Oceanic Landscaping is the practice of creating an outdoor environment that reflects a property’s style and personality. It can also increase a home’s value and provide environmental benefits.
Landscaping encompasses a wide variety of activities, including grading and leveling land, installing hardscaping elements like patios and walkways, and planting trees and plants.
Color helps to set the mood for your landscape design. Warm colors like red, orange, and yellow stimulate excitement while cool colors like blues and greens create a tranquil feel. Colors can also be used in unity or contrast to create depth. By establishing a color theme for your garden, water features, patio furniture, and even the building materials of pathways and hardscapes you can cultivate a sense of unity in your landscape.
This paper uses a social semiotic approach to read the dramatic changes in the use of saturated colors in recent urban and landscape design. It has collected 692 projects featuring saturated colors created between 2000 and 2019. To decipher their meaning, it develops a typology of landscape projects that utilize saturated color for different purposes of social communication. These include highlighting the history of a place, evoking regeneration, and branding. Nearly two-thirds of all the collected projects are related to branding purposes.
Form
Form describes the three-dimensional attributes of a landscape design, including how objects are positioned in space. The shape of a flower bed, pond or hardscape element, the silhouette of a tree and the structure of a hedge all contribute to the overall form of a landscape. Form can also be achieved through a variety of other elements, including the arcs and voids created by the lines that shape and define landscape features.
Lines define movement through a landscape and determine how beds and pathways flow together. They can be straight, curved, horizontal or diagonal and can be created with both hardscape materials like pavers and gravel or plant material like hedges and trees. Straight lines create a formal character and are associated with symmetry, while curved lines give a more natural, informal feel to the landscape. A landscape with a mixture of both rectilinear and curved lines will be more visually interesting than one with all straight lines.
The shape of a landscape evokes emotions and creates ambiance. A rectilinear form, for example, feels structured and formal, while circles and triangles are strong and dynamic. Individual plants, whether they are tall or low and open or closed, have their own unique forms and may be pyramidal, vase-like, rounded or freeform. Form is also created by a variety of other outdoor features, such as the sloping shape of a hillside, the size and shape of outdoor structures and the outlines of architectural elements.
The key to a functional landscape is balancing form with function, so that both aspects of the garden serve their practical purposes but still create a beautiful and appealing space. This balance can be seen in a number of ways, from using plants that are well-suited to the climate to reduce watering and chemical fertilizer use to incorporating WSUD (Water Sensitive Urban Design) principles, such as permeable paving that allows rainwater to naturally infiltrate soil and reduce the strain on stormwater systems. But the balance is also evident in simple touches, such as a reflective pool that brings peace and tranquility to a backyard or an artistic sculpture that provides a focal point in a front garden.
Texture
Whether you’re brushing your hand over the soft, feathery fronds of ornamental grasses or feeling the rough bark of a tree or textured ground cover, there’s something about texture that grabs our attention and draws us into our landscape. Texture, along with form, are two of the most important elements in landscaping to consider when designing your yard and garden. Texture refers to the surface quality of plants and materials – how coarse or fine they are, and how smooth or rough they feel. Form is the three-dimensional shape and structure of individual plants and landscape elements, and how they relate to each other.
The use of both form and texture in your garden can create depth, intrigue, and balance. For example, using plant species with different textures and forms can add contrasting focal points throughout your garden. You can also create a sense of unity within your design by choosing plants that share similar attributes such as color, texture or even maintenance requirements.
For example, a fine-leafed perennial like silver lace dusty miller pairs well with the coarsely-leafed red salvia. Both have a unique texture and are drought tolerant, making them a great combination for Colorado’s climate. Another way to incorporate texture into your garden is by adding a water feature with rocks or gravel. This not only adds interest and depth to your garden, but it can also help to control erosion and provide a habitat for wildlife.
Lines are another element that are crucial in defining your garden’s space. Whether they’re perceived lines created by plants or hardscapes, or physical paths, they direct your eye and create focal points within the garden. When designing a garden, it’s important to consider how you want your space to be used, and what kind of atmosphere you would like to create.
A beautiful, thoughtfully designed landscape can make your home more livable and increase its resale value. It can also encourage family members of all ages to spend more time outdoors, improving their health and well-being. Adding visual appeal to your outdoor space also makes your home a more attractive place to live, and is a great way to reduce stress and anxiety.
Lines
Lines are used to draw forms and create pathways in the landscape. They can be real (an actual path or walkway) or perceived (a series of objects arranged to suggest the presence of a line). Whether the lines are vertical, horizontal, diagonal or curved, they serve to accentuate, control, and direct movement within the garden.
Lines can be straight or curved and can be created with plant material, hardscape materials, or other features. They can be used to create patterns, delineate spaces, sculpt shapes, and unify themes. The shape of your house can provide clues as to the type of lines that will work best with your landscaping. For example, a home with gables or other architectural details might inspire the use of angled lines in your landscape.
Straight lines evoke formality and precision, precisely directing the eye to focal points. Conversely, curved lines are more relaxed and informal, encouraging leisurely exploration of the garden. Lines can also be emphasized or subdued with the placement and arrangement of plants.
For example, taller trees or structural features like an arbor should draw the eye upward, creating a sense of movement and helping to enclose and define space. Low lines, on the other hand, can spatially divide a landscape and tie it together. They can be created with a variety of design elements, including low garden walls, walkways, and short hedges.
The textures of surfaces also help to create the perception of lines. For example, the smoothness of turf grass, groundcovers, or gravel may be a contrast to the roughness of brick, wood, or stone wall surfaces.
Another important aspect of line is proportion, which refers to the size of an element in relation to other nearby objects. For example, an overly large tree or shrub can detract from the overall look of a landscape and can overwhelm other features. Conversely, an element that is too small can feel lost and overshadowed by other features. Proper proportion is essential to creating an aesthetically pleasing and balanced landscape.