Once again, I believe it is a case of context. That massively overgrown yew by the front door is out of scale with THAT setting.........in a different location in the same garden, it might be perfectly appropriate.

I'm not sure that scale is something the eye must be taught to see. How many "uneducated" eyes would view that same yew by the front door in a similar way? They may not express it as out of scale precisely, but something about it will bother them.

Scale and proportions of hardscapes and other hard elements are relatively easy to grasp - they are what they are and don't change or grow over time - so they tend to be less bothersome in a landscape. Although some (ie., minute and useless, dinky builder patio slabs) are obviously out of scale, they do not seem to carry the same impact as living material. For some reason, too large or too small plantings stick out more and are more often the landscape elements that sing out as being out of scale or proportion to the whole. For whatever reason - neglect, indifference, unawareness, even fear of removing a living plant - these out of place plantings seem to persist.

Any size house can have any size hardscape and not have it be out of scale, if it is mitigated by something else. That is what I was trying to say above.

Proportion can be out when you compare a large house with a dinky patio without anything else. Mitigate that by adding plants or something else and the same house and patio become a well proportioned composition.

A patio is to address a function and should be designed for that function. Then you need to use your design skills to effect (or affect, English ain't my thang) the outcome, so that nothing appears disproportioned. Obviously, you can not put 10 pounds of stuff into a 5 pound bag.

I've said it several times. Design your uses first, then follow through with use of plants and other elements to strengthen those uses and the aesthetics (which is a use) of the site.

There is sort of line we, as landscape designers, fall somewhere along. Near one end are plant compositions and garden with houses, hardscapes, and other uses tolerated among them. Near the other end is a functioning site that uses plant compostions and gardens to support them and build aesthetics within them. There is a very big difference in thinking. We tend to move down that line as we continue doing this over time, hopefully.

Ahh laag - you've just defined me and my problem :-) On the whole, I'd rather live in a garden that has a house in it than in a house that happens to have a garden! Although, it's not that clear cut because, this past summer, we visited the garden of a fairly well-known Canadian garden writer. The garden was lovely - his use of color and plant combinations is great - but it was strangely unstatisfying and it took me a while to realize that the problem was that I couldn't find the house! And when, after looking around, I did find the house, it was disappointingly nondescript and did not feel linked to the garden. Perhaps the relationship to the garden looked different from inside the house. My DH said I had too high expectations of the place and was bound to be disappointed.

What I'm curious about is what the pros on here personal landscapes look like - are they all perfect examples of design principles or are they a case of 'the shoemaker's children go barefoot'? The neighbour behind us is a graduate of a well-respected School of Horticulture and is a partner in a garden center and runs a design service. I don't find his personal property a very good advertisement for either of his businesses - if I had access to the plants he does at wholesale cost or less, I'd have a much more interesting garden than he does! My garden design might not qualify as such in your eyes but I'm sure you'd find his on his personal property even worse!

Pam makes an interesting observation regarding context and I am reminded of young Audrics 10 foot cube of a couple of weeks back. If the garden in question is removed from its surroundings then it can provide its own context and therefore the scale and as long as what is in it remains proportionate then it will work. A garden like that will almost certainly be a 'picture' not meant to be walked in unless you have a Gulliver complex. In Japanese garden design there is a term named 'Shakkei' that is translated as 'borrowed scenery' which means that you design to invite the surroundings into your garden. If you do this then it is essential to have a graduating scale like a landscape painting with a foreground, middle etc. My own interpretation of 'Shakkei' might be 'controlled scenery' which works both ways and is especially important if your surroundings are not Mt. Fuji but Wall Mart or Tethro the Junk hound. If you manipulate your landscape to block a view then different proportions exist between your house and the horizon you will also have a view back towards the house.

Gardengal made a great point for the uneducated eye, "something will bother them". This describes what I tend to go through everytime I take on a new project (move to a new home, not a pro) and I think what takes such a long time for a starting point is defining the problem.

Wouldn't you say, scale and proportion in landscaping is like most things, practice makes perfect? (or close to) A person has a desire to design a garden &/or landscape, but with no practical experience beyond replacing annuals, they have to practice and study to find what they want. Given, that would be without landscaping advice from a pro. A pro would have the advantage of desire and education to think beyond what is desired to the surroundings, uses and future maintenance. You guys just know what questions to ask and points to make in advance to picking up a shovel!

Here is a scenario:
A lady just bought a new home with a beautifully landscaped back yard. She is in her 60's. Problem: VERY large yard surrounded with smart, beautifully designed professional landscaping. She hates to mow a large lawn so I made the comment that she might want to call in the original landscaper to add more garden less lawn. This to me is an example of being out of Scale and Proportion for her needs. It would suit a family of 4 beautifully and functionally, but not her.

I'd say that there is a function not being addressed. The function being her ability to maintain it. Then you need to design your plants and what not to enhance the function.

Disproportion is not the cause. It is a result of the functions that define it as disproportioned.

I see what you're saying Laag. I was defining proportion as the two elements (lawn vs garden) size relationip to each other. But when you throw in function, it makes you define it in a different way.

I've read these responses several times but a couple of things really clicked with me. Ink said: "In my opinion a garden should not rely on the plants to provide scale or proportion but have hard elements and strong lines to provide it". And laag followed with, "Any size house can have any size hardscape and not have it be out of scale, if it is mitigated by something else". I'm a frequent lurker & learner on this forum, and I truly appreciate this discussion. I had a really hard time in the past few years making the transition from houses on small city lots to country acreage. It took a while to adjust to the overall scale I was dealing with & to learn to view not just the view from our windows but the overall picture one has from various angles. DH kept me on the "functionality" track by insisting on space to drive & maneuver his toys (aka, the tractor & mower). I've planted, re-planted, moved, adjusted, and driven DH crazy, but we're getting there. Slowly, but it's beginning to make sense due to discussions like this.

Although you could say that redesigning the garden in the way you suggest is 'disproportionate' to the ladies ability to maintain it this would be a different use of the way we are talking about scale and proportion in their physical sense here. You are using lawn and garden as units of effort or enjoyment. Using laag's suggestion that good design is where form follows function your suggestion would simply be bad design. The answer is probably to get some help with maintenance.

Another point to consider in this discussion. The majority of home owners purchase a structure where the builder has installed some important hardscape features which influence scale and proportion. To builders the cheapest and shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Think of all the front sidewalks installed with just a 3' planting bed remaining along side the front of the house, etc. So, many owners start out with hardscape features that are out of proportion and expensive to change...and in their struggles to design they may not recognize the builder's contribution to the dilema.

Many times it is impossible, perhaps due to house height or very tall trees, to have perfect scale. This is when we turn to our old friend 'focus points' to lead the eye down and away from that which causes the problem.

It's not just builders who think the cheapest and shortest distance between two points is a straight line. How many times have people put in paths that meander, only to complain that everybody from the kids to the mailman won't stay on the path and insist on cutting through the beds? It's not a scale problem, but a functionality problem.

Ok. So scale and proportion can be used to solve functionality issues, frame a view, change a focal point or 'correct' other proportion issues, they can also be manipulated to affect our emotions within any of these contexts. A space can be made to 'feel' more private or expansive by manipulating its scale in proportion to those things around it.

Nandina is saying the same thing that I am saying, but in a different way. She is clearly saying that you can mitigate the problem. Her way of mitigating is by using focal points.

Mad gallica tells of the straight line path phenomena vs. the meandering path that no one follows. In either case, I would argue, once again, to use your plants and other landscape elements to effect the function.

In any landscape we are stuck with certain things that we simply can not change. We have to deal with them. It could be climate or some other cultural condition. It could be that builder's walk, or outsideplayin's DH's tractor. In any case, you have got to focus in on the power you have at your disposal. The power is psychology sometimes, or physical other times. You have so much at your disposal. Landform, color, hardscapes, mass, height, barriers, over head structure, and it goes on and on. These are elements that you can use to enhance, mitigate, create, and/or build form to directly effect the function that you have identified as an important piece of the landscape.

The important thing is to start to see those functions as the framework that you are building upon. This is why I go nuts when someone comes in with a five acre lot and a new house in the middle of it and starts with a plant list. To me, that is like going down to NAPA and grabbing a bunch of auto parts of the shelf, then going home to find out what is wrong with your car with the notion that those parts are going to be the right ones to fix it (same feeling an English teacher has reading this run on sentence).

It starts by understanding that everything is a function. Aesthetic pleasure is a function just as parking a car is. Peace and quiet is a function. A view (or a screening) is a function. Look at something you feel compelled to do in your landscape. There is some function at the root of it. Sometimes it is obvious, but sometimes it is not. BUT, it is always there. Disect it and find it. This ability will take you a long way.

My daughter just pointed out to me that ignore is the root word of ignorance. If you ignore what function you are dealing with then you are ignorant of it. Who needs another ignorant designer. Where did she go off to now?

...just kidding.

I didn't mind your sentance, Laag. I love this kind of thread!

Okay, "sentence" then. (Where did I learn how to spell?)

Probably at the U of Idaho. ... just like me.

Nope. Try again. I'm actually originally from California, but that won't help you either....

So, in the case of the straight vs. meandering path, you should first consider the function of the path (ie. whether it should be a direct thoroughfare or encourage a leisurely stroll) and design accordingly. Is that right? And if you want it to encourage a leisurely stroll, would you line it with barberries to keep people on the path? Or would there be a better way to use plants and other landscape elements to effect that function? Like several focal points along the path, or a tree or shrub along each curve, or something more like that?

I hope I'm not asking questions with really obvious answers. I think my brain is a little bit fried right now.

No. Use either and make your landscape reinforce the comfort and aesthetic to make it work successfully.

I think these comments can relate to the "debate" over straight lines vs. curves in foundation plantings or other beds. As gingerblue noted, a 3-ft deep curving bed will not accomplish something just because it has curves, and may look only marginally more "right" than a 3 foot rectangular bed. In many typical rectangular homes, I think rectilinear beds would look just as good as curved--they just need to have adequate depth for the house and for the height of things to be planted, and extend away from the house in a bolder and more pleasing way. So someone may come in and say, out with your 3 foot straight bed, you need curves, but if the bed is actually deepened or otherwise improved in proportion to the house, such as extending "arms" out into the yard, and is now planted with varying height and depth of shrubs, then it may well be this change in size and proportion that achieved the aim of grounding, more than curves. The same can be said for paths--someone showed me a proposal for a path to connect my driveway with front entrance, and of course it was "curved", but composed of relatively small stepping stones and overall width and so did not accomplish the feeling that is needed there, did not relate to the house, just looked like it would be a dinky curved path when something bolder was needed, whether curved or straight.

Well, my scale shows that I am out or propoerion. It's those darn out of scale portions.

To follow up on the bed shape and size train of thought - should the bed size and shape not be defined by what is in them rather than the opposite.

I'm beginning to wonder if I might be an extremely backward thinker. But, if I am, it would work out that I won't see it that way and will continue with my views.

Or should the bed shape be defined by what is not in them (lawn, patio, paths) and the beds be treated more as filler space? As a way to transition from the soft curves of the lawn edge to the hard edges of the house or property line? There is obviously some give and take here.

- Brent

I'd love to hear some rule of thumbs to help people. For example, when we put in our back patio it was hard to tell how big/deep it should be. Somewhere I read that "if you could tilt your house forward onto the lawn, the patio should be that big". A one story house would have a 12-15 foot deep patio, a two story much bigger. This actually helped me a lot, just a rule of thumb. (obviously they didn't mean the patio should run the length of the whole house, they were addressing depth. Not a RULE, but a guideline that helped.

For example renegade gardener suggests lawn not be more than 2/3 of yard, rest should be trees, shrubs, flower beds. Any other rules of thumb?

The size of a patio should depend on the use you put it to and be relative to the part this plays in your life: or in short, form ever follows function. John Brookes has a grid method whereby a feature of the house say a window or gable end, is taken as a module that forms your grid that you lay over the plan of your garden. The theory is that provided everything, patio lawn etc complies to the grid it will all look right. The big problem of course is that it may not look right in reality and your plan will need some fine tuning on the ground. Of course this will tie your garden to the house but this may not be what you want and here may well be the divide between what has become known as formal/natural. A natural garden may be one that relates more to the natural surroundings, either real or imagined, than to the house. On a large estate you could have it architectural (formal) near the house and more wild out near the ha ha. When I say 'imagined' I probably mean 'remembered' and it is this phenomenon that will finally tell you if the scale and proportion is right.

I do not have a lot of personal experience in this area, but the best book that I have seen that covers these type of "rules of thumb" or patterns for laying out a landscape is "Your House, Your Garden: A Foolproof Approach to Garden Design" by Gordon Hayward. The central theme of this book is that your house is the center of your landscape and that the rest of your landscape should relate to your house. There are a lot of good ideas on laying out patios, lawn areas, and secondary buildings.

- Brent

"Your House, Your Garden: A Foolproof Approach to Garden Design" by Gordon Hayward

I bought that book, but somehow I could not physically open it. ... I wonder why.

Laag, if you are backwards, I'm backing after you. That is why sometimes you see a landscape foundation planting that appears to be perhaps the correct 1/2 or 2/3 or whatever the height of the house, so you see this reasonably sized bed in front of a 2-story house, and yet it is populated by rows of tiny pruned nandina and liriope and pansies, and you go, whoa, the PURPOSE of having the deep bed was for it to be approximately large enough to have room to contain a flowering dogwood, or japanese maple, or tallish evergreens, and good-sized shrubs, and 2 or 3 layers of other things that give the correct height and mass for the house and can be sited far enough away from the walls.

There are obviously some very practical reasons for determining the size of various landscape features - a primary walkway should be wide enough to accomodate two people walking side by side comfortably, a patio needs to be large enough to accomodate what furnishings will be used on it (a 10' square slab might work for a bistro set, but won't be roomy enough for a full size table and four or more chairs) - as well as some very basic safety considerations (approved rise and runs of steps, etc.), but as ink points out, function will govern much of the rest and even have a great deal of influence on the above. In short, I don't believe there are hard and fast rules of thumb that are not governed first by logic, function and context. And as laag has so subtly indicated, nothing is truly "foolproof" in landscaping and to rely solely on procedures outlined in books and magazines is to ignore what confronts you in real life - the context and the function these elements must work with.

Not to say that practicing designers have all the answers, but either through training, experience or a combination of both are perhaps more in tune to recognizing both the practicality of these issues and their relationship to each other and the garden as a whole.

We had a discussion some time back that addressed masses and voids and so indirectly, proportion and scale, and clearly it was an issue that was difficult for some to grasp. As in any visual art form, composition is the relationship of these various factors in a specific context. To apply uniformity to the steps in achieving a pleasing composition in landscape design as well as one that is functional in three dimensions is to attempt to create a piece of fine art with a paint-by-numbers set - something vital will be missing.

I think that most of us have an innate sense of scale and proportion although often it is not well developed or defined. Elements that are out of scale or proportion - either too big or too small - make us uneasy or uncomfortable or stick out visually in some way. We feel overwhelmed or intimidated, too exposed or pressed in, lilliputian or brobdinagian. These are design principles that can be learned or developed to a higher degree through study, formal or otherwise, and through experience. But they will not necessarily follow rules and they are not necessarily achieved by following a step-by-step how-to guide without consideration of their function and the context in which they are placed.

"I think that most of us have an innate sense of scale and proportion......" Pam says and that it "make us uneasy or uncomfortable" if they are denied and I think we are hard wired to it. It is possible that what has been called the 'Savannah' landscape is what makes most sense to us. Lots of short grass with trees dotted about, you know the thing. When we work on a small property with constraints of budget and space this ideal, or dream has to be tempered if we want to acheive a pleasing composition. This is the challenge that any fool can tilt at but we all know when it succeeds or not.

Maybe we are onto something. People follow all these rules of thumb instead of their inate sense on how to use what they have.

Whenever we got a client years ago who had done some reading or otherwise felt enlightened, my brother used to use part of a well known quote from an unrelated subject. "a mind is a terrible thing" and it ended there. Sometimes input currupts our own ability to think.

When someone breaks elements of the landscape into neat little packages with easy sets of rules they are often quite reasonable sets of rules. The problem is that it is often looked at as one layer of packaging. Within each bundle everything makes perfect sense, but when all the bundles form an entity that is affected by the others and in turn effects those others, things do not necessarily make sense. Each landscape is a dynamic situation with so many variables that exist and so many that can be created. Sometimes people read things and get so focused on these certain points that they lose site of everything else. They ignore the dynamics.

I think the best analogy is music. What would you do if you were a composer and someone asked "what is the right beat?, should there be a drum solo? Are two guitars better than one?" What would you think if someone told you that they read that it is best to have a soprano singer as the lead, there had to be a banjo in every good composition, ... and since you do not have these in the song you wrote for me, you obviously don't know what you are doing.

PS. Why is it always necessary to have two people walk side by side on a walkway?

Boy, untill the last there Andrew I thought you had lost it.

To answer your question lagg, I'm not sure it is ever "necessary" to have two people walking side by side on a walkway, but it is certainly much more user friendly and welcoming, specially on something like an entry pathway, to have it be roomy enough to allow this, rather than forcing a couple to walk single file on the narrow little paths so typical, or worse, step off onto the lawn or bordering plantings.

I see that as pre defining your use. More times than not, it is probably the right thing to do. There will be lots of folks that read that rule and will force that into their landscape whether it is appropriate or not. It is just like the folks that make their plant beds by taking the height of their front wall divided by the square root of 7. "Why does my landscape look awkward, I followed all the rules?"

Sometimes an 8' wide walk is the right thing to do on a small residential home. I've made them 2.5' wide. In the context of an informal 150 year old cape, a walk of over 3' wide is not usually appropriate in the context of my area.

The only point I'm trying to make is that some people will take one persons article or own experiences and take them to be rock solid rules. If all rules were true and were followed, every landscape would be more or less the same.

Scale and proportion is not only physical. It is contextural (don't look that one up in the dictionary) as well. It is cultural and historical and regional sometimes. It never gets easier. The more you explore the simplist of things in a landscape design, the more variables you can identify and address. It only gets more and more complicated.

Some people come to these message boards or go to libraries with the notion that the more than learn of it, the simpler it will be. That is the exact opposite of how it gets. That is probably true with about everything, I suppose.

Rules are short cuts to thought. Sometimes that thought can be processed so quickly that we don't even know we have done it, but it must be done.

I think that some people have a born sense of scale and proportion. I have read all the books, had 4 years of archtiecture, know mentally what is "right" and I can't get it "right" all the time. The dh, whose only real concern with the landscaping is that the grass area is easy to mow, can look at my problem area and say someting like, "this should be higher", or wider or what ever and he is right. Drives me crazy. I want that skill. Guess I should be thankful that I have him to see it for me.

Is that pre-defining your use or a factor of the function of the purpose of the walkway? And to acknowledge my earlier comment regarding the context of these elements, granting that at times it may very well be appropriate, would you not find a 2.5' walkway rather stingy for even a single individual, therefore creating one of the those situations where one feels unease?

Granted I don't live on the Cape in a historical home, but I DO live in a cape (50+ years old) and my entry walk varies in width from 6' to 8'. Is context related only to location or is it related to situation? Or both?

Both.

Is that pre-defining your use or a factor of the function of the purpose of the walkway?
I'm saying that if you do not already have a reason to walk two people side by side down a walk, why are letting the "rule of thumb" tell you that there is a necessity rather than the site or its users? The implication is that as a result of having a walkway, we now have a need to walk two people side by side along that walkway whether or not we did before we had the walk.

Please do not take this personally. The example is for the greater discussion not an attack on your design process. I have no doubt that you would recognize and size a walk of appropriate size under any circumstances. I also would believe that you might not run into a situation where a narrower walk would be a must. A lot of people do run into this situation quite a bit and should not be burdened by such a hard and fast rule whether it is to do with a walk, bed size, or just about anything else.

I am not sure that the width of walkways is the best example of working with scale and proportion perhaps we could start another thread? I think Andrew is trying to point out the danger of rules even if they are only approximate (rules of thumb) if they are not fully understood. Pam's worry about stepping off the path and on to the lawn made me wonder why a path through a lawn was needed, perhaps the answer to this question will solve the problem.

Not to worry - nothing taken personally, but just further questioning to discover your reasoning as well :-) I understand (I think) what it is you are trying to convey and I agree that there are all sorts of contexts where a narrow path is advised or even necessary. But is this one? Perhaps we should move this out of the "rule of thumb" category and consider it a convention? Why would one want to design a pathway to the entry of a residence, or any building where people commonly gather for that matter, that was so narrow as to restrict access to a single individual at any one time?

And ink, isn't a walk or pathway's function to direct circulation and traffic flow? Without one, visitors are free to walk anywhere they want - through lawns, planting beds, whatever and typically the shortest route to their intended destination, if they even can identify what the destination is without a path to guide them. If that is the intention, fine.

I just wanted to add that this is the type of thread I find so valuable on this forum - a chance to articulate how and why we do what we do and to receive feedback from others who approach it differently. I find this very rewarding and a chance to be exposed to thought patterns and rationales outside of our norms and typical comfort zones.

Thanks, Susan :-)

I agree Pam, this is the type of thread I hope to see each time I log on. I think a designer has truly become enlightened when he/she instinctively knows when to break the "rules of thumb". Unlike that perfect drawing in a design textbook that satisfies all the rules, creating designs for real people in real spaces with all the limitations and compromises rarely allows one to follow many these rules. The 3' wide walk for the cape is a great example. In this context, ideal circulation takes a back seat to what is considered historically accurate and approriate for the architecture and probably budget of someone building a cape in 1856 or earlier. Achieving a certain look has become more important than two walking abreast.

Sometimes one person going down a walk is ideal circulation.

Or one person in a wheelchair.

Okay...let's take this thread in a different direction. What happens when you are forced to ignore scale and proportion due to house height or tall trees on a small lot? This is a common happening here in the southeast. What design standards apply in these types of situations?

Nandina, that's a very good direction to take. I know it's happening "on purpose" in the city near us. Some people are buying houses located in a highly-desirable area, selling the house only which is moved to another location, and then rebuilding a totally different, over-sized house on the lot. This really stands out when the house being replaced was a small cottage-style or bungalow (think 50's or earlier). Those big new houses just tower over their neighbors. Others have just re-done the facade and added to the back which doesn't look quite so out of proportion. It's really a nice neighborhood, I just wish there was more control over the process. Since it's not a historic district, the rules that apply are just the standards everyone else has to follow in terms of easements, etc.

" isn't a walk or pathway's function to direct circulation and traffic flow? Without one, visitors are free to walk anywhere they want - through lawns, planting beds, whatever and typically the shortest route to their intended destination" this is the answer to a specific problem which is what I was suggesting Pam. If this leads to a walkway that is 4ft wide that is fine but then if this is used as a rule of thumb and someone applies it to a path to the compost bin we are in trouble.
I don't think there is ever a situation where we are forced to ignore scale and proportion, the example you use Nandina would be a good case for the 'rooms' or 'room' concept where you would introduce a different criterion. For example: imagine the main view of a small garden is through French doors that open onto a patio that becomes a small lawn with a large tree in one corner. It would make sense to continue the scale that exists inside the house on to the patio, if there is a typical house plant (ficus benjemina) (?) then this would work as something to help proportion things outside. A 60 foot tree with a trunk of 15 feet circumference (you did say big) would have the form of a chimney stack from our point of view and only be reminscent of a tree and is best ignored. If the proportions of the room leading to the garden are our guide we arrange everything to this scale on the patio and from there into the garden.

It is no different than getting stuck with a water problem, a tough climate, or heavy clay. You analyze your site and use your media to enhance the positive and mitigate the negative.

The more you limit your media, the less options you have. If you only use plants, or only certain plants, you have options. You have more if you use landform such as berming and contouring. Still more options are at your disposal if you use retaining walls and hardscapes to enhance or mitigate. More options arise if you can work on the house. The options are only limited by budget, your client, and your skills and comfort zone.

The answer is always the same. Figure out what you can change, what you have to work with and then use your skills to enhance or mitigate.

I was just reading about proportion in a book by Rosemary Alexander, and I had the opportunity to hear her speak recently. She showed a slide of a small patio that had a view of the city skyline (but not the romantic view). The designer had used an oversized architectural piece in the patio to distract from the outside view. A smaller statue would not have been in proportion with the view, and there fore wouldn't work. But in another small patio, the statue would be overbearing.

Another point she brought up in her book was about scale- that outside stairs usually need to have deeper treads and shorter rises than we use indoors. I noticed this the other day- I was visiting a client and the front stairs (6) were really steep. I noticed when I got inside that the front stairs were the same as the interior stairs. But without the secuity a wall provides, I found the front stairs to be uncomfortable.

Scale can also be used to affect traffic along a path. People will often walk slower if the plantings are smaller scale, giving them something to look at and a feeling of space. They will generally move right on through if the plantings are large, dark and overbearing. Sometimes the same affect can be seen as the path narrows and widens.

There's my two cents' worth.

That is exactly what I am talking about.

I think the original questioner is where I am at right now. Yes, there are guidelines in hardscape things, such as the "golden rule" when building a house and the scale or proportions of the windows to the house. Too small(or large) of a window would make the house look odd. I've seen plenty of it. Yes, you could say "oh, that doesn't look right" and change it. But, not after the house is built , and not when the garden is 10-20 years old. OK, you could, but why not do it right in the first place. What do hey teach in design school? Like groups of odd plants, etc.

For example, I'm trying to get my head around about 3-4 acres in the back, sloping uphill. I know I want a kitchen garden behind the barn. But, for the rest of the property, I have no specific use in mind. I need ideas. I don't want it formal. I'm finding it difficult to find ideas of large groupings of plants. there must be some guidelines like....don't plant a large viburnum next to the front door unless you want to prune it or pull it in 3 years. Aren't there some guidelines for very large properties? How would a landscaper design a small park?