Now we’re encouraged to get the most out of our houses and outside spaces no matter how little they are. Become an extension of our living area and they will need to serve a goal. The uses of the space could be endless — relaxing, dining, playing, growing food and even working — but it hasn’t always been so.
The English landscape garden of the 18th century, using its top designers William Kent and Lancelot “Capability” Brown, were signs of a real change in how gardens had been used. The English casual garden of the 18th century proved to be a film, an idealized re-creation of the natural landscape, to be seen rather than used — other than as a place to maintain your algae, algae and decorative highland cows. Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, 17th-century French painters working in Italy, are usually quoted as providing the inspiration for these idealized landscapes that gave rich landowners their own living masterpieces outside their doorstep.
There are, I believe, several ways that our houses have followed the case of using the garden for other than “practical” uses. As well as producing an outdoor picture, they’re used as straightforward extensions of the design of the homes, as backgrounds for sculpture and sometimes works of art, painted with flowers.
Liquidscapes
This formal bud terrace having a central pool leads the eye through to a natural landscape reminiscent of the English landscapes of the 18th century.
The garden combines seamlessly with the more natural land beyond — a hint that the English landscapers employed using a sunken ditch known as a “ha-ha,” beautifully executed here.
Liquidscapes
The simplicity of the landscape performs the most important job of placing the house in the landscape. It doesn’t compete with the design or stand out in its own right, but the two together make a complete picture.
The design makes a vista back toward the house in the end of the stepped path as well as generates rustic views out from the main house.
C.O.S Design
This modern landscape design links perfectly to the house it adjoins. The paving, planting and grassy area give the impression of a Mondrian–design painting in complete equilibrium.
Can it be a viewing garden, you may inquire, or has it a goal apart from its visual advantage? It is. A seat is supplied for this purpose, but that I feel the total design is meant to be looked at from the house.
Griffin Enright Architects
Aminimalist garden space could develop into a picture in its own right. Plants do not always need to be the main contributors of the garden picture. The combo of textures and limited color range employed in this terrace give an almost Zen garden contemplative view — which is accomplished by the dancing flames of the fire pit.
Margie Grace – Grace Design Associates
From garden to art installation. Sculpture gardens have become highly well known in public spaces and personal grounds. They supply the ideal exterior viewing theater.
This combo of stone-shaped seating over meandering artificial grass is a true art installation and may be found in any contemporary art gallery. Certainly this must be among the most maintenance-free gardens that you could design, but it still has such excellent visual appeal.
Wagner Hodgson
Set amongst the formality of the allée of standard deciduous trees, rusty ball sculptures bring this viewing garden to life. The minimalist buildings behind, including the sculptor’s studio, make the ideal backdrop and setting for this almost plant-free garden.
Terra Ferma Landscapes
Standard trees, that this time pear trees, are used in a contemporary parterre-style entrance courtyard.
The indirect path along the pathway to the front entrance gives a superb vista through to the wall of golden conifers.
Jeffrey Gordon Smith Landscape Architecture
Even the most pragmatic of spaces could change from an easy transit room to some vista in its own right.
This attentively thought-out design elevates ordinary steps right into a visual joy of texture and colour contrast set off by a simple world.
Lucas & Lucas
Creating a pleasurable vista does not always mean intricate planting or wide, manicured yards. Sometimes it can be far simpler.
This urn water attribute set amongst wayward grasses changes an easy planted area to some view reminiscent of the British artist Andy Goldsworthy, who uses nature to make artwork that is amazing.
Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC
I suppose you can say all gardens are, in the end, to look in and enjoy. However, I do feel that some exceed that and are designed for the absolute visual pleasure they supply.
From the origins of the herbaceous borders of the beginning of the last century, the combined boundaries we enjoy planted with shrubs and perennials make a feast for the eye, minus perhaps providing any further practical use other than ground cover.
Designing Eden llc
The French impressionist painters didn’t paint the scene, but painted a feeling of the landscape as they watched it — only think of Monet’s paintings of poppy fields.
We can see how in this superb swath of pastel flowers, such as lupins, the same effect has been made — a living impressionist painting — to simply delight the eye.
Zeterre Landscape Architecture
This most contemporary of gardens have to be the epitome of viewing gardens. Both the design and the planting scheme create a combined picture that may be observed on many levels.
The patterns cut in the lawn serve no function other than the visual effect they make along with the interest and pleasure they give the viewer.
More:
Old-School Style: Frame Your Own Garden View