Perimeter landscaping is not inherently bad. It is sometimes a result of good application of methods used to affect other issues in the landscape. However, it is often a beginning point for people looking to put plants in the ground without a broader vision. I would not say the latter is necessarilly evil, just that it is a very limited use of the space - a wasted opportunity, in some cases.

It is sort of a cart before the horse thing. Some people start out by deciding where beds could be rather than with how they want plants to enhance a space, view, or, or activity or how they want plants to mitigate negative aspects of a space, view, or activity. Then they see and decorate only the bed and possibly what it touches as if they were entities only to themselves. That is not bad as I said before, but why not use the opportunity to solve problems and enhance experiences further?

Instead of decorating the edge of a deck, one could enhance the space on the deck. The result may be a perimeter planting, but it would not be limited to fringe decoration. It could be some larger shrubs along one part that make you feel like you are in a space rather than hovering up on a deck. There could be a part that has lower vegetation so that the bigger plants frame a particular view. Maybe another part swings out for a larger tree to screen Nosey Nellie next door from scoping out your activities or company.

Another example of effective perimeter planting is to build space in a limited space such as a small back yard. Again, one could put a bed in front of a fence and decorate the fence with plants. But, another might strive to make you forget about the fence and, maybe more importantly, get you to forget about what might be beyond the fence. A good example would be a row of trees a few feet in front of a fence with a shrub layer between them and the fence. It has a huge psychological effect of building a space so that the fence (in plain sight) and what might be on the other side of it, are so insignificant that the world almost begins and ends in that back yard.

Does that make any sense? I never know if I'm in my own little world where these are fantasy which I see and experience or actual facts that everyone else can experience as well.

Okay, so having the bed perform multiple landscaping needs is a key point. Addressing those needs may then help to determine a more suitable location for siting plants other than along a perimeter, or the perimeter is still the best choice for planting.

Emcompassing the needs be considering the interaction of the whole of the landscape then becomes process design template rather than the outline of the fence or deck.

"Does that make any sense? I never know if I'm in my own little world.."

Heck yes it does make sense, Laag. I have always enjoyed your articulate, well-balanced and educated responses in this forum and I am not alone in that opinion. And to you and rhodium, I am aware one ideally should have a plan before the plan(ts)and perimeter planting is not always bad. But the question is how do you go about creating and siting, say a garden room, when there are no clear cues ...like a sliding back door and such?

"so having the bed perform multiple landscaping needs is a key point"

No. The bed is what you make around the plants to improve their growing conditions.

The key point is to decide what you want to enhance and/or mitigate in your landscape and then to use everything you reasonably can to get that done.

Usually, a lot of that can be accomplished by selecting plants. Make the plants do things for you in your layout. Then make the beds fit the plants. And, yes, sometimes the functions that you need the plants to perform result in them being located in perimeter areas.

Using the perimeter when it is a result of where things need to be to best affect your design criteria is fine. Starting with the idea of decorating the perimeter for no other reason is not as rational.

Whatever pattern you blindly follow, whether it is perimeteritis or anti perimeteritus it is a clich and there is nothing wrong with that unless yours is a different objective. Without first establishing a destination, any road you take will get you there.

So the answer to your question "what is the starting point of the design?" is start at the beginning. If the question is "how do I arrange colourful plants so that I can enjoy them from my kitchen window?" the answer might be "plant them at the perimeter of your view beyond an expanse of lawn." If the question is "how do I create a private space for reading and relaxing?" the answer is probably not "plant them at the perimeter of your view beyond an expanse of lawn."

Even the term perimeter can be mis-applied so as to be confusing. Some people think that all use of the perimeter is perimeteritis. There is a difference between having a very narrow strip of planting at the perimeter and/or a hedge or fence-like planting, vs. the planting in laags examplelaags example (I think) might technically be at the perimeter, meaning, not a lot of usable lawn or activities planned between the shrubs and the fence, but the depth and design of the planting means that the planting itself does not become just a decorated fenceit creates other "sensations" when viewed or even when walking in the yard. Although, its useful to realize that you can keep a path or workzone between fendce and plantings, and maybe that adds to ability to take care of it, or creates a get-away, and that the more room you have to work with, the more you would do just that. Whereas the typical "perimeteritis" mistake is to try to keep as much open lawn as possible between the house and the lot line regardless of other important functions or visual needs, or creating a sharp vertical planting at the lot line for its own sake, not realizing that open space alone does not create spaciousness, and a "hedge" at the perimeter may not create the greatest privacy (real and/or sensed), and so on.

So, Ive read comments chastising some designs on this forum for exhibiting "perimeteritis" even when the gardener created a deep, multidimensional planting of species that served many purposesscreening, depth, colorful views from the housejust because it happens to extend to the lot line, so in a aerial view it would be at the "perimeter". However, if that location and design, in terms of distance from the house, angle extending out, heights of plantings, functions, etc, was just what was needed, it is not perimeteritis. It doesnt seem quite the same thing. The perimeteritis question in that situation is whether there need to be any plants there at all, and if so, to do what, and so which ones, and what bed then serves them. So, its okay to USE your perimeterits how and why you do it.

No-no, I have seen spectacular, broad mixed borders around the perimeters of homes both on this site and others. And I wold love to have one of the but the many sugar maples make it impractical.

What started this question was something I just read. According to Gordon Hayward shortly after he purchased his home in Vermont his friend and landscape designer of 45 years looked at the south-facing front door of Haywards' 200 year old farmhouse and an old apple tree 250 feet in front of it and said "that's an important line". He then set out building a series of gardens and garden rooms based on that line. Sometimes however, there is no obvious line. Could you simple plop a mixed border garden in the middle of your property and thus bifurcating it without the result looking odd?

'Line' is another clich served up cold with no entre.

"that's an important line"

A made up (substitute the word "created" if you find that negative) criteria or objective is still an objective that you can strive for. We can make something out of nothing and if you have a flair for making yourself mystical, you can do the stone soup thing and look like a genius, an artist, and gifted. Or you can attempt to rationally explain that you are making something out of nothing and explain the rationale which allows others to learn and try things themselves. I'm always disappointed by the people who try to be mystical .... especially when you can pick it apart and re-create it based on pure reasoning and rational thought. I wish they'd just attempt to explain it and save the hassle.

The line was not important until he made it important. He could have stated that the line was "shar" (a mystical negative energy line in Feng-shui) that needed to be mitigated and created a landscape based on eliminating the line.

We learn nothing from people who would rather pretend to be gifted (and imply that only the gifted can understand which therefore eliminates the rest of us who are not gifted) than to describe what they have learned and how they apply it (then the rest of us can actually hope to re-create things on our own).

The 'mystical' and the pragmatic may well offer up the same result although it could be that not everything can be explained rationally. How to build rooms around a perceived 'line' is part of the how which in my opinion comes after the why.

One of my early lecturers insisted that every garden (landscape) should be 'open in the middle', now if you follow this advice it is a short unimaginative step to a lawn with planting around it. What you are calling perimeteritis. In fact the lecturer was regurgitating and misinterpreting, the 'Gardens are for People' notion: the space in the centre being where you are.

There are two distinct types of garden, one is a picture and the other is a place. This might be a good starting point.

It tickles me to see the term that I coined picked up by this forum. However, what most pleases me is that people are obviously allotting conscious thought to this problematic practice. In the classic sense, "perimeteritis" is put into practice by gardeners too shy to plant beyond the "24-inch limit" away from an object typically a fence, deck, building or tree. The perimeter controls their planting area. No perimeter No planting.

Setting aside aesthetic sensibilities for a moment, I avoid perimeteritis because it typically brings with it the drudgery of repetitive, never-ending trimming tasks that could (and should) be easily avoided. Mowing a lawn is work enough but creating a "design" that now requires more time spent with a string trimmer than the mower is one of the very reasons so many people HATE what they call "gardening".

To over-simplify: If you cant mow it Mulch it. In other words, dont create all those tight, inside corners that are impossible to reach with your lawn mower. It will go a long way to throw away your tape measure and simply lay out your beds with a lawn mower. Mow an easily maneuvered curve at those tight corners and bring the edge of your bed out to meet that mown edge. Try to design so as to keep your string trimmer in the garage. Although there are some exceptions; I feel that good landscape design decreases (not increases) your work load.

The examples have only begun. However, I think it is important to also provide practical examples rather than just theory.

IronBelly

So what is the difference between mindlessly following the edge of a fence and mindlessly following the edge of a lawnmower trail?

How to get started... that has been a tough question to consider because starting a plan without any identified constraints or needs means the design possibilities are endless.

Maybe that should be your starting point then. So the most basic questions should be asked, as what is your area for and what will you do there? This may start to identifiy some limitations and hopefully spark some creativity to overcome them.

Will anything in this region impact another space on the property where you have an identified goal?

Do you ever intend to walk in this area or have need to reserve an area for future family expansion?

Sometimes a focal point can help to define an area, one can be found or created to justify your border placeent.

Probably not the most insightful input, but these have been my thoughts in the past to get going.

Landscape design and gardening are not the same thing. Using a lawn mower to mark out flower beds sounds like a vote for a necklace of plants around a symmetrical lawn.

And a necklace (or deep border...) of plants around a symmetrical lawn can be very effective! We - and most visitors here - think my backyard rectangular lawn with surrounding paths and woodland beds is the best part of our garden. Making the changes that created the lawn was a significant turning point in our garden-making. On one hand it all could be considered a case of perimeteritis; on the other hand it addresses negative space by making the negative space an arresting - and particularly calm and serene - space. In The Pattern Language book you recommended last winter Ink, the pattern about making negative space into positive space was one I really identified with. I think perimeteritis can best be dealt with by looking at the interior space and shaping that.

Okay then. Requests were made for my destination or goal for the area and for an example. Here goes.

I live in a house built when even buggy traffic in this area was rare. What I am looking for is screening (i.e. a mixed border) away from the road and placed up close to the house instead of on the perimeter of our property.

I am seeking a sense of enclosure and a respite from the traffic noise and visibility/over-exposure afforded by gaping holes in our (and which can't easily be remedied), perimeter screening as I am soaking up the sun (southern exposure)and drinking a cup of coffee. I want this new "Mixed Border" screening about 10' west of the corner of our porch and to travel about 56' south of it in a slightly curving line and somewhat past the baby alberta spruce by the dog leg...I think, if done properly, I could also have a nice private area for people to hang when I have summer parties. ..Maybe transition space from the driveway as well....

But I can't really conceive of a way of doing this that won't look peculiar with what's happening in the dog-leg or guest parking area of the driveway. How to make the lack of symmetry look planned, not like a last minute island bed and the space feel right is the question?

Looking towards dog-leg and guest spot:
{{gwi:46083}}

Further right (west)(note the really pathetic maple):
{{gwi:46084}}

The Reverse: Please note another old sugar maple foreground left.
{{gwi:46085}}

and closer up:
{{gwi:46086}}

perimeteritis is a serious disease, but it is more easily treated than acne islands which are very difficult to cure once they have popped up.

I don't want to be "mystical" about it but I feel there really is an intuitive feeling about what looks good and how things go together that is very difficult to put into words. Not to overdo the medical metaphor, but sometimes it is very difficult to put complicated symptoms into words (something I have too much first hand knowledge about right now!) and the doctor needs to make an intuitive leap to understand the symptoms and get the right diagnosis. There needs to be good communication between a doctor and patient or designer and client, but sometimes there just aren't words to describe, so there is an unspoken element to diagnosis, treatment and design. (Who thought I would ever put diagnosis treatment and design in one phrase?)

MissLucinda with all of this design wisdom to go on we will be expecting great things from you ;)!

I can't really get a grasp of the site based upon the descritions and pictures, do you have a plan view drawing?

Misslucinda - I am a little confused by your example because I am having difficulty understanding where the road is located. My assumption is somewhere near the driveway, but what is in front of the big porch - is that road too? You really have a beautiful house on a nice property - if I were you I would really focus on protecting and caring for the gorgeous trees you have. Love it!

Do you want it to look "planned"? or natural? I think proportionality is a key element to what you want to do - you have big trees, a tall house, a large yard with a lot of grass - the bed needs to be proportional to those things and proportional to itself.

Drtygrl:

Formal would involve terracing the front of the house and wrapping some kind of hedge around front and sides (third side is retaining wall). Hedges we use here are boxwood and it would be $8,000 just by the time I bought 24"-30" plants and frankly, although the front of the house is classic, I don't like the entrance view and think even after all that money it won't look great.

However, you asked about the road. In the second pic, to the far right corner you can see the road if you squint... but here, going even further to the right as above, in a line perpendicular with the front of the house (not shown in photo) and roughly perpendicular to the driveway is THE road in summer:
{{gwi:46087}}

and in Winter:
{{gwi:46088}}

And this is so for about 230' although directly in front of the house I was able to plant an evergreen and shrub border for about 50'.

Just in case we are talking about general stuff and not lucinda's garden in particular.

woody, (my theoretical friend and someone who has been through the mill) says that "plants around a symmetrical lawn can be very effective" and who would deny this? but this is the answer not the question. "How do I display my garden to the best advantage" may be the question.

A colonial amongst mature trees? Set out some beds with a lawn mower why doncha?

Just in case we are talking about general stuff and not lucinda's garden in particular.

woody, (my theoretical friend and someone who has been through the mill) says that "plants around a symmetrical lawn can be very effective" and who would deny this? but this is the answer not the question. "How do I display my garden to the best advantage" may be the question.

A colonial amongst mature trees? Set out some beds with a lawn mower why doncha?

I just watched the second Austin Powers movie again. Someone's been playing with the remote.

Anyway, I think there is a lot of starting with conclusions going on.

Apparently I was a too facile in my title for this posting as I am not being heard so let me again repeat: I am in no way opposed to perimeter (of the property) planting. However, in my case it just won't work because: a) nothing wants to grow under the tangle of sugar maple roots which (no pun) lines the edge of my property bordered by the busy road and b) it fails to provide me with the sense of enclosure I seek.

Getting away from "conclusions" and back to my original question...if not the perimeter how do you find the best positioning and design for an intra-property garden?

I knew approximately where my new border would be (positioned to obscure the road views) and marked that line with stakes which unfortunately don't show up well in the photos. However, in my eye, it looked like an island bed without rhyme nor reason. And it clashed with that squared-off dogs leg (behind those three fat spruces).

What I am really finding out, and you are correct in asking for a plan Rhodium, is that in order to transcend 'perimeteritis' (defined as where the line/area or whatever you want to call it, for a planting bed is already there for us to latch onto and which can be somewhat mindless at times) one must first do a site plan...and believe me graph paper in hand, I am working on one.

In lieu of and instead looking at my property in GoogleEarth I figured out the problem: To the left of the first photograph I have a very high retaining wall which noticably bulges out towards and culminating after the 90 degree corner of the dogs leg and then recedes in a subtle and disappearing s-curve.

So now the right angle of the dogs leg is not only an impediment (and Laag would smack me upside the head for this error) from backing up from the garage and using it as a turn-around but it would be a more pleasing design if we curve the bed (or so I think thus far).

Further, if you can visualize a gentle curve starting out 10 feet from the porch corner in pic #3 and ending past and about 10 feet short of (to the right of) the weensy spruce in pic #2.... then my new bed makes sense in that it is the inverse of the retaining wall and the smaller and echoing dog's leg bed. Does this make sense?

Phew. That's alot of words.

As Rhodium suggested, a plan view would help a lot... Some of us hijacked your thread to have fun with a discussion that probably is silly and frustrating for you - sorry about that... :-) What I have found in the past is that the easy/simple way to approach the plan view is to take a copy of your property survey and use that to roughly scribble possible alternative layouts. When you draw in existing beds or structures, trees etc., those may not be perfectly to scale but you can easily make it good enough to serve as a starting place for planning purposes. It's a whole lot easier than drawing everything to scale from scratch on graph paper - you might get to that stage at some point but it might be best to leave that until after you've got a rough plan that you think will work.

What I've learned from my reading and years of trial and error is that I'm happiest with the outcome when, as I said above, I plan the shape of the 'negative' space as well as the space/shape of the planting areas. It sounds to me that you are heading in that direction too if you are thinking that your first idea of what appears to be an island bed, doesn't look right in the space. Try looking at both the bed shapes and the shape of the remaining space when you're exploring the options. What worked for me in the front yard this year was to turn the remaining lawn into grassy paths that lead around the beds. By giving the grassy areas a definite shape - and purpose - it helped make all the beds fit together better.

Playing around with a plan view is, I think, the easiest way to start. Keeping it simple on a copy of the survey makes it easy to explore lots of options without doing a heck of a lot of fiddly drawing :-)

Did we hijack the thread? I thought it was a theoretical design question.

You're right about the latter and IMO no hijacking occurred, drtygrl.

Lucinda

Go to the bottom of the class woody, what was interesting about lucindas question was exactly as drtygrl says.

What we have been talking about, I think, is the danger of taking an opinion as some kind of truth and then worrying about how your own simple plan holds up to the perceived wisdom.

What other opinions about what is percieved wisdom are out there or maybe what is the most contemporary percieved wisdom?

You use the "wisdom" of others to get what you want for yourself. Rules of design help you figure out what you are seeing yourself and what to do about it. They are not for imposing a code onto your own efforts that you must adhere to because That Is The Way It Is Done. I run into this with consultation clients repeatedly, they think they need to follow some kind of covenant-like regulations in their yards.

I like how bboy said it. I can read design books and not "get" certain sections--either in theory or in how I might use them--and then one day something clicks and AHA I see how the principle leads to a certain effect. Then I can decide whether to use that to achieve something I wanted or something that was "missing" . Understanding the principle and not just memorizing some words or following a recipe also lets me see how I might employ it in part, or with a variation, or wait 'til next year, or see that what I've done will grow into the principle, or fuggetaboutit, or whatever.

bboy has knack for succinct and concrete expression. In point of fact, he's expressed his reccomendation so succinctly and so many times I finally broke down and ordered Grant's "Garden Design Illustrated" ;).

There's a lexicon unique to every area of expertise. Woody mentioned one design principal articulated by architect Christopher Alexander in his book, "A Pattern Language" and that is the concept of 'negative space'.

I scratched my head for a few moments until I came up with an illustration for myself and that was a Japanese Ikibana flower arrangement where there is a minimum of floral material but the placement of those few pieces and the spaces between them have everything to do with the coherence, harmony and beauty of the design. And this brings us full circle to bboys point.

Ms Lu,

Forget about all the dos and don'ts for a moment.

I'll tell you what I do (and I'm not necessarily normal in my approaches) with every landscape design on an existing home. It evolved from being a necessary step for drawing a plan and became (to me) the most essential step in planning a landscape.

It is to clear my head of any detail of what I might do and simply go out to the home and start to do an existing conditions plan. I know that you live there and believe you already know those existing conditions, but there are different levels of familiarity. A humorous analogy would be going to first base, second base, . of intimacy with the property. We all know that the more we do anything, the more we understand it and pick up on detail and remember it (whatever "it" is). This is no different with your landscape.

The four bases of an existing conditions plan are measuring and photographing, recording your measurements in a sketch or diagram as you measure, and drafting the plan which is a two step process of reading measurements (and looking at the photos for confirmation) and the physical act of drawing it (the home run "theres no place like home, theres no place like home" ). That is a lot of work, but you will know and understand your site like you never have before. It puts you at "ground zero". Now you can move forward logically.

You will, hopefully, be a lot less concerned with concepts such as "perimeteritis" or "negative space" and be more focused on what challenges you have to overcome. Some of those should be newly discovered while some you already knew about. . And you will have a base plan to start sketching in your proposed work. Here again is a place where you can work backward or forward.

You want a place to sun bathe and enjoy your coffee -these are "activities". You want some privacy and not to be bothered by road noise these are "experiences". Ultimately, you need actual dimensioned physical space, structures, plants, etc, where you can do these activities with the desired experience these are the "requirements".

You seem to be thinking backwards by first defining the physical requirements for the experience before the physical requirement for the activity. Glenda the Good Witch said "it is best to start at the beginning and then follow the yellow brick road". I agree.

Your list of activities should grow as you do your existing conditions plan (passive activities are also activities). Certainly, you will become aware of more aesthetic issues that will need to be mitigated or enhanced along with the primary ones. Parking, arriving, maintaining, entering, exiting, viewing, bringing in the groceries, playing with the dog, . are all activities, all will yield an experience, and all have physical requirements.

Start by planning the primary activities. Place those that are movable where they least conflict with other activities and near supportive activities. If you need a patio, put it in the plan before you think about screening it (opposite of your current thinking that is starting with the screening). Enhance that space (it may begin to screen it). The design will evolve. Just dont make the secondary physical requirement (the screening) become the primary activity and then have to then figure out how your primary activity is going to work within it. Build your landscape around what is important both philosophically and physically. Perimeters and negative space evolve within that bigger context.

Starting with a "mixed border" that is "10 out and 56 long" is the same as designing a planting bed and then trying to figure out what to plant within it.

Put on the ruby slippers and click your heals together.

The four bases of an existing conditions plan are measuring and photographing, recording your measurements in a sketch or diagram as you measure, and drafting the plan which is a two step process of reading measurements (and looking at the photos for confirmation) and the physical act of drawing it (the home run "theres no place like home, theres no place like home" ). That is a lot of work, but you will know and understand your site like you never have before. It puts you at "ground zero". Now you can move forward logically.

Thank you. I've been stuck on what to do with my side and backyards for...what, eight years now? Ever since the 2001 market crashed and the money for the plans the LA designed for us went away. I couldn't get my brain around my yard...and now I know how to start.

I've been completely stymied by the existing conditions...in part because I was looking at them piece-meal. I need to look at the whole thing...and how we want to use the property...and not get caught up in the fact that it's a honking big project. I do well with vignettes...not so much with big pictures. I need to DEFINE the big picture.

laag...it may be an interesting winter!

melanie

...I'm a work'in on it...:
{{gwi:46089}}

and I am going blind with that 1/8" scale or 1 box = 2 feet:
{{gwi:46090}}