Easy Guide to landscape design for the home owner, by Lynton Johnson

Easy Guide to landscape design for the home owner, by Lynton Johnson. Briza Publications

Easy Guide to landscape design for the home owner, by Lynton Johnson. Briza Publications

Easy Guide to landscape design is not a step-by-step guide to perfection in design. Lynton V. Johnson simply sets out ideas, guidelines and suggestions that will result in you, the home owner, creating a successful garden to fit your needs and expectations.

Lynton Johnson  

There is a tendency today to open gardens to the public for the purpose of fundraising for one charitable institution or another. The interested visitors often have another motive in mind, namely a little light pilfering, not in the physical sense, but visually. They go to get new and stimulating ideas. Deciding on how a garden is to be designed is perhaps the hardest part of all. Often there are dozens of fragmented ideas to draw from, and yet the intention is that the garden should end up being in harmony with the home, its owners and their needs and likes as well as aspirations for their garden's future development. Not all potential home owners are able to see clearly, let alone create, their dream garden. They need a little extra inspiration. To help solve this quandary I suggest compiling a mood board. A mood board is simply a means of taking the obvious and the intended and compiling a visual collection of these in such a way that they look and feel right together. In the same way as paint charts are collected and combined to select the ideal colour and textured finish combinations for a home, or material samples are collected to ensure the right 'look' for an interior design, so the mood board helps pull garden components and ideas together. Remember that the home is of a specific size and style and fits onto a specific shape and size of property. These are basic visual facts. Everything after this is at the whim and fancy of the home owner. Start by collecting ideas, pictures or photos of gardens or sections of gardens that appeal, and soon a specific tendency or preference will begin to emerge - a rustic country or farm style, or alternatively a garden that is more neat and tidy, formal, bold or lush. Colours, plants and ornaments that you favour will feature in more and more" of the material collected. Certain styles of hard landscape material will appeal more than others and you will begin to relate to the design of some garden structures more than others. Visit homes with gardens that are architecturally similar to your own home; stroll through garden centres and nurseries and make lists of favourite pots, plants, garden featural elements such as statues, water features or garden furniture, and if necessary visit a paving company and tile supplier to see what could be underfoot. Above all, ask questions. All your collected ideas depict more than one style that appeals to you. don't be discouraged or confused, some of them can be put to good use in smaller, more private areas of the garden, even if this happens at a later stage. If the garden has previously been designed and you enjoy some of its aspects, photograph these aspects and add them to the ever-expanding collection of thoughts and ideas. There will come a time when the collection begins to repeat itself. Too much of the material collected is the same? This should be an indication of what you like and what not. [...]

This is an excerpt from the book: Easy Guide to landscape design for the home owner, by Lynton V. Johnson.

Title: Easy Guide to Landscape Design for the Home Owner
Author: Lynton V. Johnson
Publisher: Briza Publications
Pretoria, South Africa 2009
ISBN 9781875093779 / ISBN 978-1-875093-77-9
Softcover, 21 x 24 cm, 128 pages, 300 colour photographs

Johnson, Lynton im Namibiana-Buchangebot

Easy Guide to landscape design for the home owner

Easy Guide to landscape design for the home owner

Landscape design for the home owner is an easy guide to most ‘first time garden’ situations and pitfalls and provides guidelines to alterations and changes in garden styles.

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