Think Outside the Box When It Comes to the Art of Gardening

Garden Bench
The art of gardening elevates gardens into something beyond a small plot of land. The beauty of having your own garden is like a painting — the only limitation is your imagination. In the art community, each artist enjoys all areas of the arts but often prefers a specific niche. The same is true for the gardener. Some gardeners are minimalist, while others create intricate masterpieces.

For most green thumb gardeners, the plants become the artwork, leaving design and efficiency to the gardener. When it comes to gardening, the gardener and the plants have a symbiotic agreement: the gardener provides good planning and attention to the garden, and the successful garden provides food, beauty and pride.

Urban Gardens Blend Fashion and Foliage

The urban gardener can mix and match all types of plants with fashion to make a combination-style garden, which can feature a variety of vegetation from trees to shrubs to herbs. In an urban garden, you might find outdoor furniture covered in fabric that complements the garden's color palette. Instead of ceramic pots, you might fill purses with ornamental grass or a pair of cute shoes with herbs.

Aerial Garden Art

Create Garden Art for a Bird's Eye View

Many people look at gardens as a two-dimensional canvas, but why stop there? Add a third dimension by creating a landscape designed to dazzle from above the ground. If you have a balcony or a two-story home, consider how the garden will look from the higher vantage point. For a great example, check out the movie "Coraline." While you may not be able to create the fantastical element of the garden, you can see how to create aerial garden art that will capture anyone's attention from both the ground level and the upper level.

Add Flare With a Flower Garden


Flowers add a flare of color, but they serve a purpose, too. If you prefer moving art to still life, plan your garden so it will attract a constant variety of wildlife. Pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, can make your garden flourish. Native flowers, aster, black-eyed Susan, Rhododendron and sunflowers all attract pollinators. For a hummingbird garden, plant columbines, azaleas, honeysuckle, foxgloves, impatiens or petunias. You'll love seeing the vibrant colors of butterflies and hummingbirds coming to share your garden with you.

Reuse Items to Create a Modern Art Garden

Sometimes garden accessories, like statues and waterfalls, can help set the tone of the garden. Repurposing older items can often create a modern art garden. You can find pieces in your house, at a yard sale or at a flea market. Old automobile parts make great accents. Use a chrome bumper as a retaining wall or plant a flower garden in the bed of an old pickup truck for a different take on a flowerbed. You can even make something that is one of a kind, like a windmill made of a radiator fan and a crankshaft.



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Find Year-Round Tranquility With Japanese Gardens

Japanes Gardens
Japanese gardens highlight vegetation that changes with the seasons. No matter what time of year it is, you'll find something beautiful in this type of garden. While other garden types tend to focus on the plants, a Japanese garden often incorporates the surroundings. Incorporate garden statues, rocks, different colored sands and buildings. Add natural walkways and areas where you can stop and meditate. To add stunning visual effects, add tsukiyama, or artificial hills created by building up mounds of dirt covered by ornamental grasses.


Blend the Element of Nature to Create Garden Art

Creating art from nature doesn't have to stop at your plants. A successful garden can have many features. Use the stump of a fallen tree for a seat or make a bench using the bottom section of a tree trunk. You can use the roots and some of the outstretched arms of a large tree to make legs. If the tree is too small for this method, use two short sections as legs and place a larger section perpendicular across the shorter sections.

Water features not only add beauty, but they also add a musical element to your garden. Design your garden so you can listen to the water from a nearby bench or yoga platform. To highlight the wind, consider hanging bells or chimes from trees. You can find bells in a variety of pitches from hollow, mellow sounds to whispering sopranos.

Thinking outside the garden box is fun because there are very few limitations. Make your garden a personal expression and feature the type of art that you want to see every day. Whether you want to create a sprawling estate that will attract visitors or a smaller garden where you can relax, make your garden a canvas.

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