall versus the way you feel in your living room. The more intimate and comfortable feel of a living room is due to its more human scale. In the same way, small to midsize trees can be used to manipulate the scale of a space. Intimate spaces employ understory trees to create a low canopy that shelters and encloses.
Intimacy can be achieved by re-creating layers found in natural plant communities. Taller trees screen the infinite space of the sky; smaller understory trees create a ceiling on a human scale; shrubs form appealing enclosing walls; and herbaceous plants provide visual interest at ground level. [Photo: Alan & Linda Detrick]
Think of shrubs as the walls in outdoor rooms, reaching from 3 to 15 feet tall. Like hedges and fences, shrubs can screen unattractive views, divide the garden into rooms, create privacy, and provide a backdrop for a flower garden. Visually, they create spaces on a human scale.
Trees and shrubs, the ceiling and walls of an outdoor room, are key to creating enclosure and intimacy. Visually, shrubs give spaces a human scale, which makes them ideal for dividing the garden into several smaller areas. [Photo: Karen Bussolini]
Shrubs are essential garden elements for a variety of reasons: the breaking buds of deciduous shrubs often offer the first sign of spring in the late-winter garden; as the first flowers unfurl, life renews itself. Foliage soon follows, providing a myriad of textures to carry the garden through the dog days of summer. In the fall, deciduous shrubs herald the passing of the growing season with a blaze of yellows, reds, and oranges. Their bare branches stand as testimonial to their enduring nature as snow starts to collect along them. Evergreen shrubs add special interest to the garden during the dead of winter. Their foliage provides color; snow gathers on coniferous bows; and curled rhododendron leaves tell us when the mercury has dipped below freezing. These day-to-day changes in the garden's green architecture reinforce the intimate relationship between you and your garden.
Trees and shrubs, the ceiling and walls of an outdoor room, are most important in creating enclosure and intimacy, but the floor of the garden is where avid gardeners often have the most fun. Groundcovers, perennials, annuals, bulbs, and mosses make up the garden's ground layer, or carpet. This can be the most dynamic part of the garden but also the most labor-intensive. Perennial borders, for example need a lot of attention. A simple groundcover planting, perhaps with bulbs for spring interest, provides a lush look and is a lower-maintenance alternative that may be better suited to your lifestyle.
Defining Planting Areas
Look for interesting shapes, textures, colors, and flowers when picking perennials for your garden. Here the bluish tint of Mediterranean spurge sets off the flowers of crape myrtle. [Photo: Neil Soderstrom]
Plants with great architecture such as this weathered Harry Lauder's walking stick are the cornerstones of a compelling design. It's also whimsical, and mood is as important as structure. [Photo: C. Colston Burrell]
Once you have sketched out comfortable spaces, you can turn your attention to the particulars of the planting areas. This is a good time to go back inside and take a look at your planned garden from a window to consider views from the house. Do you want to see directly into the space, or will a veil of trees make it more enticing? Perhaps you want to be totally shielded from the house, so that coming upon the garden space on a stroll will create a sense of surprise. Open-crowned trees such as serviceberries (Amelanchier) and Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) are diaphanous, while evergreens like pines (Pinus), and trees with dense crowns like redbuds (Cercis) will create a screen. Most shrubs will effectively block your view by creating green walls. Keep in mind that larger, wider plants require deeper beds, and upright or conical selections, such as yews (Taxus) and boxwoods (Buxus), can fit into narrow spaces.
Make sure you have access to all areas of the garden from the edges or from internal paths: The average person can reach about two and a half feet into a planting bed, which means that beds accessible from two sides can be five to six feet deep without a central path; a border that's accessible from one side can be three feet deep, any wider and it will need a rear or central path.
Choosing Plants with Presence
Once you've blocked out the most important practical spaces and planting areas in the garden, it's time to choose just the right shrubs and trees. Plants with great architecture—interesting and varied foliage shapes and textures, combined with good branching structure—are the cornerstones of a compelling design and should be top priorities. Beautiful inflorescences are a wonderful bonus, but as flowers are fleeting, it's the strong architectural plants that give structure to the garden and carry it through the seasons.
When choosing plants for your intimate garden, consider the sizes and forms of the trees and shrubs. In small gardens, proper plant choice is critical, and every plant must be carefully chosen to accomplish the dual goals of beauty and utility. Specimen plants and focal points should be dramatic, with exceptional branching or strong vertical form, so select highly architectural plants with good bones, or structure.
The plants in an intimate garden not only create a sense of structure and enclosure but also are critical in creating the proper mood. Choose plants that change with the seasons with flowers, fruits, or colorful autumn foliage. The more attractions a plant offers, the more involved you will be with that plant, leading to a more intimate relationship with your garden. Will the fragrance of an evening-flowering plant entice you outdoors at day's end? Will the sinuous silhouette of a shrub lead you outside on a crisp winter afternoon? Intimacy demands practicality as well. Consider evergreen plants for screening unattractive views or giving privacy year-round. Extend your seasonal enjoyment of the garden by contrasting deciduous plants that have brilliant fall color with evergreens such as pines (Pinus) and cedars (Cedrus and Juniperus) for dramatic effect. Plant colorful flowers that bloom during the season in which you will appreciate them most. Similarly, if you use a space mostly in the evening, consider planting white or pale yellow flowers, especially fragrant ones.
Playing With Light
The interplay between light and plants is one of the most enchanting aspects of a garden. The quality of sunlight changes throughout the day, and so does the way it mingles with leaves and stems. Position architectural plants where they can interact with the sun. Backlighting the twisted stems of Harry Lauder's walking stick (Corylus avellana 'Contorta'), for example, is an enchanting way to reveal its intriguing structure. A fine-textured plant, a feathery willow (Salix), for example, often disappears into the garden fabric in the flat light of midday, but with backlighting it really stands out.
The interplay between light and plants is one of the most enchanting and elusive aspects of a garden. As the angle and intensity of sunlight changes throughout the day, the way it mingles with leaves and stems is transformed, creating subtle or dramatic variations in mood. [Photo: Karen Bussolini]
Luminescent foliage surfaces should not be overlooked. Think of foliage in terms of paint finishes that you might use in your home. The reflective qualities of plant leaves are similar to high gloss, semigloss, and matte-finish paints: The smooth, shiny leaves of camellias are high gloss; the hairy leaves of witch alder (Fothergilla) have matte finishes. Filtered light reflecting off a glossy groundcover seems to sparkle as the rays of light filter through the trees. Yellow or white variegated foliage brightens up a shady spot and turns it into a focal point, whereas a solid green plant might be lost in the gloom. The play of light and shade is, of course, ephemeral and unpredictable. Perhaps that is what makes it so compelling.
Emphasizing Fragrance
Place fragrant plants, such as sweet pepperbush 'Pink Spires', where you are likely to spend the most time, and plant those that yield their scent only at close hand in a spot where they are most likely to be appreciated. [Photo: Karen Bussolini]
Fragrance is perhaps the most alluring aspect of the garden, so it is a shame that so few plants other than roses are chosen for their scented leaves or flowers. Humid summer air carries fragrance throughout the garden and into the house. Nighttime is often the most fragrant time in the garden, and scent wafting through an open window can draw you outside to enjoy your outdoor room in the evening. Some plants perfume the air; others reveal their scent only up close.
Place all fragrant plants where you are likely to spend the most time, and locate those that yield their scent only at close hand in a spot where they are most likely to be appreciated. Position a pot of scented perennials and annuals near a seating area or table. Sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) and perennials such as garden phlox and 'Casa Blanca' lilies (Lilium 'Casa Blanca') are good candidates for the beds surrounding a dining table.
C. Colston Burrell is a garden designer, photographer, naturalist, and award-winning author. A certified chlorophyll addict, Cole is an avid and lifelong plantsman, gardener, and birdwatcher. He gardens on ten acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Charlottesville, Virginia, and is principal of Native Landscape Design and Restoration, which specializes in blending nature and culture through artistic design. Cole has published several books on gardening and writes regularly for such publications as Fine Gardening, Horticulture, Landscape Architecture, and American Gardener. He has edited or contributed to 13 BBG handbooks, including most recently Spring-Blooming Bulbs (2002), The Sunny Border (2002), and Summer-Blooming Bulbs (2001).