Sunday, June 30, 2013

Landscape Gardens Ideas

News and Pictures about landscape gardens ideas

Landscaping Ideas - Landscape Pictures, Tips to Beautify Yards

Landscaping Ideas - Landscape Pictures, Tips to Beautify Yards

Do you seek landscaping ideas and plant facts? View pictures, landscape tips, hardscape Getting Started; Take My Free Classes; A-Z of Plants; Spring Flowers; Cottage Gardens

Landscape Design Ideas & Plans | Free Landscaping Ideas

Landscape Design Ideas & Plans | Free Landscaping Ideas

The landscaping ideas on this page are free for you to look at and get examples from. Shady Garden For Long Narrow Side Yard. Most yards are unique in shape and

Landscape Design - Landscaping Ideas & Pictures for Front and

Landscape Design - Landscaping Ideas & Pictures for Front and

500+ Landscape Ideas. Build your garden's bones with a well-designed hardscape.

Landscape Garden Ideas | eHow.com

Landscape Garden Ideas | eHow.com

Gardens delight the eye with a spectrum of flower colors, the textures of rock features or the soothing sounds of fountains. These pockets of nature give gardeners a

My Ideal Garden

My Ideal Garden

Garden Information. Landscape Idea Photos; Our Portfolio: Landscape Idea Pictures; Garden Coach; Ideas and Resources; Plan Your Landscape; Free eCourse; Landscape

Pictures & Ideas for Flower Gardens, Beautiful Landscapes, Cottage

Pictures & Ideas for Flower Gardens, Beautiful Landscapes, Cottage

Get design ideas, pictures and tips for transforming your outdoor living space with a beautiful landscape and garden from HGTV.com.

Landscaping - Landscape Ideas & Garden Plans & Design - BHG.com

Landscaping - Landscape Ideas & Garden Plans & Design - BHG.com

Find landscaping plans, pictures and design ideas for front yards and backyards, decks and patios, hills, and even desert landscaping. Get inspiration for garden

Landscape Ideas - Landscaping Network

Landscape Ideas - Landscaping Network

Landscaping Ideas Landscaping Pictures Backyard Landscaping Ideas Front Yard Landscaping Patio Ideas Outdoor Kitchen Ideas Rooftop Garden Tips. Creating outdoor

Gardening - Landscaping - Home & Family Network

Gardening - Landscaping - Home & Family Network

Landscaping. Learn how to assess your landscaping needs, create a new landscape on a budget, and get landscaping tips and ideas.

Directory Of Landscaping Pictures And Garden Design Styles

Directory Of Landscaping Pictures And Garden Design Styles

Pictures of landscaping and garden design styles. Landscape design photos of backyard, front yard, patio, and more do it yourself ideas from professional designers.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

The Design Process

Designer Duncan Heather argues that more can be made of the preliminary research documents, when it comes to winning design contracts and selling schemes to clients.

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When first being taught to allocate space, the landscape student is guided through several different processes before they reach a final design solution.

It all starts with an accurate topographical land survey. A plan of the site is then drawn up to scale, to include boundary walls, existing buildings, trees, services and existing levels.

Having gathered this information on a local scale, the student should then expand their area of study to the surrounding landscape. Topographical, historical cultural and architectural information can be gathered from maps and the internet, which helps put the site into context and may suggest a theme on which to hang their eventual design.

Shadow plans are then calculated to assess the impact of spring and summer shade patterns and a sight Analysis plan developed to note the influencing factors of the site such as existing features, wind direction good and bad views etc.

Once all this information has been compiled, the student can start to experiment with space allocation in the form of bubble or functional diagrams.

All this work is a prerequisite to the creation of the presentation or master plan.

But what happens to all this research once the presentation plans are completed?

What many student fail to appreciate, is the difficulty many clients have in understanding the 2D plan drawings.
While we take it for granted that the ‘house’ is the big black rectangle in the middle of the drawing, it’s surprizing how few clients realise this. You can be waxing lyrical about how great their new garden is going to be, while showing them the plan and they simply can’t make head nor tail of it!

At the Oxford College of Garden Design we teach our students to overcome these difficulties by using the research and preparation drawings as part of the sales presentation.

The diagram above, illustrates the 4 preliminary design stages and can either be presented on separate sheets, or combined into one or 2 presentation drawings. These allow the designer to start their presentation, by going through the site survey and pointing out the house and the important features of the garden. This allows the client time to digest the plan and to familiarise themselves with the graphical nature of the drawings.

Next you can explain how you developed their ideas, by running through the site analysis plan and the bubble/functional diagrams.

Explaining the thought process to your clients helps you justify why you have arrive at a particular design solution, but also it help the client to understand how much work goes into the preparation of a landscape plan.

When you are charging several $1000 for an outline proposal arriving with just one sheet of paper can give the client the impression that they are not getting value for money.

Remember! you only get one crack of the whip at presenting your ideas, so you need to make that ‘sale’ in no more than about 60 minutes, otherwise you won’t get the rest of your design fee and more importantly the garden will never be built.

Arriving with 2-3 sheets of research drawings plus the garden plan, plus any coloured perspective and a mood board, suddenly starts to look like a lot of work and thought has gone into the design.

So if you want to improve your sales and get more of your gardens built, spend a little extra time ‘prettying-up’ your research drawings and use them as part of your presentation.

Duncan Heather is director of the Oxford College of Garden Design and MyGardenSchool and one of Europe top garden designers

How to Survey a Garden Pt.2

Even if you think a garden is completely square you should always check the corners using triangulation and never take for granted what your eyes are telling you.
Triangulation involves taking two measurements from fixed corners of the house - to the point that you wish to plot. In this case, we will use points A and B as shown in figure 1 for our fixed points.
16-04-2012 14-23-52
Now, we need to find points E and F and, to do this, we need to triangulate. Take a measurement from point A to point E and another from point B to point E. (Figure 3)
In order to plot all four corners we need to know the following measurements
A-E B-E
A-F G-F
G-D H-D
A-C I-C
Top Tip: The bigger the triangle the more accurate the measurement. Therefore triangulation AF-GF will be more accurate than AE-BE because the triangle is bigger. (It doesn’t matter that A & G are not a straight line)
Remember: That you need 2 measurements from the house for every corner you plot. It’s very easy to forget to take one measurement and this could result in you having to drive make to the site just to take one vital dimension. I always draw out the triangulation line on my rough sketch of the site to make sure I have all the measurements I need before I leave.
You can also use triangulation to plot the position of trees and other elements in the garden. See diag. below. When measuring a tree you run each tape to the ‘centre middle’ rather than to the front of the trunk (see diag. below) as this gives a more accurate reading.
16-04-2012 14-24-21
Triangulation can also be used to plot the corners of other outbuildings garages and even the centre of drain covers so it’s probably the measurement designers use most, when surveying a garden.
MEASURING YOUR GARDEN: OFFSETS
There is one more measurement that is useful for the garden designer and that is called offsets. Imagine for a moment our garden, instead of just one tree had a small wood.
16-04-2012 14-24-37
You need two tape measures for this. Lay one along the ground between two known points i.e. E - E1 If you don’t have two easily identifiable points, you can make them up, then triangulate their positions e.g. point E1
Then with a second tape run a measurement back from each tree to the tape on the ground making sure you meet the tape at 90° then record the measurement from the tree as well as the point at which the two tapes meet (see red lines). In this way you can quickly measure many trees using a whole range of offsets.
This method is also useful for measuring curved flow beds. Set up your tape close to your flower bed along the ground and plot the position of each end using triangulation. Then take a measurement at 90°along the tape every 2-5m back to the flower bed and record the distance. When you get back to the office, you can mark off the points on your plan then join up the dots like dot-to-dot picture to get the shape of your curve.
The same approach can be used for measuring curved walls/boundaries.


















Friday, June 28, 2013

Student Exhibition 2010: See Why our students are considered some of the best in the World!

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13062759&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1Student Exhibition 2010 from Duncan Heather on Vimeo.
The student end of years’ exhibition was held on the 17th June with over 200 people visiting the show between 4-7pm The students go on to use their exhibits as part of their sales portfolio so the work has a duel role both as a way of showing the external examiners the quality of the work and also as a sales aide for when they start their business. The work displayed is a selection of all of the work completed through the year so from the first design exercises completed in the into module to the 3 real gardens completed during the course. Not to mention the 20 or so speed design exercises design to stretch every facet of the design repertoire from commercial housing projects to car par design, through to the sighting of tennis courts and swimming pools and garage and driveway design. The course is called residential landscape design for a reason, as we cover both domestic and corporate projects to maximise the employability of our students as well as give them the broadest range of experience of any the design schools.
“The course lies somewhere between a university based education and an apprenticeship, as student and tutors work closely together on real live projects and clients from the start.”
Project 1 was a tiny courtyard garden in central Oxford the garden was part of a development of modern town houses built in the late 80’s over 3 floors with the lounge dining and kitchen bases on the first floor. There is a first floor balcony, but no existing link to the garden, so is was decided very quickly to build a flight of stairs allowing direct access to the garden. Project 2 was a small country garden in a village location in Rotherfield Oxfordshire. The site had significant privacy issues as well a requiring a new garage and workshop, a new conservatory and a kitchen garden. All to be squeezed into a relatively small 500 square meters Project 3 was a 2.5 acre country garden on a sloping site in Bluebury Oxfordshire. The front entrance area require a major revamp and the client also requested a conservatory design as well as a new pond/lake at the bottom of the site. This has been another excellent year. You can see from the slide show that are student produce better designs in their first 8 weeks of training and most schools produce in a year.
“It’s not just their design ability! The level of technical competence and professional practice is second to none and continues to demonstrate why are student are considered to be some of the best in the world.”

Front Yard Gardens Pictures

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Front Yard Garden Ideas

Front Yard Garden Ideas

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Front Yard Gardens - Martha Stewart Home & Garden

Front Yard Gardens - Martha Stewart Home & Garden

Read Marthastewart's Front Yard Gardens article Get do-it-yourself closet, kitchen, cabinet organization ideas, plus home decorating and gardening tips.

Front Yard Landscaping Ideas For Front Yards

Front Yard Landscaping Ideas For Front Yards

Front yard landscaping ideas, pictures to design a front yard, plans for front yard garden design

Front Yard Landscape Photos - Landscape Solutions, Garden Designs

Front Yard Landscape Photos - Landscape Solutions, Garden Designs

Front Yard photos can give you some ideas for the landscape in your front yard.

My Ideal Garden | Landscape Design - Front Yard Landscape Pictures

My Ideal Garden | Landscape Design - Front Yard Landscape Pictures

A collection of front yard landscaping pictures and other home landscape design images.

Flower Garden Pictures, Flower Bed Pictures, Pictures Of Roses

Flower Garden Pictures, Flower Bed Pictures, Pictures Of Roses

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Landscaping Ideas > Pictures > Front Yard > Garden Design

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Front yard, side yard, & backyard landscaping ideas & garden design pictures shared by homeowners and landscape contractors. Free how to landscape pictures & ideas.

Small Space Gardening - Front Yard Gardens

Small Space Gardening - Front Yard Gardens

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Small Garden Design for Front Yards - Gardening – Advice and

Small Garden Design for Front Yards - Gardening – Advice and

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Directory Of Landscaping Pictures And Garden Design Styles

Directory Of Landscaping Pictures And Garden Design Styles

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BBC - Gardening - How to be a gardener - Basics - Garden styles

BBC - Gardening - How to be a gardener - Basics - Garden styles

Garden styles The smaller the garden - the more it needs a distinctive 'theme’ to link the various plants and design elements. When you are deciding on a style

Garden Styles - Country and Cottage Gardens, Rock Gardens, More

Garden Styles - Country and Cottage Gardens, Rock Gardens, More

Find your favorite style and design a gorgeous garden. From Better Homes & Gardens

Garden Styles | Suite101.com

Garden Styles | Suite101.com

Garden Styles. Garden styles, unlike garden types, demonstrate the paths leading to the development of modern gardens. It is not difficult to list at least two styles

How to Recognize Garden Style | eHow.com

How to Recognize Garden Style | eHow.com

Garden style decor blurs the boundary between indoors and outdoors, with a light, bright ambience. Here are some ways to identify this fun, casual look. Does

Garden Style - Fine Gardening

Garden Style - Fine Gardening

Find dozens of articles, videos, and tips on Garden Style from the editors of Fine Gardening.

Quiz: What's Your Garden Style? - Better Homes and Gardens

Quiz: What's Your Garden Style? - Better Homes and Gardens

Do different garden styles seem complicated to you? If so, take our quiz and find out what style best matches your tastes.

Garden Styles | Gardening Tips | Garden Guides

Garden Styles | Gardening Tips | Garden Guides

Garden Styles. Learn about Garden Styles on GardenGuides.com. Info and videos including: Alpine Garden, Cottage Garden, English Garden and much more.

Formal Garden Style at GardenDesigner.com

Formal Garden Style at GardenDesigner.com

Formal Garden Style Description Explore - Garden Styles From formal to informal or somewhere in between, let us help you decide which garden style you prefer.

Green Houses & Greenhouse Kits | GardenStyles Greenhouses

Green Houses & Greenhouse Kits | GardenStyles Greenhouses

GardenStyles offers a wide variety of green houses, gardening tools, and greenhouse accessories. Click here to view our complete product line.

Garden Style | Types of Garden

Garden Style | Types of Garden

In conditions of modern world with an abundance of the newest technologies, modern technical achievements, a person who lives in modern mad rhythm more and more has

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Garden Plant

News and Pictures about garden plant

Flowering Plants | Shrubs | Shade Plants | Garden Plants

Flowering Plants | Shrubs | Shade Plants | Garden Plants

Spring Hill Nursery: plant catalog and online plants since 1849. Garden Plants, Flowering Plants, Shrubs, Bamboo Plants, Shade Plants, Perennials, and more!

Ornamental plant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ornamental plant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ornamental plants are plants that are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design projects, as houseplants, for cut flowers and specimen display.

Gardening - Advice and Tips, Vegetable Gardening, Container

Gardening - Advice and Tips, Vegetable Gardening, Container

How to grow and care for flowers, plants, and trees. Find backyard and front-yard landscaping ideas, landscape plans, a home garden planner, plant encyclopedia

Plants | Gardening Tips | Garden Guides

Plants | Gardening Tips | Garden Guides

Plants. Learn about Plants on GardenGuides.com. Info and videos including: Plant Taxonomy, About Plants, Annual Plants & Flowers and much more.

List of garden plants - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of garden plants - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a partial list of garden plants, plants that can be cultivated in the garden, listed alphabetically by genus. See also list of plants by common name. A Abelia

Recommended Garden Plants - How To Information | eHow.com

Recommended Garden Plants - How To Information | eHow.com

Don't just sit there scratching your head, find useful info on Recommended Garden Plants on eHow. Get essential tips and learn more about everything from Species of

Great Garden Plants – Your Online Plant Nursery for Thuja Green

Great Garden Plants – Your Online Plant Nursery for Thuja Green

Mail-order source for Jumbo 1 & 2-Quart potted New Perennials, Shrubs, KnockOut Roses, Hydrangeas, Hedge Plants & more! Plus our Amazing Triple Guarantee!

PlantFiles: The Largest Plant Identification Reference Guide

PlantFiles: The Largest Plant Identification Reference Guide

You've found the famous Dave's Garden website! Join this friendly global community that shares tips and ideas for home and gardens, along with seeds and plants!

Garden Plants - Online Garden Centers and Plant Nurseries

Garden Plants - Online Garden Centers and Plant Nurseries

Browse online garden centers and plant nurseries, and shop for quality garden plants, flower bulbs, and gardening supplies.

Plant Vegetable Garden - How To Information | eHow.com

Plant Vegetable Garden - How To Information | eHow.com

Don't just sit there scratching your head, find useful info on Plant Vegetable Garden on eHow. Get essential tips and learn more about everything from How to Deal

Fairy Garden Plants

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Fairy Garden > Miniature Trees > Fairy Gardens - Miniature Gardening

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Plants : These plants are all varieties that are suitable for use in smaller containers. Whether you are making an alpine trough, hypertufa planter with lots

Gardening with Fairies - Herb Companion Magazine | Cooking With

Gardening with Fairies - Herb Companion Magazine | Cooking With

Start with Herbs. Begin by choosing low-growing herbs. The scale of plant material in your fairy garden container is important because the plants create the miniature

Miniature Fairy Garden Plants | eHow.com

Miniature Fairy Garden Plants | eHow.com

You don't have to believe in fairies to enjoy an attractive and ornamental fairy garden in your environment. Fairy gardens often are designed to look whimsical, lush

How to Plant a Fairy Garden | eHow.com

How to Plant a Fairy Garden | eHow.com

Planting a fairy garden will transform your back yard into an enchanted fairy land. It will be a place where thirsty hummingbirds hover over brilliantly colored

Miniature Garden > Fairy Houses > Fairy Garden - Miniature Gardening

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Miniature Garden Plants Set for Fairy Terrarium Shade or by Janit

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Miniature Garden Center > Miniature Garden Plants > Mini Fairy

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Fairy Garden Inspiration - Ilona's Garden in Ohio

Fairy Garden Inspiration - Ilona's Garden in Ohio

Enchanting fairy gardens are fun,small, and easy to create.The plants to choose and other ideas on making your own fairy garden.

Plants for a Fairy Garden | Garden Guides

Plants for a Fairy Garden | Garden Guides

Plants for a Fairy Garden. A fairy garden is a garden in a small box, container or window box and is a miniature landscape that is really a three-dimensional work of art.

Fairy Garden Plants

Fairy Garden Plants

Plants for your miniature fairy garden you'll find our list of our favorite miniature fairy garden plants and miniature low growing ground cover.