Garden design
Garden design is the planning and arrangement of plants, paths, structures, and other features to shape a garden’s appearance and use.
Garden layout: The spatial arrangement of a garden’s beds, paths, lawns, and other areas. It translates a design concept into the garden’s overall spatial plan.
Site analysis: The assessment of a site’s physical conditions, constraints, and opportunities before design. Sun, slope, soil, and access set the limits and opportunities for a garden plan.
English landscape garden: An eighteenth-century garden style that arranged naturalistic scenery through designed views and landforms. Its composed landscape offers a contrasting model to formal geometric layouts.
André Le Nôtre: A French landscape architect best known for designing the gardens of Versailles. His work helped define the monumental geometry associated with French formal gardens.
Landscape architecture: The design of outdoor spaces and landscapes, from gardens to public and regional environments. Garden design is one scale of practice within this broader profession.
Garden path: A route through a garden, shaped by its materials, alignment, and surrounding planting. Paths guide movement and connect the garden’s different spaces.
Microclimate: The climate conditions of a small area that differ from its surroundings. Walls, trees, and orientation create local conditions that affect plant choice and placement.
French formal garden: A garden style organized around symmetry, geometric parterres, and controlled vistas. It demonstrates how strict geometry can express order across a large site.
Capability Brown: An English landscape architect who shaped naturalistic parkland gardens in the eighteenth century. His designs helped establish the English landscape garden as a major alternative to formality.
Permaculture: A design system for creating productive environments modeled on ecological relationships. It prioritizes self-sustaining systems, often extending beyond garden appearance and layout.