Landscape Garden Design

We have been gathering new ideas for our landscape garden design and want to know what Exterior Worlds has to offer.
If you’re thinking about some new ideas for your landscape garden design, Exterior Worlds has plenty of good ones for you.

Perhaps you want to start with building an outdoor kitchen. These spaces become a natural gathering place, similar to the kitchen inside the home. They also create a focal point for your yard. It is essential that you design a good layout so that all your appliances are convenient to use and fit properly.

Also consider adding or enhancing other hardscapes—the term used in landscape design to describe the non-plant material of your landscape—such as pool decking, entry walks and pathways, gates, garden structures, decks, garden arbors, retaining walls, driveways and motor courts.

We may decide to go with an overall theme for our landscape garden design—what do you suggest?
Many homeowners prefer a theme for their landscape architecture. One beautiful choice is an English garden design, noted for its informal approach to gardening. Think vine-covered arbors, glorious rose gardens, colorful azaleas and beds of seasonal color. This theme is hugely popular in the United States and well suited for Houston’s semi-tropical climate.

Another popular choice is classical landscape design, a sub-category of formal landscape design that uses well-defined lines to develop an orderly look. You can draw these “lines” with well-trimmed hedges, rows of trees or built-in seating in a retaining wall. Use green plant material to soften any harshness.

If your home’s architecture allows it, think about a modern landscape design. This style is noted for its undefined boundaries between areas of color, textures and shapes—or conversely, sharply defined boundaries. Dramatic geometric shapes convey a point of view that is both elegant and natural.

Any suggestions for an environmentally-sensitive garden?
Exterior Worlds is all for “green” green gardens. With a design for a green garden, the goals are similar as for any other landscape project. Plus the additional focus on making a garden that is ecologically helpful, practical and sustainable by reducing the ongoing landscape maintenance of watering, trimming, weeding and mulching.

Who can we get to help us with the planning and installation?
Landscape designers and landscape architects will help you during the planning phase.
You can hire them to help with, say, your patio design. A patio is a great place to start with a new landscape garden design since it is the transition space between the house and the yard. Patios run the gamut from an open-air greenhouse to an elegant outdoor room.

Or we can help with your landscape lighting. Expertise is essential in the design, planning and installation of landscape lighting since about 50 percent of the technical work has to do with placement of the light fixtures. You don’t want to see the system’s hardware—you only want to see the beautiful effect.

After more than 20 years in the landscaping business, we have a long list of highly skilled professionals to recommend.

Parterre Garden Design

The word “parterre” means “on the ground” in French. It refers to a type of formal garden created by French nursery designer Claude Mollet in the 1500s. Mollet had been inspired by the English knot gardens he had seen, and he wanted to expand their basic elements into something appropriate to the opulent and massive estates of the French Aristocracy. He decided that the parterre garden would look better if viewed from above, as opposed to a ground-level perspective. To make it visible from a higher vantage point, he expanded the one square into four squares with gravel paths that intersecting in the center. From an elevated position, this would create a sense of linear movement combined with balance and proportion.

Because parterre gardens were designed to be viewed from above, Mollet decided that clipped box and other similar shrubs would work better as visual elements than aromatic herbs and flowering plant. The English, of course, objected to this, with herbalist and poet Gervase Markham denouncing box as having a “naughty smell” that had no place in a garden. The English were missing the point. Mollet was creating something for the Elite to quietly admire from the opulence and comfort of their balconies and open windows- not stroll through the garden and smell.
Parterre gardens reached the zenith of their form under the reign of Louis XIII, at the Palace of Versailles. King Louis’s head gardener, Jacques Boyceau, defined the best elements of the parterre gardens as follows:

• Borders made from box and other shrubs.
• Compartments and pathways within shrub elements
• Passements-French for embroidery patterns
• Arabesque elements (repeating geometry)
• Interlacing patterns clearly visible from windows.

The parterre garden fell out of style after the French Revolution and the introduction of the 18th Century English naturalist garden. However, in the 20th Century, it returned as a popular element of residential landscaping design. The same basic aesthetic principles of Boyceau and Mollet are still followed, but the use of four squares divided by gravel paths is typically not used except on very large, private estates.

In most Houston neighborhoods, parterre gardens are planted adjunct to an architectural or landscaping feature. They can be either linear or contoured to compliment the architecture of any outdoor structure or landscaping element. For example, a West Houston couple with a passion for all things French had us plant a partier garden around a paved parking area that was shaped like a horseshoe. Later, this area was used to place an outdoor sculpture, and the greenery surrounding it added a natural, embellishing touch.

Typically, landscaping companies use a combination of boxwoods and holly trees for modern parterre garden design. The boxwoods provide the boundaries for the garden, and the hollies add a three-dimensional element. This simple combination makes such a garden an excellent addition to a yard that has no fence. When planted along the property line, it can create a superb and highly aesthetic natural boundary between a residence and a neighboring property.

River Oaks Italian Garden Design

A River Oaks resident hired us to create organic elements that would harmoniously blend the organic elements around her home with inorganic stonework and masonry that ornamented its exterior. Because her house featured architecture that was classically symmetrical, elegant, and almost perfectly balance, she wanted these areas of her property landscaped with the theme of an Italian garden. The key areas we focused on were both ends of the walkway that ran from the sidewalk up to her motorcourt and front porch, the side yard that featured an all brick surface and very sophisticated swimming pool, and the front and upstairs balcony of the house itself.

The walkway was built in steps that gradually ascended to the front door. We accentuated this sense of an entryway by placing a variety of species around the front steps intersected with the sidewalk. We planted Agapanthus, which is very prolific throughout the Houston area, and known for its blue and white flowers in the late spring and early summer. We also used boxwoods for ground cover, and a number of other annual flowers to create a variety of colors to frame the entrance to the property. This established the theme of an Italian garden by placing order, symmetry, and linear proportions at the forefront of the property where people walk in.

The thee-story home was a very distinguished structure in and of itself. It was built around elements of Classical architectural design. It has windows shaped like tall arches, and rose up from the landscape to a height nearly equivalent to its width. To accentuate the symmetry of its architecture and further enhance the Italian garden theme with Classical elements, we planted two very tall Italian cypress trees on either side of the house. We kept the vegetation in front of the house very low in order to keep the aesthetic of the windows from being diminished, and also to allow people within the home to look through the windows without any obstructions.

In front of the door, the walkway widened symmetrically and intersected with a portion of the motor court. The symmetrical right angles this structure created was almost like that of a planter, and provided additional opportunity for colorful vegetation to be placed. We decorated this area with snapdragons, pansies, and annuals. This allowed the colors and floral patterns to be changed out every season so the residents would have an entirely new look and feel to their Italian garden at the beginning of every spring. Boxwoods were then planted in linear rows and right angles to make a frame for the entry garden that was consistent with the balance, order, and symmetry of Italian design.

To the side of the home there was a pool area which was surrounded by a yard that was completely covered in brick. This area was already perfectly balanced and symmetrical, and the pool had been exquisitely constructed and required no renovation. The area was a bit barren, however, and needed both organic and inorganic elements to add dimension and depth to its aesthetic. We planted a row of Holly trees on the far side of the pool to screen in the entire area and create privacy for the residents and their guests. This provided a backdrop for an Italian cherub that we mounted on the fountain wall on the side of the pool. This sculpture framed by Hollies made the back wall of the pool look like a small garden up lit by concealed fixtures and ornamented symmetrically on both sides by handmade Italian pottery. The final touch to this mini-garden area was up lighting the sculpture, and placing down lighting on the side of the house.