What Is The Best Way To Create Ecstatic Gardens with 4 Useful Flower Garden Design Features?
Are you one of the people I know who are creative but just too shy to show their skills? Are you fond of flowers and plants? Are you not afraid to get sweaty and dirty in your garden? Are you the kind of person who loves doing things on his or her own? Then why not start building a flower garden design and make use of it? Why don’t you show your other side to your family and friends? And prove to them that canvassing on nature is one of a kind.
You can express your real self by designing your flower garden designs based on your personality. It is your own garden, so don’t be afraid to do whatever you want. Designing your own garden will need a lot of effort from you, but don’t worry because in the end you will definitely be satisfied with the result. Remember there is no right and wrong when you are designing your own patio garden design, you yourself will be the one to dictate on what you should do, but considering some helpful tips with some flower garden design books will help you make the most of your designs attractive.
Although it is tempting to scale down the garden features to avoid cluttering the space this will result in a muddle of insignificant elements that does the exact opposite. Including a single bold structure like a chunky pergola or a rendered blockwork wall around a seating area creates a sense of enclosure, introduces a touch of drama and holds focus inside the garden. Textured finishes like slate or pebble cladding can be used on courtyard walls to add interest and also stop the boundaries from becoming overbearing.
Some of the skills of professional landscape designers are already built into the garden design software. For example, in the past we have to depend on the professionals to select suitable plants that will thrive in your local climate. Today, the USDA Hardiness Zone Map is encoded into most paid and free landscape design software, so selecting suitable plants for your climate has become a much easier job.
What Are The Most Important Features in A Software Package to create Awesome Flower Garden Design for Your Patio?
Over the years of using both free and paid garden design software for garden design projects for my clients, I noticed that there are 4 “must have” features in the software that can help to save lots of time and avoid garden design mistakes:
1) Large Plant Database with Hardiness Zone Maps
I cannot stress the importance of correct plant selection enough. Fortunately, access to Hardiness Zone Maps is just a few clicks away with the correct software. Experienced gardeners will tell you that it is pointless to plant something that will not survive in your climate.
The 2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which plants are most likely to thrive at a location. The map is based on the average annual minimum winter temperature, divided into 10-degree F zones.
Therefore, to avoid the disappointment of seeing dying plants, it is important to know your hardiness zone before deciding what plants you want in your garden.
2) Ability to Do 3D Garden Designs and Create 2D Drawings
From experience, many people have problems visualizing how the garden will look like by just looking at a 2D drawing. Unfortunately, many professional landscape designers still like to communicate the garden design concept to their clients. For example, by looking at a “bird eye view” plan, there is very hard to imagine how a bird bath looks like beside a raised flower bed. Some clients absolutely love it; however, some clients want the bird bath removed after it was installed. Such costly design errors can have avoided if the client was shown a 3D photo of the future garden.
If you want to go further than simply understanding the basics of landscape design, there are a few places online that will help you to approach your landscaping in the right way. When it comes to finding inspiration to ignite your creative juices, there really is no better place than Pinterest. Simply search for “Landscape Design” to find more boards and pins than you can shake a rake at.
Anyway, 2D drawings are still important. It contains much important information, such as the size of the garden, and the location of every garden element. Therefore, it is crucial for paid and free garden design software to have both 2D and 3D design capabilities.
3) Ability to Import Your Front Yard or Backyard Photos
This type of free garden design software is probably the easiest to use, and it is definitely the most practical for gardeners who has only a small garden to work on.
This type of software allows you to import your front yard photo and add garden features around them. So, it is particularly useful for creating “before and after” comparisons. Some software even can create different lighting effects so that you can see how your future garden looks like in the morning as well as in the evening.
However, if you have a large garden, this type of program is probably not for you. The reason is, if your garden is a large one, in this type of program it is not possible to design in every single detail.
4) Natural Plant Growth Simulation
Once you’ve mastered the basics of gardening and landscape design, it’s time to get into the fun part: designing your garden. Below are a selection of options specifically chosen for this purpose.
With the Hardiness Zone Maps installed into the software, some landscape design software nowadays can also predict how your plants will look like in the next 3 months or 5 years. This is particularly important so that adjustments can be made for space constraints which are not apparent at the first look.
Smart Drawing is a powerful browser-based software app, which claims to be the “smartest way to draw anything”, from flowcharts to floorplans. It’s the software’s ability to draw and design landscapes only in 2D it’s an interesting feature here.
Besides, it is also a great experience to see how your garden will become more and more gorgeous year after year, without the need of time travel!
You should always put in mind that the flower garden design you are creating is yours. Remember to do everything that will make you feel better. Make it as relaxing as you want for you to have a sanctuary whenever you needed to unwind and rest your mind. Your patio garden design will reflect your personality so you should design it carefully.