Garden Design Collective

GARDEN ROOMS

Here we are at the start of a shiny new membership! Yay!

Since we are just diving in I thought it would be great to focus these early months on foundational garden design topics, starting with GARDEN ROOMS.

GARDEN ROOMS are a basic unit of landscape design and important to understand as we learn how to do SPATIAL DESIGN the next couple of months.

SPATIAL DESIGN. This is the overall spatial arrangement (or structure) of your garden. Spaces (or rooms) are defined then arranged (if more than one) so they relate to each other in the appropriate way for a client. Read more here.

When starting a design, I'd like to challenge you to think about the overall room(s) you're creating first rather, than jumping into the detail of plant selection. Plants come down the road a bit. Let's create the structure of our outdoor spaces first (SPATIAL DESIGN), then we will use plants (and other elements) to define those spaces.

That brings us back to GARDEN ROOMS. Let's use this month to shift our mind into thinking about the SPACE we're creating, rather than the individual plants we are placing. Once you understand the components of a GARDEN ROOM, head over to these garden guides to learn how to create them from scratch: DESIGN PROCESS and LINES OF FORCE.

GOODNESS FOR YOU THIS MONTH

Below you will find several items to help you learn more about GARDEN ROOMS. From written words to video to applied activities to group discussions. Explore our topic from different angles and gain a new perspective. Click on the first two images below to download PDFs. Further down you will find a video and links to our community, plus Q+A's too!

VIDEO ON GARDEN ROOMS

OUR COMMUNITY

Don't forget to hang out with us this month.

Activity

GARDEN ROOM IN YOUR STYLE

To design a GARDEN ROOM for OUTDOOR DINING, while incorporating YOUR STYLE. Let's dive in!

Because we did this challenge in our past community format the original submissions are no longer available, but I do share all of them in our Q+A recording from that month. Please take a look at that video below.

Check out past submissions in this video

Discussion Prompts

Throughout the month I'll ask questions related to GARDEN ROOMS. One question I'd love you to think about:

In this month's activity we explored garden rooms via YOUR STYLE. How would you learn about and incorporate a client's style into their design? Is it okay for your style to be injected into your client's designs? Why or why not?

BTW, there is no right or wrong answer! These discussions challenge us to think in different ways.

When you're ready to add your thoughts, click the button below to go directly to this thread in our community.

I have something to share!