9/20/2010
By Tauqeer Ul Hassan
Garden that sloping towards the house has its own advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of having such garden perhaps is that you can view everything in it. However, it has some disadvantages as well, the two more prominent are: in case the slope is steep enough, the house appears to be dark, and the second disadvantage can be of drainage as the water accumulates at the bottom near the house and may cause dampness problem. But the slope in these designs is not that steep, so you need not to take too much account of these disadvantages. The shaped paving should have sloped away from the house and there must be a form of drainage at the foot of the steps. The circular area of the paving can be done in different types and shapes. The area other than circle could be shady and in winter it may become slippery as well with natural stone or smooth paving. The climbing plants on either of the corners will help to take off the bareness of the area.
The height of the retaining walls (that is of brick or stone) should be maintained all around. The ground height near the steps will manage the height of the retaining walls. Some backfilling with soil may be needed. Make sure that the plants on the top of the walls are not too high to obstruct the view.
A low retaining wall is used to level the area for the seat and pergola. Similarly, on an opposite corner, the small shed or summerhouse is treated in the very same way. The slope between the two borders should be from rear fence to down to the lawn and the lawn itself will slope down towards the steps. The structure used as a pergola needs to be of some heavy material so that it will support some climbing plants, such as a honeysuckle and clematis. If you prefer to enjoy the sun, you can opt out the pergola.
As there is no room for shrubby plants, climbing plants are used to screen all the fences. To avoid any damage to the plants, the pergola timber used should be pressure treated and stained. There are different shapes of pergola that you can use, such as octagonal or hexagonal. But fore such designs, you need to adjust the seat under a pergola further back into the shade to have a comfortable sitting place. These designs are not suitable for people who enjoy the sun a lot.
If you are designing a hobby garden for a family, then there are certain modifications you can make in your garden accordingly. You can use a high quality fine lawn grasses. You can replace pergola and seat with greenhouse. And instead of shrubs, you can grow high amount of herbaceous and annual flowers in your garden. In case of alkaline soil, tubs and pots of acidic compost can be used to grow ericaceous plants, such as rhododendrons, camellias, pieris and azaleas and many more.
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Design a Small Garden and also Design a Small Garden.
By Tauqeer Ul Hassan
Hobby garden as the name suggests is merely a leisure pursuit and has nothing to do with formal garden. It has a small patio area, which is small enough to accommodate sun-loungers or chairs. Natural stone is used mostly in a paving with random rectangular or crazy paving style. This natural stone is more likely the color of rockery stone, i.e. if the rockery stone is gray then the modern gray sets made of natural stone or from concrete might be laid in a square or rectangular pattern. It is quite odd to use plain square or rectangular concrete slabs in the hobby garden. Rocks used will form the topmost of the terrace and holding back much of the soil. For hobby garden, use walls on each side of the neighbors' boundaries and at the top of the garden. At the top of the garden you can use stone and for the places that are not much visible, you can use concrete blocks. It is seen that large pieces are more useful than small pieces and make sure that all the lines of weakness in rocks (strata) face the same direction.
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To give realist effect to your hobby garden, the rocks should go right down to the water surface in the pond. To give more practical look to your garden, you can use reinforced concrete or molded fiberglass rather than a flexible liner such as butyl rubber. Using a cascade in the garden will improve the looks of your garden.
Stone steps will join the two terraces and the color of the paving stones should be the same like everything else. Sidewalls are covered by mixture of shrubs and climbers, whereas the clusters of rocks keep the informal theme alive at the two opposite corners. Remember, you need to have a gradual change from pure chunks of rocks to walling stone, as a result the wall emerging from the rocky outcrop, gives an attractive look.
On the corners and edges of the garden you can use small specimen trees such as Japanese maple, medium sized conifers, weeping cheery and weeping birch. Keeping the central area of the small garden free from tall plants is a good idea. The small lawn usually serves the purpose of connecting the shed and the top step. Usually stepping-stones are used for this junction, but there are other ways like using a mixture of grass and chamomile or grass and alpine bulbs. The planting is made so that it screens the fences and the shed. For limited space, you can use shrubs like pyracantha and garrya. They are handy at limited space because you can trim these shrubs so that to fit them in size and shape according to the space available. For covering the shed, Vitis coignetiae or Polygonum baldschuanicum are really helpful.
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