BILOWZ ASSOCIATES INC. is an award winning landscape architectural design firm with a proven philosophy: "Creating Design with Harmony & Balance."
Our company blog, Annie's Gardening Corner, takes a sneak peek at how we balance our own love for everything green + a place to find inspiration, garden ideas and landscape design tips.

To browse our award winning landscape design portfolios, click on our company website at WWW.BILOWZASSOCIATES.COM

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Digging the Shades

Shade in a garden is the coolest place to be in the summertime. (Landscape Design & Image/©Bilowz Associates Inc.)
Think summer garden and one might envision a welcoming area to take it all in. One of the coolest places to relax - you guessed it; planting yourself under a few shade trees. If you want to lounge under a canopy of shade, achieving the well-designed, usable outdoor living space requires a finishing touch.

Let's fast-forward past the hardscape and go to an often underused or overlooked feature - it's the choice of plant materials. What you decide to plant and where you plant it often ties the space together. Simply put, your planting plan works out to be the winning combination. Why? Because it's literally the lifeblood of a design. So if and when you delve into those shade perennials, one little tip to remember. Give them a chance to mass together. See some examples below that showcase and highlight shade plantings massed in lovely textures and colors.
Mass your shade plantings to add texture and color.
This next maintenance and design tidbit is for the massive glut of mulch lovers. It ranks second in 'Americana' fascination with first going to a plush, green lawn. While mulch can be useful for weed control and containing moisture, specifically for new plantings, it's a must to give your perennials a chance to grow in harmony. It's what good design is really all about. So take the crash course. Mass the beauty of your plantings - in this case, the shade perennials. Then give them a fighting chance to do their thing and lose the addiction to mulch. Use it sparingly, it's a sure thing. You'll get happy plant results.
Perfect harmony of plant material = less or no mulch.

What shade plantings do you intend to place in your garden to make your summer landscape look alive?

© All Images – Property of Bilowz Associates Inc.          

If you like this blog, check in for your daily share's worth of garden inspiration, landscape architecture and design tips; always original, not cookie cutter and copied. Just like our design work, we strive for unique! We invite you to contact Bilowz Associates, Inc., or to browse our portfolios. Like our Facebook follow on Twitter or subscribe to the blog to receive posts daily via email or a feed. You can follow with visuals on Pinterest and find us on LinkedIn and Houzz, too.  And you can also find us back on our Google+ Business Page. (Landscape architects/Landscape Design/serving Massachusetts and New England.)

No comments:

© 2009

© 2009 Ann St. Jean-Bilowz/Bilowz Associates Inc. (including all photographs, unless otherwise noted in Annie's Gardening Corner are the property of Bilowz Associates Inc. and shall not be reproduced in any manner nor are they to be assigned to any third party without the expressed written permission and consent of Bilowz Associates Inc.)