Garden Design Fundamentals for Beginner Gardeners

If you’re new to gardening but want to create a beautiful garden oasis at home, rest assured you don’t have to be an expert in garden design to get started. Beginner gardeners will benefit from learning a few garden planning basics to get started, but once you have a general knowledge of the fundamentals of garden design, feel free to flex your creative freedom and have some fun with it.

It can be tempting to buy all the flowers, vegetables, or fruit trees that look the most attractive to you and figure it out as you go, but the end result might be chaos and disorganization. If there is no flow or cohesive design in place, this will turn out to be a disservice to your gardening efforts.

Apply the following gardening fundamentals as your foundation, then don’t hesitate to experiment with your garden. Breathe new life into your garden as time goes on, and watch as you get more comfortable with gardening the more time spent doing it.

How Garden Design Software Makes Gardening Easier

Beginner gardeners might get overwhelmed by designing a garden from scratch but using a garden planner like the Hortisketch garden planner software makes the gardening process much simpler. Gardening planning takes patience, practice, and creativity, and it might take some time for you to get it right. Don’t rush the process, there’s no timeline on creating a beautiful garden. Just like anything else in life, there’s no room for perfectionism in gardening.

Measure Your Space

Every gardening space is different and will require a unique set of gardening design principles. Small gardening spaces in urban areas vs. gardens in sprawling country areas will differ in design basics. Take this into account, while measuring your space to determine the best course of action to scale a successful garden to your space.

Set a Focal Point

Setting a focal point will attract the eye to one place, honing in on one specific object, color, or plant variety. Your focal point can be anything from a water feature to a beautiful magnolia tree. Once this focal point is determined, this sets the stage for the rest of the garden. Do your best to frame your focal point and accentuate its beauty.

Incorporate a Color Scheme

Incorporating a color scheme will streamline your color ideas and make them tie your garden together in a cohesive way. Limiting your garden to four or five colors is a good general rule of thumb, and beyond that the color decisions are entirely up to your personal preferences. If a color scheme isn’t considered, your garden can end up looking like a jumble of colors that don’t mix.

Symmetry or Balance

A symmetric garden will feature the same flowers or plants on each side, mirroring each other to achieve a more traditional look. If this isn’t your style, strive for balance and harmony in your garden instead by playing with size, texture, and shape to find cohesion. This requires playing around with a garden planner to balance the weight.

Repetition

Repetition is the secret sauce of garden cohesion. Using repetition will make your garden appear grander in size and amplify the beauty of each plant. At a minimum, use three of each plant variety to create repetition that amplifies your garden and showcases the natural beauty of it.

Use Garden Savvy’s Hortisketch to Design Your Garden

Garden Savvy’s Hortisketch Garden Planner makes it easy to plan, build, and design your garden online so that you can make your garden dreams come to life. When applying these basic gardening fundamentals, use our garden planner to design a harmonious garden before you start buying plants that don’t mix well together.

Use the planting and spacing guide to help you properly scale your garden based on the plant’s needs your garden’s growing zone. Use the garden design icons including vegetables, fruit trees, flowers, fencing, pools, and more to drag and drop your desired flowers, vegetables, fruits and more onto your online gardening space. Employ trial and error to find a sense of balance and cohesion before you purchase one single plant.

From there, you will know what to purchase to make your garden dreams a reality. Head on over to our suppliers’ page to locate the world’s best suppliers for all your gardening needs-over 1,600 vendors.

Gardeners grow at Garden Savvy! We provide gardeners with the best tools to plan a garden, organize a garden, and research a garden, with Hortisketch, our Garden Manager and our catalog of gardening Suppliers. Get started on your dream garden today