Interiors Kitchens
barstools
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5. Ground covers level and focus the visual field. Here’s a great example of how the ground plane, filled with one blooming plant, can draw the eye forward through a design. The gravel path leads us into the larger planting and out to the water, but the creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum, zones 4 to 8) ground cover frames and guides, too, like runway lights. If there were a variety of flowering species down low, we’d get lost in the visual chaos, and the calm and serenity the garden is evoking would be lost. Even though this is a water’s-edge scene, I can’t help but think of a woodland trail. There, you’d see the trail edge filled with a few species all adrift as they move deeper into the forest canopy. Plants shown: Creeping thyme, blue oat grass, Siberian iris (Iris sibirica, zones 4 to 9), Victoria California lilac (Ceanothus ‘Victoria’, zones 8 to 10), Palace Purple coral bells (Heuchera micrantha ‘Palace Purple’, zones 4 to 9)
This is a close-up of a much larger garden, but you can see how drifts and masses are working on both informal and formal levels among the plants themselves. Grasses up front encircle the coneflowers, while both lead up to the taller Joe Pye Weed blooming white. There’s both a formal, stepped succession of height we expect in a tended garden, and a more informal surprise as the viewing angle changes from point to point; the intermingling drifts provide new vistas as we walk the landscape, creating surprise and cohesion at the same time.
2. Keep smaller spaces simple. Going with a smaller plant palette doesn’t mean limiting your choices or garden experience. A small space can quickly become overwhelmed and chaotic when there are too many plant species or their size overwhelms the space. Think about shorter plants and using more of one kind. Let’s say you have a 100-square-foot garden — maybe you’d use four to six different plant species but have 10 of each. Then if you clump them together or have drifts intermingle, you create intrigue and formal style without the perceived visual chaos of more plant species.
1. Create a wilder look. Nature expresses self-similarity — it repeats itself over and over in patterns that can be mapped mathematically. In other words, nature is a geometric fractal, a pattern that duplicates itself on small and grand scales. Think snowflakes, coneflower heads, trees, mountains and coastlines. In a garden you can intermingle drifts of plants. Toss in a few massed clumps of flowers amid a backdrop of grasses, then repeat that flower and grass pattern elsewhere on a larger or smaller scale — say, three of a kind here, seven of a kind there. If you have a large area, you can do this with bigger plants and more of them; in a small space, choose smaller plants with a more limited species palette.
“We envisioned a Scandinavian modern kitchen design with open shelving, flat-panel fronts and wood cabinetry. We decided to use rift oak because it has a straight, tight grain and was most consistent. We decided to offset the wood cabinets by painting the island a rich green tone. To complement the wood cabinets, we installed matte black tab pulls to tie in with the minimalistic design.”
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