You have decided on the style of Thai garden you like, and you are pretty sure of the positioning of certain garden features that you want. Now you feel ready to tackle your garden and begin to implement these changes throughout your landscape.
Garden styles you have seen in books, magazines and in person may not exactly fit perfectly into your own garden space, it is highly likely that your garden will be the wrong size and shape to perfectly recreate or copy a certain style, so the best idea is to keep in mind a style, rather than copy it in it's entirety. If you are having problems visualising your whole garden in your chosen style, say you like a wild tropical garden, or a low maintenance Japanese stone garden, it is possible that this style can be included as an element of your new garden, rather than throughout the whole design.
In formal garden design, there are three basic successful patterns that are used time and time again. These are rectangular, circular, and diagonal.
This week we will focus on circular.
Pattern 1 – Circular
Gardens designed circularly are very good at breaking up the formal shapes that are the norm of many gardens ie. square lawns / rectangular beds etc.
A designers favourite, with a circular plan you are able to create interesting shapes within your Thai garden. As you can see from the example above, you only need to plan in a couple of circular areas in order to break up the garden, and 'overlapping' circles can also give the impression of a well designed, stylish garden.
Plants and walkways are good for filling in the gaps between the circles. Circular plans and patterns can have very dramatic impact on middle to large sized gardens, but can also be used as a smaller element within the overall garden design, rather than for the whole design.
In the next post of this feature, Thai Garden Design will focus on rectangular patterned gardens.
