Two Styles, Many Gardens

 

Gardening by Better Homes and Gardens

Regardless of outward appearances, gardens fall into two style camps: formal and informal. Here are prime examples of both styles in action.
Cottage gardens can be formal or informal, but this one is decidedly informal. Curving beds, the asymmetrically placed arbor, the winding flagstone path -- all are casual.

 

Informal Style

Informal gardens sometimes evolve into wild gardens. Here, a bench is becoming engulfed by its surroundings. A sunny front yard can be home to a wildflower meadow in miniature. Informal gardens have a lot of benefits, chief among them that they are forgiving. If you forget to weed and water for a while, they hide our sins much in the same way a patterned rug doesn't show a stain or two. And for the tree huggers among us, an informal garden better mimics what Mother Nature would come up with on her own. Informal gardens have few pretensions, making them an appropriate choice for small or rustic homes. Perhaps the least formal landscape is a wildflower meadow -- a sunny, open area in which wildflowers and grasses are grown together, allowed to go to seed, and cut or mowed once a year. Although it sounds romantic, the reality of a meadow garden is that it looks unkempt much of the time. But the idea of a meadow can be incorporated into a more traditional landscape by planting small "pocket meadows," essentially large flowerbeds planted with a mixture of wildflowers and native grasses. Wooded areas are another type of informal garden. A miniature woodland garden can be fashioned under a cluster of shade trees, even on a small lot. Underplant the trees with native shade-loving flowers and plants, add a a wood-chip walkway, and you have your own little forest of earthly delights. Perhaps the most popular informal garden is a wide (at least 4 feet), curving flowerbed planted without regard to a pattern. They are a delightful way to mix bulbs, annuals, perennials, and even small trees. The downside is that they can become too much of a good thing and look unstructured in negative way. Technorati Tags : informal+gardens, formal+gardens, gardening, design+a+garden

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