Before the Plants

The Architecture of a Garden

Sometimes the Most Important Decisions Have Nothing to Do with Plants

It's tempting to think of garden design as choosing beautiful plants and finding places to put them. But before I think about flowers, foliage, or color, I look at the space itself.

How does the garden relate to the house? Where does your eye naturally travel? How do you move through the landscape? What feels awkward, and what feels right?

These questions often lead to the most important design decisions.

Finding the Right Proportions

For this project, the challenge was to create a more harmonious relationship between the house and its surroundings.

The placement of paths, the proportions of architectural elements, and the way different spaces connect all influence how a property feels.

I explored changes to the entry, walkways, garage doors, and trellises to give the landscape a stronger sense of order and coherence.

None of these decisions depends on choosing a single plant. Yet together, they establish the framework that allows a garden to become beautiful.

The Pleasure of Getting It Right

I find proportion fascinating. Sometimes a relatively small adjustment—a wider path, a better-aligned opening, a change in scale—can transform the experience of a space.

Good proportions aren't necessarily something people consciously notice. They simply make a place feel comfortable, balanced, and inviting.

That's one of the things I love about design: finding the underlying relationships that make everything else fall into place.

A Foundation for the Garden

Once the structure is right, the planting can do what it does best: soften, enrich, surprise, and bring the landscape to life.

The most successful gardens have both. An underlying sense of order and enough freedom for nature to introduce its own complexity.

This page illustrates the architectural and spatial design process. Proposed elements are shown as design concepts rather than completed construction.