Cany Venning
This spring will mark the 26th year I’ve worked in the landscape industry, creating hundreds and hundreds of garden plans. Although I can’t convey all my experience in a few hundred words, I’d like to share these simple, guidelines to get you started on making the most of your backyard.
Essential pathways to get to the BBQ, the parking spot, the shed, or the gate are the basis for how you use your yard. Walkways should be mapped out and joined together as gracefully as possible, likely with a patio at the central point. If you like clean lines, consider using 45-degree angles, they’re easier to maintain and gentler on the eyes. If you like curves, use a hose to lay them out then look again to lengthen and stretch those curves or use an actual circle. I would love a herringbone, granite cobble path from my deck to my patio but the financial reality at this time is a wide path of arborist wood chips. Sure, I can’t walk through it barefoot, but I can push a wheelbarrow across it, have some large ‘seating stumps’ nestled into it and it’s an easy way to figure out if the path is elegant and in the right place. (mulch is easy enough to move, add on to, or plant right into!) Pathways that are infrequent or awkward might be skipped altogether or hidden with some steppingstones to avoid drawing attention.
Now you need some privacy or a semblance of it because to me the backyard is a place where you should be able to occasionally ‘hide out’. Doing this with permanent or temporary structures like a pergola, gazebo or a screen, is easier than ever with Ikea and Canadian Tire as options. Using an existing tree, fence or the side of a garage with a well-placed umbrella, hammock, a pair of overlapping triangular ‘shade sails’, even a mosquito net hung from a tree branch sets a ‘do not disturb’ mood. Finally, for extra privacy, ‘green it up’ with climbing vines like Clematis or Virginia creeper. Lush vegetation is great for muffling street noise and conversation as well as ‘softening sightlines’, aka hiding.
‘No mow’ gardens continue to grow in popularity and I’m a big fan. Consider shrinking your lawn even if you’re not ready to lose the mower completely. Pups will learn to poop in the garden beds where it dissolves or on the path (where you can see it to clean it up) and children will enjoy picking flowers or spying on insects. Very few yards are big enough to actually kick a ball around or play croquet and if you have shade and use the garden frequently it’s nearly impossible to grow grass anyway. Mulch, again, is your friend until the plantings can fill in to your desired lushness.
Garden centers and gardening gurus can be really helpful when choosing plants but a decent yard becoming a great garden really starts with easy access, a fortress of solitude, more plants and less mowing.