The next step in planning your garden design is to plan the hardscaping. What is hardscaping? It's everything in your garden that doesn't grow. Plantings are not included in this step, just walls and paths and trellises and fences, and anything else that's hard or at least semi-fixed. (Don't include planting containers in this step. We'll get to those later).
You need to plan the hardscaping now for two reason:
1. Unlike plants, it won't grow or change with the seasons, and is often permanently fixed in place. It is therefore less flexible than the plants that will be growing around it and needs to be carefully planned.
2. The hardscaping defines the boundaries of your garden rooms and determines where the plantings will be located.
I want my east side garden feel like one room, distinct from the rest of the garden, but still open to it. The western 'wall' of this room is going to be the side of the house itself, although there will be shrubs and other plantings growing along it which will eventually soften the wall. The eastern wall will be a shrubbery hedge, so no hard fence needs to be installed there. The northern and southern walls are going to be defined by 'doors' that lead in and out of the room and are themselves defined by gate posts. I will not be including actual doors, because I don't want the area to feel closed off. Instead at each end of the garden I'm going to plant two fencepost, each about 4' tall and 4' apart. They will be topped with decorative finials which I haven't found, yet, but I will be shopping on-line and in my local stores until I find something I like.
In defining the entry to the side yard, the gate posts will also provide structure to the garden room. Other options besides fenceposts would have been arbors or actual gates. I don't want to mess around with hanging gates gates and I don't want the expense of hiring someone to do it or me. When it comes to arbors, because of how long and narrow the space is going to be, I didn't want to visually close it off as much as arbor would have done.
Once the posts are in place I will add my second bit of hardscaping: horseshoe game pits. One of the reasons I want to renovate my side garden is because, as it is now, it serves mainly as a featureless passageway between the front and back gardens. I want it to be more than that. I want it to be a destination. Adding a game or activity is one way to get people to stop and linger. Since the space is about 40' x 16' (and will seem even narrower after the plantings are done) there were very few active, outdoor games that I could design it for. The two that came to mind were archery and horseshoes, and since archery is illegal inside the city limits, horseshoes was the winner. I will be talking more about the design of the pits when I install them in the spring.
The next bit of hardscaping I'm going to put in are trellises along the wall of my house. The way my house is constructed, there are very few windows on the east side, only three to be exact, so there are sections of the wall that are large expanses of windowless red. I'm going to put trellises in to break that expanse up a bit. The trellises won't expand the entire length of the wall or else I'll just be exchanging one kind of monotonous expanse for another. Nor will they be as tall as the wall. Instead they will bring the wall down to human height. Again, I will talk more about these in the spring.
The last bit of hardscaping I'm going to add are edgings along the planting beds, and I've decided to go with straight lines of cedar or pressure treated lumber sunk a few inches into the ground. I've tried other kinds of edging, and I've never really been happy with any of them. I've tried rocks, which have the advantage of being available free at my parents farm, but the uneven edge makes edging the beds difficult and time consuming. I don't like a lot of the other edgings available on the market because they are either a. too expensive, or b. not very pretty. The boards will also go well with my rustic style and will compliment the wooden posts, plus I find that wood, especially once it has weathered to grey, adds structure to the garden without drawing attention away from the plants.
Another option, of course, would be to use no kind of artificial edging at all and to keep the lawn from invading the planting beds by simply cutting it back from time to time, but that's more work, and I really do like my planting beds clearly delineated.
There are other bits of hardscaping that I could have added, such as paved paths, but I decided that with the horseshoes game, keeping the path grass might be better, at least easier on the equipment. There are also other 'hard' pieces that I will be adding later, such as containers, birdbaths, and something to store my garden hose. These, though, are too portable to be considered at this point, and the placing of them will be determined at a later time.
Now, take some time to consider your own design. How are you going to define the 'walls' of your garden room? Are you going to use plants or will you be building a fence? Will there be a path? Will it be paved? Is there a place for an arbor or a trellis? How will you edge your planting beds? Is there a piece of garden art that you want to particularly showcase? Look at some magazines and pictures on line to get ideas. Give it some thought and when you have made your decisions, be sure to write them down or draw them up so you don't forget come spring.
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