The Importance of Land Scape Planning

Landscape design is primarily the arrangement of land for use, planning must precede planting. The two must be integrated, the one to serve as a basis for the other. Too often the beginner starts with planting and proceeds no further. Then, after the planting is done, he finds that the basic design and construction are difficult to accomplish.

Too many places are merely planted. When this happens we soon become dissatisfied with our efforts and wonder why they lack interest and charm. These qualities are not accidents but the result of well composed garden pictures. A friend of ours, a careful gardener, had arranged her borders so that they presented a lovely color display. Her husband, not a gardener, remarked, "How nice it is that so many things happen to bloom in our garden at the same time." "Happen," said she, "Happen indeed! What do you think I've been doing all spring with charts, diagrams, seedlings, and plants?"

Plants have to be carefully selected for definite purposes and placed properly to achieve any sort of landscape composition worth looking at. Not until we have designed our landscape pattern are we ready for planting design. Not before, or at the same time, but after. We emphasize this because so many people fail to realize it. They start to plant around the new home before they have designed the circulation, or the areas, or provided for the various activities.