Make the Best Use of Garden Buildings
Article by Piers Scott
A garden can be so much more than having a nice lawn and pretty flower beds. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show each year challenges and pushes the boundaries of top garden designer’s creativity as to what can be achieved. Often designers use structures built as part of gardens to add dimension help bring them to life.
This year the winning design at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show was by Joe Swift winning gold for his Homebase Teenage Cancer Trust Garden. It’s inspired by the ‘power of plants and natural forms in an urban and suburban environment’, it’s cedar wood structures framed and contrasted beautifully with the lush, colourful plants, water features, pebbles and a stone walkway. It is a gorgeous environment to be in and the cedar wood structures totally make it extra special.
So why not take some inspiration and use garden buildings or garden furniture to add some contrast to your home garden.
Decorative Garden Buildings
Even in most modest size it can be improved with inspiration from Joe Swift’s designs. Garden structures, clever placement of different size plants and water features can create the illusion of size and space.
You can place a few sculptures subtly amongst plants throughout. As an alternative consider erecting a summerhouse as an elegant centre-piece. Summer houses are fantastic ways of incorporating an attractive structure into a garden that compliments everything around it and yet isn’t overbearing. You can decorate summer houses with hanging baskets or grow climbers across them like honeysuckle.
Garden benches also offer a simple yet effective way of placing sculptural-like structures throughout a garden and they are useful too – you can sit on them and enjoy the view.
Garden Buildings with a Purpose
Can a wooden shed be an attractive structure for your garden? Of course it can – wooden sheds do not need to be hidden away for the purely functional purpose of storing away power tools and equipment. Why not grow plants such as clematis up the side, maybe even paint the shed with bold colours, to make it really stand out. While you may not position a shed as the centrepiece of a garden it can add a lot of character creating a desirable English country look.
If you are tight on space – then a corner shed will be ideal, again offering some character and yet not too imposing.
Weathered natural wood looks gorgeous as a contrast to plants; elegant painted wooden structures such as summer houses also add a lot of character.
Before you consider how to style your garden, research garden designs, go to garden shows like Chelsea and collect garden images from magazines or online to build up a picture of what will look the best for your garden at home. Then all you will need to do is make it happen.
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garden buildings,Summer houses,Garden benches
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