Creating Gardens Around Themes

We garden for the enjoyment it brings us. We love to look out around our homes and know that this delightful beauty is something we have had a hand in creating. Our gardens provide us with visual beauty, the joy of working with soil and plants, and the pride of showing others what you have created. Our gardens give us the opportunity to decorate the outside of our homes as well as the inside. One way to do this decorating is by creating your garden, or a room within the garden, with a theme…

We garden for the enjoyment it brings us. We love to look out around our homes and know that this delightful beauty is something we have had a hand in creating. Our gardens provide us with visual beauty, the joy of working with soil and plants, and the pride of showing others what you have created. Our gardens give us the opportunity to decorate the outside of our homes as well as the inside. One way to do this decorating is by creating your garden, or a room within the garden, with a theme.

There are many themes you can use to create your theme garden. Just use your imagination or do a search around here on the web. Don’t forget to look in the many beautiful books and at the public gardens that are available. We recently spent time at the Botanic Gardens near Old Town in Albuquerque delighting in the various themes they showcased there. Your region probably has some type of public gardens as well.

Think of the old formal gardens with their hedges uniquely designed to provide a visual appeal that has survived the ages. Think of the Japanese Garden with its calm Zen-like quality. Theme gardens can be based upon a historical time or place or special types or colors of plants. They can be created upon the wild creatures we hope to draw to our garden such as butterflies or hummingbirds.

Each type of garden has an unique appeal and some even more pleasing gardens can be had by using combinations. We Americans are famous for being the “Melting Pot” supposedly, for combining things we have brought from the rest of the world. Imagine having a butterfly garden surrounded by old rose varieties. Imagine a vegetable garden with a Zen garden in the middle. The combinations are endless.

The book Theme Gardens by Barbara Damrosch is a great starting place. She has several types of theme gardens with pictures and layouts. Use these plans to create your own. Or layout a garden that is uniquely yours using these plans as a starting point. There is no real right or wrong way to lay your garden out, so learn as you go and have fun.