Does Your Garden Dance?

February 24th 2010 by samanthachaplin

Don’t let your garden stand still this year when it could be performing a horticultural Hokey-cokey! 

Samantha Chaplin explains how we can encourage our gardens to dance

You may not know that borders can actually Boogie-woogie and few people realize that paving has the ability to pulse the Paso Doble. These garden moves (and more) are possible on your own plot even if you are no Michael Flately and you don’t harbour a penchant for lycra. Rhythm! It’s what’s missing from most gardens these days and if you introduce it, you will avoid the staid of static and provide the beginnings of a “designed look”, without the costs of a garden designer. 

Somewhere within our interiors we have attempted to match wallpaper colour with a few cushions and perhaps  have a favoured shape that has been repeated subconsciously or otherwise throughout our homes.  However, all too often this flash of inspired coordination fails to find an exterior expression. Instead our gardens are homes to singular shrub placement, oddments and a jumble of shapes, which if well placed and well kept can be suitable and give a certain limited pleasure. But, gardening in this way is the equivalent of counting you in, providing the the first pitchy note and then having to continually start again. Being a garden choreographer is all about applying design principles outside and holding that tune. 

Rhythm is formally recognised as a visual device in garden design and is mentioned in all design books, where  it is also referred to as “punctuation” or “unity”. In design terms it means making an effect with colour, shape, quantity and texture and in garden terms that can involve many combinations of planting, hard-landscaping and features.  Considered placing of these items within your garden can produce stunning effects, direct your gaze and lead you to discover further associations. There must be some complex psychology involved in the visual effects of repetition, but fundamentally as human beings we are most satisfied when we see a connection as it provides comfort and enables us to remember.   When used in poetry repetition provides an emphasis and reprises in the garden are no less effective.

Rhythm can be applied to any style and any size garden even with a limited budget-  the best news being that simple is effective.  The very basics involve plant colour and probably, due to your own preferences you are already applying colour repetition to your garden. However consider the pace in which colours occur, for example: an entrance border intermittent with white followed by an absence of white, which ends in a beautiful white splurge. This provides a sort of quick quick slow visual for the eye.  The effect can be heightened with contrasting colours to accentuate, varying heights of white coloured plants as well as the inclusion of variegated foliage colour.  For an early and cheap solution the introduction of single coloured annuals will enable your garden to dance this coming season - a prelude to more substantial future changes.  The same colour that appears in your border can then be used as an accent elsewhere, for example in pots, garden ornaments and paving.  Repeating a simple shape can be equally effective, the more natural the chosen shape the better.  Choosing a sphere for example which naturally occurs in the flower heads of Alliums, can be followed through to clipped box topiary and with the inclusion of a stainless steel gazing globe (or two) your garden will be hot to trot. Changes to the size or textures of the chosen repeat may be subtle and harmonious. Not directly obvious to all, but to those who take the time to appreciate and most importantly yourself it will be the source of much satisfaction.   Texture can add a weave of interesting pace, smooth and slow granite or choppy fast cobbles, either blended seamlessly or bluntly introduced as a key change. 

Rhythm can add an informal or formal presence and paying heed to balance when placing these things will fool admirers into believing you had a top designer in!  If your garden is currently sat alone in the shadows of the disco ball, then lead it by the hand and encourage it to bob up and down, sway, swing with pattern and pulse, it needn’t be a full on pogo but a garden with two left feet can easily be avoided