Garden Design Quick Tip - Design for Structure
I thought I’d take a slightly different angle than my usual garden design topic and actually look at the garden design process itself in terms of structure since above all else having your garden designed adds structure to your project.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) the word structure has many meanings and all of them are valid in relation to garden design.
Firstly, structure is ‘the arrangement of and relations between the parts or elements of something complex’. Make no mistake, your garden design is a complex undertaking requiring skills across a number of disciplines – even the ‘simplest’ looking garden design requires the designer to wear many hats ranging from land surveyer to plantsman; creative to structural engineer; sociologist to psychologist (yes, really!); soil scientist to environmentalist, visionary to pragmatist, and more; and sure, we can all have a go ourselves but we each have to weigh up the cost of hiring a professional garden designer against whether or not our own skills can produce results as well, or as efficiently, or as knowledgably, or as thoroughly, or as creatively, etc. In the vast majority of cases the investment is well rewarded.