Understand how to incorporate key elements into a cohesive design

Question 1

Describe how elements of hard landscaping, soft landscaping and other materials (garden furniture) should be selected and used to ensure that a design is cohesive

Answer 1

A description of what makes a ‘cohesive design’, with examples covering hard and soft landscaping elements and furniture

Question 2

What is coherence?

Answer 2

All parts of the design forming a unified whole, linked by consistent styles or materials in hard landscaping and furniture, and themes in planting, to the house itself as part of the garden landscape and the local landscape

Question 3

How to create cohesion with hard landscaping and other materials

Answer 3

Materials should have elements of similarity without being too different - colour and material could be the same as the house or surrounding environment to match the local surroundings

Shapes the same

Depending on if formal or informal design benches and furniture to suit e.g. Lutyens bench / wrought iron intricate seating / compared to wooden, rustic benches, logs as seats simpler design / seating can be used as focal points

E.g. statues in formal gardens will link the style of the garden

Question 4

How to create cohesion with hard landscaping materials - some examples

Answer 4

Decking - build it to the shape of other features in the garden / use the same material / built it to complement other lines in the garden (e.g. parallel to them)

Paving slabs - use the same material for patio as you would path / Choose lcoal material that reflects local landscape

Question 5

How to create cohesion with soft landscaping

Answer 5

Simlar plants growing in garden to what’s outside / similar coloured/textured plants to what’s being grown inside house

Repeat the same plants or similarly coloured plants

In formal gardens hedging can bring a universal style to the garden and bring everything together

Use of a specific colour palette / that can match in soft and hard landscaping

Rhythm creates cohesion and movement in a garden from repeated planting of the same species/colour/texture/form throughout the garden

Also cohesion through implied themes e.g. mediterranean garden / japanese garden