Tuesday, November 3, 2015

How to Copy a Large Landscape into Your Small Space

Great example of historic/classic garden design in modernist disguise, below.

nelson byrd woltz landscape architects / hudson highland cottage, new york:

Don't have a rural property?  Your home is a classic 60's ranch in a sea of other 60's ranches?  Yes, you can have this landscape in your front yard.
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How?  What exchanges to make?
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The meadow/woodland, above, are the street & neighbors homes, so, block that view, keeping the rest of this incredible landscape design.  Behind the stone/cement walls, plant an evergreen hedge.   Choose for zone, height, drought tolerance, resistance to insects/disease, and deer.
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This landscape, above, is pure jewelry for a 60's ranch house in comparison to their builder installed  ubiquitous foundation plantings long ago pruned into green meat balls & meat loafs.  
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More, depending on the size of your site, this design, above, has plenty of room for a golf cart to zip around.
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Most odd, copying this landscape design, above, into a 60's ranch front yard provides the same elements of space, calm, and beauty as in the larger setting, above.  Promise.  It's one of those odd things you learn after decades of designing gardens.  The sky provides different types of magic, and confers 'size' to small spaces.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic from Gardenista.

3 comments:

LPC said...

I admit to being mystified by your hatred for foundation plantings. Bad ones, I get it. Plants butchered and hacked into graceless shapes, I hate them too. But what do you have against plants, per se, against the side of a house? And while I like decomposed granite, and slate patios, I also like a good shrub verging on wild, and a band of natives under an oak at the perimeter.

Can you tell us why, in a little more detail, you are so strong in your preferences? Do you dislike all plant-heavy gardens, and mixed borders, or just those that treat vegetation like wallpaper?

La Petite Gallery said...

Yep! I remember those meatball shrubs. This has a feel of Vegas or Arizona.
Sure makes an easy life. I am sick of my yard work. Hitting 80 soon and
Yesterday a friend came over to help prune a cherry tree and wisteria.
I can't walk today. Too much leaf blowing and raking and bending, stooping.
yvonne

Jacinta Arnold said...

Thank you so much Tara. These posts translating your ethos into suburban size gardens is gold.