What Kind of Garden do you Want?

Ask a Child to draw a picture of a Garden and they will draw flowers. Ask a Landscape Designer to draw a Garden and they will need more information. The difference is the Landscaper is more knowledgeable about the art form and the nuances of gardening styles. Here are some examples of Garden styles to consider before making an appointment with our Landscape Designers. You are not limited to this list, your only limit is what you can imagine and your property can sustain. This should feed your imagination and give you a starting point for the conversation you will have with our Keystone Gardens Landscape Designer.

Cottage Garden

The cottage garden is a distinct style of garden that uses an informal design, traditional materials, dense plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants. English in origin, the cottage garden depends on grace and charm rather than grandeur and formal structure.

Modern-day cottage gardens include countless regional and personal variations of the more traditional English cottage garden, and embrace plant materials, such as ornamental grasses or native plants, that were never seen in the rural gardens of cottagers. Traditional roses, with their full fragrance and lush foliage, continue to be a cottage garden mainstay — along with modern disease-resistant varieties that keep the traditional attributes. Informal climbing plants, whether traditional or modern hybrids, are also a common cottage garden plant. Self-sowing annuals and freely spreading perennials continue to find a place in the modern cottage garden, just as they did in the traditional cottager's garden.

English Garden

The English garden usually included a lake, sweeps of gently rolling lawns set against groves of trees, and recreations of classical temples, Gothic ruins, bridges, and other picturesque architecture, designed to recreate an idyllic pastoral landscape.

The Continental European "English garden" is characteristically on a smaller scale and more filled with "eye-catchers" than most English landscape gardens: grottoes, temples, tea-houses, belvederes, pavilions, sham ruins, bridges and statues, though the main ingredients of the landscape gardens in England are sweeps of gently rolling ground and water, against a woodland background with clumps of trees and outlier groves. The dominant style was revised in the early 19th century to include more "gardenesque"] features, including shrubberies with gravelled walks, tree plantations to satisfy botanical curiosity, and, most notably, the return of flowers, in skirts of sweeping planted beds. This is the version of the landscape garden most imitated in Europe in the 19th century. The outer areas of the "home park" of English country houses retain their naturalistic shaping. English gardening since the 1840s has been on a more restricted scale, closer and more allied to the residence.

Water Gardens

Water gardens, also known as aquatic gardens, are a type of man-made water feature. A water garden is defined as any interior or exterior landscape or architectural element whose primarily purpose is to house, display, or propagate a particular species or variety of aquatic plant.

Although a water garden's primary focus is on plants, they will sometimes also house ornamental fish, in which case the feature will be a fish pond.

Although water gardens can be almost any size or depth, they are typically small and relatively shallow, generally less than twenty inches in depth. This is because most aquatic plants are depth sensitive and require a specific water depth in order to thrive. The particular species inhabiting each water garden will ultimately determine the actual surface area and depth required.

Butterfly Garden

Butterfly gardening is a growing school of gardening, specifically wildlife gardening, that is aimed at creating an environment that attracts butterflies, as well as certain moths, such as those in the Hemaris genus. Butterfly gardening is often aimed at inviting those butterflies and moths to lay eggs as well. Because some plants are not fed upon by adult butterflies, the caterpillar host should also be planted for a bigger population of butterflies. Butterflies typically feed on the nectar of flowers, and there are hundreds of such plants that may be planted to attract them, depending on the location, time of year, and other factors. In addition to the planting of flowers that feed butterflies, other means of attracting them include constructing ¨butterfly houses¨, providing sand for puddling, water, and other resources or food items, including rotten fruit.

Some people only like to look at the butterflies, while others like to take pictures as well. Others try to help the butterfly population by planting native plants which rare or threatened butterflies feed on. Done correctly, butterfly gardening can increase the populations of butterflies.

Many butterflies are becoming less abundant as a result of habitat destruction and fragmentation, and they do not feed on the plants regularly found in gardens. Others may also help in tagging monarch butterflies, which helps scientists monitor the monarch population and their migratory routes.

Chinese Garden

The Chinese garden, also known as a Chinese classical garden, is a style of garden developed under the influence of traditional Chinese culture. Historically, through the gardens, people sought out ways to emulate the harmonious and idyllic places of the natural world that long have inspired the Chinese aesthetics and arts of painting and poetry. It provided a shelter for one to connect with nature and an idealistic way of life.

Chinese gardens used plants as symbols. Bamboo was used in every traditional Chinese garden. This is because bamboo represents a strong but resilient character. Often pine is used to represent longevity, persistence, tenacity and dignity. The lotus is used to symbolize purity. The plum blossom is one of the most important aspects of a Chinese garden, as it represents renewal and strength of will. Flowering peaches are grown for spring color, and sweet olive as well. The chrysanthemum is used to symbolize splendor, luster and "the courage to make sacrifices for a “natural life". Peonies symbolize wealth and banana trees are used simply for the sound they make in the breeze.

Color Garden

The term color garden has in popular use two contradictory interpretations. In the first sense, a color garden is a garden specially planted in order to display a wide variety of colors, often in a particular season (for example a fall color garden). In the second sense, a color garden may more accurately be labeled a single-color garden. Such a garden is planted so that it overwhelms the observer with a single color. While this may seem a rather bland approach at first, such gardens were made popular by the work of famous garden designers such as Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West. Sackville-West, for example, created what may have been one of the most famous single-color gardens, the Sissinghurst Castle's all-white garden.

White Garden

A White Garden is a feature garden composed of plants that produce white flowers and spathes as well as plants with a white or silvery cast to their foliage. The white garden is a variant of the color garden. The most essential feature of the white garden is its unity of color.

The white garden is an informal gardening style that is similar in design to the English cottage garden. The open and informal design creates associations with romance, peace, and elegance. The white flowers are not usually placed in clusters, but spread throughout the garden's green areas, creating a natural look and feel. The mildly dense placement of white flowers creates a luminescent sight that is especially powerful in the twilight.

Flower Garden

A flower garden is any garden where flowers are grown for decorative purposes. Because flowers bloom at varying times of the year, and some plants are annual, dying each winter, the design of flower gardens can take into consideration to maintain a sequence of bloom and even of consistent color combinations, through varying seasons.

Flower color is an important feature of both the herbaceous border and the mixed border that includes shrubs as well as herbaceous plants, and of bedding-out schemes limited to colorful annuals. Flower gardens are sometimes tied in function to other kinds of gardens, like knot gardens or herb gardens, many herbs also having decorative function, and some decorative flowers being edible.

Italian Renaissance Garden

The Italian Renaissance garden was a new style of garden which emerged in the late 15th century at villas in Rome and Florence, inspired by classical ideals of order and beauty, and intended for the pleasure of the view of the garden and the landscape beyond, for contemplation, and for the enjoyment of the sights, sounds and smells of the garden itself.

In the late Renaissance, the gardens became larger, grander and more symmetrical, and were filled with fountains, statues, grottoes, water organs and other features designed to delight their owners and amuse and impress visitors. The style was imitated throughout Europe, influencing the gardens of the French Renaissance and the English garden.

French Renaissance Garden

The Gardens of the French Renaissance is a garden style largely inspired by the Italian Renaissance garden, particularly the gardens of Florence and Rome. King Charles VIII and his nobles brought the style back to France after their campaign in Italy in 1495. They reached their peak in the gardens of the royal chateau at Fontainebleau, the Château de Blois, the Château d'Amboise, and the Château de Chenonceau. . These gardens were characterized by symmetrical and geometric planting beds or parterres; plants in pots; paths of gravel and sand; terraces; stairways and ramps; moving water in the form of canals, cascades and monumental fountains, and extensive use of artificial grottoes, labyrinths and statues of mythological figures. They became an extension of the chateaux that they surrounded, and were designed to illustrate the Renaissance ideals of measure and proportion, and to remind viewers of the virtues of Ancient Rome. By the middle of the 17th century, during the reign of Louis XIV, the style evolved into the grander and more formal Garden à la française.

Japanese Garden

A catalogue of features "typical" of the Japanese garden may be drawn up without inquiring deeply into the aesthetic underlying Japanese practice. Typical Japanese gardens have at their center a home from which the garden is viewed. In addition to residential architecture, depending on the archetype, Japanese gardens often contain several of these elements:

• Water, real or symbolic.
• A bridge over the water, or stepping stones.
• Rocks or stone arrangements (or settings).
• A lantern, typically of stone.
• A teahouse or pavilion.
• An enclosure device such as a hedge, fence, or wall of traditional character.

Hedge Maze

A hedge maze is an outdoor garden maze or labyrinth in which the "walls" or dividers between passages are made of vertical hedges.

Hedge mazes evolved from the knot gardens of Renaissance Europe, and were first constructed during the mid-16th century. These early mazes were constructed from evergreen herbs, but, over time, dwarf box became a more popular option due to its robustness.

Native Garden

Natural landscaping, also called native gardening, is the use of native plants, including trees, shrubs, groundcover, and grasses which are indigenous to the geographic area of the garden.

Rain gardens that absorb rainwater from gutters and impervious surfaces, work much better when planted with native plants tolerant to the alternate flooding and drying cycles.

Paradise Garden

The paradise garden takes some of its character from its original arid or semi-arid homeland. The most basic feature is the enclosure of the cultivated area. This excludes the wildness of nature, and includes the tended, watered greenery of the garden. The commonest and easiest layout for the perimeter walls is that of a rectangle, and this forms one of the prime features of this kind of garden. Another common theme is the elaborate use of water, often in canals, ponds or rills, sometimes in fountains, less often in waterfalls of various kinds.

The rectangular or rectilinear theme of the garden is often extended to the water features, which may be used to quarter the garden. This layout is echoed in the four rivers of the Garden of Eden, and much of the use and symbolism of the paradise garden is derived from this connection. The contrast between a formal garden layout with the informality of free-growing plants provides a recurring theme to many paradise gardens.

Rock Garden

Rock garden plants tend to be small, both because many of the species are naturally small, and so as not to cover up the rocks. They may be grown in troughs (containers), or in the ground. The plants will usually be types that prefer well-drained soil and less water.

The usual form of a rock garden is a pile of rocks, large and small, esthetically arranged, and with small gaps between, where the plants will be rooted. Some rock gardens incorporate bonsai.

Some rock gardens are designed and built to look like natural outcrops of bedrock. Stones are aligned to suggest a bedding plane and plants are often used to conceal the joints between the stones.

Roman Garden

Private Roman gardens were generally separated into three parts. The first, the xystus, was a terrace that served as an open air drawing room and connected to the home via a covered portico. The xystus overlooked the lower garden, or ambulation. The ambulatio consisted of a variety of flowers, trees, and other foliage and served as an ideal milieu for a leisurely stroll after a meal, some mild conversation, or other Roman recreation activities. The gestation was a shaded avenue where the master of a home could ride horseback. It generally it encircled the ambulation, or was constructed as a separate oval shaped space.

Roof Garden

A roof garden is any garden on the roof of a building. Besides the decorative benefit, roof plantings may provide food, temperature control, hydrological benefits, architectural enhancement, habitats or corridors for wildlife, and recreational opportunities. Roof gardens are most often found in urban environments. Plants have the ability to reduce the overall heat absorption of the building which then reduces energy consumption.

Rose Garden

A Rose garden or Rosarium is a garden used to present and grow various types of garden roses. Designs vary tremendously and roses may be displayed alongside other plants or grouped by individual variety, color or class in rose beds.

Shade Garden

Shade gardens are gardens planted and grown in areas with little or no direct sunlight during the day, either under trees or on the shady sides of buildings. Shade gardening presents certain challenges, in part because only certain plants are able to grow in shady conditions. Very few edible plants grow well in shady conditions, so shade gardens are usually ornamental gardens.

Aside from the lack of light, shade gardens under large trees also tend to have very dry soils, because the trees use much of the available water.

Designing a shade garden doesn't have to be boring. Plant colors may not be as bold as in a sunny location, but gardeners can create interest by selecting plants with varying form, texture, height and color. A good key to remember is to plant "cool" colors in the shade- purples and blues will be much bolder and striking than "warm" colors such as reds and oranges, which are more dramatically placed in sunny locations.

Shade gardening offers a chance to use plants not seen in the sunnier garden. There are many flowers that grow and bloom into some of the most beautiful flowers.

Spanish Garden

Traditionally the paradise garden is interpreted with a central cross axis, in the four cardinal directions, with long ponds or water channels where water reflects and flows, set in a walled courtyard. The remaining quadrants often had fruit trees and fragrant plants. Thus, characteristic sensory experiences are refreshing coolness, humidity, sounds, greenery, and fragrance. This type of garden is compatible with the Spanish climate of sun and heat. Provisions for shade are given with the use of arcades, pergolas, trellising, and garden pavilions. Ceramic elements and tiles are often used: in water features; for structural, decorative, and seating elements; and as paving; with solid fields, embellishments and accents; and in pottery. A clarity from the symmetrical simplicity often results.

Kitchen Garden/Portager

A potager is a French term for an ornamental vegetable or kitchen garden. The historical design precedent is from the Gardens of the French Renaissance and Baroque Garden à la française eras. Often flowers (edible and non-edible) and herbs are planted with the vegetables to enhance the garden's beauty. The goal is to make the function of providing food aesthetically pleasing.

Plants are chosen as much for their functionality as for their color and form. Many are trained to grow upward. A well-designed potager can provide food, cut flowers and herbs for the home with very little maintenance. Potagers can disguise their function of providing for a home in a wide array of forms—from the carefree style of the cottage garden to the formality of a knot garden.

Vegetable Garden

A vegetable garden is a garden that exists to grow vegetables and other plants useful for human consumption, in contrast to a flower garden that exists for aesthetic purposes. It is a small-scale form of vegetable growing. A vegetable garden typically includes a compost heap, and several plots or divided areas of land, intended to grow one or two types of plant in each plot. It is usually located to the rear of a property in the back garden or back yard.

Herb Garden

The herb garden is often a separate space in the garden, devoted to growing a specific group of plants known as herbs. These gardens may be informal patches of plants, or they may be carefully designed, even to the point of arranging and clipping the plants to form specific patterns, as in a knot garden.

Container Garden

Container gardening is the practice of growing plants exclusively in containers instead of planting them in the ground. Pots, traditionally made of terracotta but now more commonly plastic, and window boxes have been the most commonly seen. In some cases, this method of growing is used for ornamental purposes. This method is also useful in areas where the soil or climate is unsuitable for the plant or crop in question. Using a container is also generally necessary for houseplants. Limited growing space, or growing space that is paved over, can also make this option appealing to the gardener.

Many types of plants are suitable for the container, including decorative flowers, herbs, cacti, vegetables, and small trees.