I like to browse garden magazines. They are a wonderful resource of ideas. I love to pick them up at the store and rip out ideas of landscapes that appeal to me and stick them into a folder. I’ve had many overflowing folders for references when I feel the need for a change.

Creating a beautiful painting, and designing a landscape involve using the same principles but different media. They are both works of art, but one is living and evolving and one fixed or stationary.

The concepts of color, depth, and balance all play a role, as well as giving it life with a sense of movement with the placement of your subject matter. Choosing a focal point, yet keeping the design fluid keeps it feeling alive visually.

Paintings can run hot with bright with bold colors, or take on a serene calmness. This holds true with landscapes as well. Try to guide the eye, as if traveling or exploring a trail.

A landscape also can incorporate a change in texture and topography with highs and lows, just as color can create quiet and loud, and density can create an invitation or a wall. Boulders and gravel can give interest if skillfully done, just as an artist may add texture or create a wash of color that sets the mood.

I love nature and exploring…in nature rivers cut their path thru the mountains or valleys creating soft curves or rushing wildly creating excitement, but always captivating our interest, as do mountains, and boulders climbing and rising thru canyons and up to the heavens. The colors of fall leaves add to the “awe” effect against the changing sky, as does the spring bloom in the deserts, or passing a flower and Rose garden on an afternoon walk. Arranging plants in a Southwest Garden complete with a spring bloom is exciting and evolving, just as nature comes alive for us with its changing seasons. That is what art should do, whether it is a landscape or painting.

I love to visit art galleries and I love to observe nature, but living here on a nursery, it really excites me to see a beautiful design whether it’s in a pot, container, or display

garden. There are so many possibilities and the art of weaving a landscape can be so fulfilling.

We can all be designers…even decorating your own home can use the same concepts. It can reflect your personality with color and fluidity, or functionality and purpose. The choice is up to you…just make it fun.

Paint your garden into reality and never let it get stagnant. Let it evolve as we do, permitting growth and playfulness, softening or exploration.

If you are a beginner, you can find a landscape designer to help, or you can just start with an idea and let it begin and flow as you go. Start with the “bones” or accents of your idea, then adjust as you need and learn. Add fluff where you need it and verticals for accents add a mound and imagine it into reality.

We will be renovating our display gardens beginning this spring. I can’t wait to watch them evolve. I hope this has brought you excitement and ideas…

Till our next time together,

Jackie