Walk this Way: Two Good Design Pointers

If you own a house, there’s a good chance you have a side yard.  And you pay taxes on that side yard because it’s part of your property. Even so, many homeowners figure the side yards are an afterthought.  In a crowded city, the side yard is likely to be quite narrow and shady.  In the bungalow where I grew up, the sides of the house were cloaked with hostas and a slim ribbon of cement walk that lead from the street pass the side entryway and to the alley.  

Stand across from any house with side yards and notice how they frame the building.  They are part of the curb appeal.  What’s planted there?  How do the owners access their back yard?  What are the focal points--what draws your eye first?  And second?  

In our ex-urban one-acre setting -- we’re not quite in suburbia and not quite in farm country -- our side yards are quite large and filled with shrub borders and flanked by lawn and steps, planting beds around the foundation and arbors on each side of the house. 

I like arbors because they provide a sensation of leading one through a doorway and into the next garden room.  All the better if the style and  material of the arbor honors the architecture of the house.  This incredible arbor-and-fence combination enhances the turn-of-the-century frame house. What a bore this side yard would be with no flowers, no arbor, no path, just lawn.  There’s be nothing to stop your gaze.

But here your eyes are drawn to the arbor and then the sweep of plantings, curving around and hugging the lawn to the front walk.  It’s a stunning scene even in winter when the plants are dormant. 

There’s something else here that works particularly well but you may not notice immediately.  It’s the color palette.  And a very English one at that with pinks, chartreuse (lady’s mantle flowers), blue salvia, catmint, silver-leaved lamb’s ears, variegated dogwood and white daisies.  It’s a limited pastel palette--no hot-lips' reds, oranges, or other warm tones.  Oftentimes when a perennial border or even a container combination is not quite right, it’s the color palette.  Stick with a triad of colors or a monotone combination of one color and you can’t go wrong.  

For more on effective color combinations, see Painting Your Garden with Plants classes, coming this spring to the Chicago Botanic Garden.   

What are your favorite colors in the garden? 

Good Reads for Winter

Garden books may come and go but one of that will always have a place on my bookshelves is Elements of Garden Design by landscape designer Joe Eck. He and Wayne Winterrowd (who passed away earlier this year), co-wrote A Year at North Hill.  They transformed North Hill, their garden in Vermont, over the last 30 years into an incredible setting. Eck has written other books, but this one, published in 1996 in paperback, is 164 pages, sprinkled with black and white illustrations of his garden and divided into simple, short chapters on style, color, structure and so on. It’s something you can read at night before dozing off to dream about your garden. My copy has yellow highlighting throughout.


One sentence in particular hits home:

“Tentative and spontaneous additions to a garden space can often become its most serious liabilities.”

Many gardeners can relate to that experience. Especially in spring when, after a cold, miserable winter, we long for anything green. And buy it on impulse. This arbor was one of those spontaneous purchases that I later lamented. Made of white plastic resin, it stood out at night like a searchlight. It glowed even without moonlight. During the day, it caught one’s eyes no matter what else was in the garden so I moved it. And painted it. And then plunked two smokebushes on either side.


With a little paint I had transformed what had been a jarring liability into a “doorway” leading to the side yard. This spring I’m going to restrain myself from such purchases. Maybe.

—Nina Koziol

Elements of Design

Garden books may come and go but one of that will always have a place on my bookshelves is Elements of Garden Design by landscape designer Joe Eck. He and Wayne Winterrowd, authors of A Year at North Hill, have transformed North Hill, their garden in Vermont, over the last 30 years into an incredible setting. Eck has written other books, but this one, published in 1996 in paperback, is 164 pages, sprinkled with black and white illustrations of his garden and divided into simple, short chapters on style, color, structure and so on. It’s something you can read at night before dozing off to dream about your garden.

My copy has yellow highlighting throughout. Many gardeners can relate to that experience. Especially in spring when, after a cold, miserable winter, we long for anything green. And buy it on impulse. This arbor was one of those spontaneous purchases that I later lamented. Made of white plastic resin, it stood out at night like a searchlight. It glowed even without moonlight. During the day, it caught one’s eyes no matter what else was in the garden so I moved it. And painted it. And then plunked two smokebushes on either side. With a little paint I had transformed what had been a jarring liability into a “doorway” leading to the side yard. This spring I’m going to restrain myself from such purchases. Maybe. —Nina Koziol, www.thisgardencooks.com