Landscape Design
Step Up Your Garden’s Design With Planted Geometry
Add structure, highlight forms and direct the eye with plantings in blocks, bands, cones and spheres
Gardens of any style and size can benefit from planting in geometric formations such as blocks, bands and walls, or clipping the plants themselves into spheres and pyramids. The addition of plantings with geometry and structure can help define beds, direct the eye to focal points and provide year-round visual interest.
While perfectly clipped shrubs come to mind first when we talk about plants and geometry, not all designs require a dedication to pruning to maintain. Some make use of easy-care plants like ornamental grasses planted in bands or loose blocks to get a hit of geometry.
While perfectly clipped shrubs come to mind first when we talk about plants and geometry, not all designs require a dedication to pruning to maintain. Some make use of easy-care plants like ornamental grasses planted in bands or loose blocks to get a hit of geometry.
Spheres. Ball shapes can visually bring both structure and a sense of movement to landscapes — giving the illusion that a perfectly spherical shrub could potentially roll out across the yard. Used massed in groups of different-sized spheres, shrubs clipped into spheres add a playful note to formal or contemporary gardens. Both circles and spheres can also be used symbolically to represent “wholeness” or celestial elements like the sun or moon.
As an accent plant, a spherical shrub helps add structure to beds with looser plantings like creeping vines and perennials.
How and where to use them: As garden accents or focal points, in containers on either side of an entryway, grouped together or with other mixed ornamental plantings in garden beds.
How and where to use them: As garden accents or focal points, in containers on either side of an entryway, grouped together or with other mixed ornamental plantings in garden beds.
Bands. Plantings confined to long, narrow beds form bands in the landscape. A bit like choosing vertical or horizontal stripes for a sweater, planting bands can visually stretch a landscape, making narrow lots seem wider when bands run across the yard. When placed to run along an axis line, bands draw one’s eye to the end of the garden or to a viewpoint. Bands are also useful as edges for larger planting beds.
Planted bands don’t need to be made up of carefully manicured evergreens. In this modern garden in Marseille, in the south of France, the designers used ornamental grasses planted in bands to break up an expanse of lawn and add lateral visual interest for a pathway running down the center of the landscape.
How and where to use them: Strategically to make a garden feel wider, direct one’s gaze or define a planting bed.
How and where to use them: Strategically to make a garden feel wider, direct one’s gaze or define a planting bed.
Large blocks. Use plants pruned into block shapes to bring a feeling of stability and order to a garden design. They can be used as literal garden building blocks — planted as garden walls, edges, screens and structural low plantings.
Block plantings of evergreens add visual interest to beds year-round and can form backdrops to seasonal beds of bulbs, annuals and flowering perennials.
Browse pruning tools
Block plantings of evergreens add visual interest to beds year-round and can form backdrops to seasonal beds of bulbs, annuals and flowering perennials.
Browse pruning tools
In this contemporary landscape in the Hudson Valley, in upstate New York, the landscape architects used block plantings of ornamental grasses to create a modern meadow look that would complement the minimalistic lines of the home. Unlike block plantings of sheared shrubs, the ornamental grasses take little maintenance — just an annual cut-back every winter.
How and where to use them: To complement contemporary architecture, as backdrops for perennials and as living walls, screens or edges to define planting beds.
How and where to use them: To complement contemporary architecture, as backdrops for perennials and as living walls, screens or edges to define planting beds.
Smaller boxes. Both square and rectangular box shapes are useful in formal and contemporary garden designs to draw the eye and emphasize geometric shapes. For example, the landscape architect behind this London courtyard trimmed boxwoods into low rectangles to highlight the form of the stairs; larger rectangles sit on either side of the fountain. The crisp angles and uniform appearance take dedication to maintain (get out those clippers), but the design effect can be worth it.
How and where to use them: To emphasize hardscape elements, in containers on either side of an entryway, mixed with ornamental plantings and as accent plants or focal points.
How and where to use them: To emphasize hardscape elements, in containers on either side of an entryway, mixed with ornamental plantings and as accent plants or focal points.
Flat rectangles and squares. Low-growing plants confined to square and rectangular planting beds act like living doormats or stepping stones in design. Here, the almost two-dimensional quality of this turf grass planting in crisp metal-edged rectangles turns a usually mundane garden element into a real standout geometric feature. Yes, it would be a pain to mow and trim, but what a neat idea.
Other ways to emulate this geometric carpet look without nearly as much maintenance:
Other ways to emulate this geometric carpet look without nearly as much maintenance:
- Plant a slow-growing ground cover such as sedum or silver carpet (Dymondia margaretae, zones 9 to 11) into rectangular beds with clearly defined edging.
- Invest in a geometric hardscape pattern for outdoor flooring.
Cones and pyramids. Less common in natural settings or in hardscape, pyramids and cones immediately draw the eye. Use evergreen shrubs trimmed into cones or pyramids as landscape focal points or to add structure to more freeform beds.
Used as an entryway marker, a pair of conical boxwoods frame a view to the bistro table and clearly demarcate the place where you leave one garden area and enter another.
How and where to use them: To define entryways, as accent plants and focal points, in mixed borders, in containers and in groupings.
How and where to use them: To define entryways, as accent plants and focal points, in mixed borders, in containers and in groupings.
Vertical elements. Skinny shrubs, bamboo, cactus, trees with straight trunks and other vertical, linear plants add interest to gardens through their upright shapes. Planted in a courtyard, trees with linear trunks can define a smaller outdoor room and draw the eye upward. Use the repeating forms of skinny, upright trees (like Italian cypress) to frame a view or march down either side of a driveway.
How and where to use them: To direct one’s gaze upward, to define outdoor rooms and to frame views.
How and where to use them: To direct one’s gaze upward, to define outdoor rooms and to frame views.
Hardscape. Although it’s a larger topic for another day, plants are not the only means to establish geometric themes in a garden. Hardscape elements like walls, fences and pathways generally make up the bones of a garden’s structure and are geometric elements that require no clipping, shearing, or replanting to maintain.
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