Making a beautiful garden – Part 2

Making a beautiful garden means adding mystery. All the best gardens have a bit of mystery about them. It’s one of the things garden designers like to achieve. If yours is a bland rectangle of lawn with a dull border around the edge, completely free of mystery, we’ll reveal how to add interest by hiding things from view. You don’t want to be able to see the whole garden in one glance. You need to give your eyes a treat! Here’s how to do it.

Plant tall to create hidden spaces

Tall evergreen plants like bamboo and conifers make brilliant wind barriers as well as creating mystery. Plant them in a straight row half way along your garden so you can’t see the back half of the space from the house. Or plant two ‘arms’ that create a slim doorway in the middle, through which you walk to get to the other end of the garden. Alternatively plant them in a semi-circle or a wavy line to interrupt the view. Putting visual barriers in your way makes a garden seem a lot bigger as well as adding interest, a useful illusion.

Making a beautiful garden – Use fencing or stone walls

Maybe create two spaces split by a wooden fence, either a standard one or the lovely woven fence panels made from hazel or willow called hurdles. You can create an entrance in the centre of the garden or at one of the sides, giving the eye some ‘unknown’ to enjoy.

Cheap wooden fencing lasts for years as long as you’re not in a windy spot. While it’s a bit dull on its own the raw wood colour will quickly calm down over time, thanks to the weather, into an attractive silvery grey that blends beautifully with plants. If you like you can grow scented climbers up it to soften the appearance. Mile-a-minute, although it isn’t scented, grows remarkably fast if you want an instant one-season effect and has loads of frothy white flowers.

You can also paint a fence, a fast and effective way to add extra interest. A deep aubergine purple makes the green of plants pop right out, a gorgeous effect, and black does the same. Dark colours tend to open a space up, while paler colours tend to pull the fencing in to make the garden look smaller. Today’s ‘heritage’ colours, all those gorgeous mucky natural-looking greens, greys and browns, are wonderful against greenery and flowers, a really stylish look.

A stone wall is an expensive option but it’ll last a lifetime. It costs less when you build your wall with low-cost breezeblocks then ‘clad’ it in real stone or composite concrete that looks like stone. Alternatively build a hollow wall, fill the space in between with compost, and add plants for a really lush mystery-creating barrier where you can create varying height with your planting. Or build a simple breezeblock wall, paint it a beautiful colour, and grow climbing plants all over it so it simply froths with colour and life. Lovely! Make it evergreen climbers and it’ll look lush all year round.

Don’t forget, walls and fences don’t have to be straight. A wall built in a curved C-shape gives you a lovely place to sit, sheltered and private.

Curvy pathways, curved hedging

Curve the routes you take through the space to create visual interest, rather than making a path straight up the middle, which makes it look smaller as well as less interesting. Paths don’t have to be made from square or rectangular concrete blocks. They can be made from old brick or gravelled, cut out of a lawn and left as hard beaten earth, or planted with soft, scented chamomile.

Hedges are your best friend for mystery, and some hedging plants grow really quickly. Take laurel, which comes in all sorts of colours, from deep dark green to spotted pale green and yellow. It’s also evergreen, for year-round beauty. Plant curved hedges. Plant a circular hedge to sit in secretly in or add a table and chairs to. Set your imagination free.

Dig down or stack things up

Do you have deep soil? If so you can dig down to make a secret sunken space to enjoy the outdoor life in, a cool place you can add shade to with a big, beautiful garden parasol or sail shade, also adding privacy. There are all sorts of ways to create mystery by stacking things up to create barriers, then painting them or planting them up. How about a stack of old car tyres, painted pure white and filled with soil to make a tall planter or even a dramatic wall of planters packed with vivid flowering plants?

Use your garden furniture to create private spaces

Your garden furniture itself can create lush spaces to relax in, and private spaces that aren’t overlooked from the house or by your neighbours. Imagine the secret places you can create using a beautiful contemporary gazebo? Add curtains or floaty fabric for a discreet entertainment space.

Simply arrange your outdoor furniture set so it makes a square, where you’re all facing inwards towards your chiminea, BBQ or fire pit. Plant all around the space and it makes you feel like you’re in a room. And big, colourful fabric windbreaks, the sort you get for days at the beach, create instant mystery and privacy and are easy to move from place to place. You can even make your own from sharpened wooden stakes and fabric you buy yourself.

Plant in the middle!

Planting around the edge of a garden just highlights the lack of mystery, privacy and visual interest. Imagine planting beautiful specimens in the centre of the space to create a glade effect. If you can afford large plants you get an instant improvement, a classy look with mystery at its heart.