One of the biggest trends in garden design is to make the home landscape more environmentally friendly by using native plants and creating natural areas. Yet many people also want parts of their yard to have a more traditional or formal landscaped appearance with trimmed shrubs and lawn. It is possible to have both.

The key to combining natural and formal lies in the transitions from one to the other. To do so successfully requires understanding that your yard has different zones, each with its own characteristics, and blending those areas to create a harmonious balance and flow.

Borrowing a page from nature's playbook, layer your yard into unique areas with shared elements. First, divide your yard into three zones: foundation plantings, lawn and border plantings, and woods and natural areas. Starting with foundation plants, your yard basically involves from structured to natural the farther it gets away from the house.

Foundation Plantings - The trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, and ground covers around a house creates a transition from the built environment to the terrain of the earth. Foundation plantings make the house look appealing and connect it with the yard.

Lawn & Border Plantings - These plantings continue the transition from formal to natural by repeating colors, shapes and textures used around the house, but with a looser touch. This area is often a good place for plants such as Knockout Roses, Miscanthus Gracillimus and Rudbeckia Goldsturm, which balance structure with a touch of the wild.

Woods & Natural Areas - For these natural areas, choose colors and textures that are similar to the other zones but with an even more informal look. In some parts of the country, plants are shade-loving and grow leggy reaching for the sunlight so choose plants for this zone that are open and airy, not tight like foundation plants. Christmas fern is a great plant for full shade that picks up the deep greens of foundation plants.

One of the hardest things to do in all of landscaping is to transition gracefully from the hard edges and angles of the home to the organic, free-form shapes of an adjacent natural area. But you can do it by connecting the areas with similar plants and keeping views open.

Natural and formal can more than coexist; they can thrive.

© Copyright 2008 Estate Gardens by ValleyCrest