Selecting a theme will make it easier to design your home’s landscape, plants and elements and will make your landscape unified. Your planning should start with creating goals for yourself. Why are you landscaping? Privacy? Entertaining? Recreation? To modify the environment – too hot, too windy? Reduce water usage? Veggie garden? Attract wildlife? There are many choices, so sit down with your family and list everything that you want. Once completed, you can decide the theme that’s right for you.
Mediterranean: Santa Clarita is well suited to this theme; both the climate and abundant plant selection lend itself to pulling off a great yard. The Mediterranean style includes stonework, fragrant shrubs, vines and perennials. Terra-cotta containers with beautiful plantings should be included as well as water features and garden décor. Plants for this theme are olive, citrus, lavender, sages, rosemary, and jasmine.
Asian: Asian gardens rely more on design, the plants become secondary. Asian yards are meditative and allow relaxation and reflection, sand and water elements are used to take the contemplative nature up a notch. A garden with rock elements and clean lines is key and, in our valley, having some shade really helps! The use of accents is essential to this theme, a boulder placed just so, a quiet pool of water, bonsai plants, all adding to the ambiance.
Cottage: English Cottage is one that can satisfy many goals from your list, since it relies less on design and more on plant selection. Be clear about your goals and choose your plants accordingly. A cottage garden can create a wildlife habitat, cutting garden, or a vegetable garden. The main things to remember about Cottage style are to modify your plants to fit the Santa Clarita Valley and expect to spend time maintaining your garden. Cottage garden plants are as expansive as your imagination; crape myrtles, lavender, gardenias, yarrow, ornamental grasses, artichokes, Swiss chard, and more.
Formal: This style is shaped and manicured. It contains symmetrical straight edged pathways; trimmed boxwood hedges and often roses with carefully selected annuals surrounding the hardscape. The accents used are urns, tiered fountains, and statuary.
Taking the time to decide what you want in your landscape will make it easier to put together a look that will please you for years to come. Planning is everything! Please join Julie Molinare and Tami Smight A.S.I.D. in a Free Seminar at Green Thumb Nursery on Newhall Avenue on March 27 at 10 a.m. Julie Molinare is a Certified Landscape Designer living in the Santa Clarita for over 15 years. Julie taught the Introduction to Landscape Design Class at CSUN Tseng College of Extended Learning and is owner/designer of The Grass Is Always Greener Landscape Designs.
For more information, please call 661-917-3521 and visit www.thegrassisalwaysgreener.net .