Designing Garden Structures and Framework | Garden Home (112)

On this episode of Garden Home, host P. Allen Smith will discuss designing garden structures and framework. From designing a trellis to making a structural container for a small garden, Allen will show you the best techniques of design that work for your garden home.

Topics Include
Structure and Framework in Allen’s Garden
Designing a Trellis
Making the most of small spaces
Types of Garden Structures
Framing Views in the Garden
Old Westburry Framed View Garden
Screening out views
Rustic Garden Structures
Designing Structures
Structural Containers

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P. Allen Smith is a landscape and garden designer, horticulturist, preservationist and television host. His passions span the subjects of community, health, sustainability and history. He has designed the grounds at many of the nation’s most notable estate properties, townhomes, and commercial complexes. And, for over 19 years, he has shared his green knowledge and insight with the public via ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, his own PBS television, and six book titles. Currently, Allen is focused on residential, commercial and community designs that are beautiful, improve our contentedness, and our social and physical health.

To learn more about:
…Allen’s horticultural interests and secrets, sign up for his weekly newsletter: https://pallensmith.com/

…visiting Allen’s Garden Home above the Arkansas River, see https://pallensmith.com/tours/

….Allen’s favorite plants mentioned in his social media, see: To review many of the plants Allen mentions in his posts and that are planted in his own garden, see https://pallensmith.com/gilbert-h-wild-allens-favorites/

….retaining Allen’s Garden and Landscape design firm, see http://www.pallensmithandassociates.com/

…Allen’s Garden Home-inspired intergenerational community in Monroe, LA, see https://www.gardensofsomerset.com/

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Explore the importance of structure in your garden home next over the past 20 years as a garden designer I’ve enjoyed helping homeowners create private sanctuaries full of beauty and wonder I find each garden to be a fresh opportunity to explore ways to create uniquely personal spaces these are just

A few of the gardens I’ve helped to transform into garden hose Hi I’m Allen Smith welcome to the garden home well you’ll find practical ideas beautiful landscapes and much much more to help inspire you to push the boundaries of your home right out into the garden to the edges of your property now in today’s show we’re going to start here

In my design studio it’s the place where I get so many ideas for the garden and there’s no idea that’s more important than structure or framework when it comes to garden design before we go outside to take a look at some examples of structure and framework in my own

Garden I thought we should go over a few terms that we’ll be discussing throughout the show the first is garden home now this concept is just about expanding your living space outdoors and the way I do this is through a series of garden rooms and when I create a garden

Room I always fall back on the 12 principles of design when I create a garden it’s a garden designers checklist if you will now one of the most important as I’ve already mentioned is structure and framework so let’s head on out into the garden and have a look A real hallmark of great gardens is the way structure is skilfully integrated into the overall design it’s almost seamless you see the combination is so on the mark that both the garden and the structure are enhanced I found that this same effect can be achieved in a much more realistic

And modest scale in our own backyards here in my backyard of my garden home I want to show you how I’ve taken structure and utilized it in the overall fabric of my garden now when I was a kid growing up I remember my granddad preaching the value of transforming a

Sal’s ear into a silk first this idea of being resourceful and frugal was very important one day I discovered a house that was going to be pulled down and soon after I found this lot which was completely vacant at the time I brought the two together and created a garden

Home you know there’s something exhilarating about taking an ordinary outbuilding and integrating it into the framework of a garden this is true particularly in small gardens when buildings become part of the framework you see with some proper planning and some creativity you can transform what might otherwise become an eyesore into

Something that has a functional and aesthetic purpose you see buildings can create a sense of enclosure they can screen views and they can serve as a focal point at the same time satisfying a need in this part of my garden I’ve turned necessary structures into useful

Parts of my garden I’ve taken the garage and used it as a border for the vegetable garden and at the same time the garage serves as a screen from other houses and buildings in the neighborhood a fence hides the alley Beyond and gives my vegetable garden a nice neutral green

Backdrop these rustic trellises provides support for vining plants in summer hyacinth bean vines cover the trellises with interesting purple flowers and seed pods even these raised beds here in the vegetable garden which are very useful at a touch of structure now if I want to create a vertical element I’ll use

Teepees like this they add structure and I grow vines on them throughout the growing season this toolshed in my garden serves many purposes it’s also a chicken house and it supports this beautiful Lamarck Rose you should see it in bloom in the spring and it’s a focal point now as you can

See from your vantage point that structure in the garden isn’t just about buildings hedges can also make walls in the gardens now when I begin the design process I often look for opportunities to combine man-made structures with the natural and that’s exactly what I’ve done here in this garden room called the

Fountain garden in my garden home you see there are four walls to this room and three of them are this clipped Holly hedge the fourth is the house itself now there are large windows on this wall that look out into the garden and this is particularly nice during the winter

When I’m not out in the garden as much as I am during the growing season the late fall and winter is an excellent time to examine the structure of a garden you see we don’t have bloom or foliage to draw our attention away from the overall layout of the garden if you

Want to create living walls or hedges in your garden you might consider some evergreens such as you or Italian Cypress and of course Holly hedges can also be created from deciduous plants those that lose their leaves in the winter such as hornbeam beach and spiraea space can be a premium

Especially in large cities where neighborhoods are often in high-rises and when it is why not garden vertically or against a blank wall one of the best ways to do this is with a trellis let me show you how to make a simple and classic design that can apply to many situations

To start you’ll need a few two by twos three of them six feet long and six of them three feet long when you’re putting this together there’s no need for fancy cuts just place one board on top of the other with about three inches of overlap then space the others accordingly next just

Attach them with some wood screws and drill at each intersection now you can put this together with a hammer and nail if you like I’ve done this in the past but I like wood screws because they don’t split the wood now once you have the trellis assembled this is what

You’ll need to attach it to the wall six wood screws five inches long six little pieces of copper tubing a couple of inches long and some washers the tubing serves as a spacer that holds the trellis away from the wall this gives the plants plenty of room to grow and

Provides ventilation behind the trellis what a great way to create a beautiful wall of roses or support for any other climbing vine for that matter Structures whether they’re new or remodeled buildings trellises arbors or even plant supports all contribute to the framework of a gardens design these are anchoring elements a firm point from which we can begin to absorb and take in all the richness and diversity around a given space during a visit to Chicago

Cathleen Colome of the Douglas hair landscape architect firm showed me a garden where the structure surrounding it played an important role in the gardens overall design so what do we have here Cathleen Allen I’d like to show you this garden wow this is beautiful so often we think that if you

Live in a big city you can’t have a garden but that’s not true at all not at all it’s amazing how much you can bring the views from inside out this is from the other city so this is an extension of the dining room absolutely I’m always looking for plant material

That note not only has fabulous texture but also has you know brilliant color I want something that’s going to be hanging over the edges I mean I can see that with these beautiful calibrachoa x’ and the geraniums cascading down and then you punctuate it with these Ostia

Sperm oh yeah these are great great plants vibrant all summer long well let’s have a look at some of the other gardens that surround this beautiful apartment Kathleen this is an even better example of how the interior and exterior can relate to one another mainly because of this picture window

Exactly what we try to do here was integrate the fabric material and colors that we have on the interior with the plant palette on the exterior so you’ve used this basic simple color theme where you have a range of greens from chartreuse to deep blue green and grey

Exactly and then we have that accented with white purple mm-hmm yeah it’s great color combinations with the Terranea bouncing off of the lysimachia which is located here yes golden creeping Ginny exactly wonderful of course this color palette contrasts to the one we just saw off the dining

Room and that was all about contrast lots of different colors and this is more mana maduk well the harmony that this creates really resonates with me I just love the idea that the garden we just saw is truly an extension of the home it’s a beautiful place for the family to dine entertainer just relax it’s a great example of the garden home now when I designed gardens I find that there are certain structures that are

Really beneficial and fit right into the landscape I’d like to go over three of those the first is the Arbor you see Ann Arbor can be a resting place in the garden it can create a sense of entry or even frame a view and often plant such

As climbing shrubs or vines are grown on it just take a look at one of my entry arbors covered in new dawn Rose now another structure that’s indispensable in my garden is the loggia now the word loggia comes from the same root as the word Lodge or living space

And it’s defined as a covered arcade that’s open on one or more sides and usually attached to a building it’s an area that allows me to be outdoors but in a protected very room like setting I use my luge as a work area often I make flower arrangements there and since it’s

Outdoors the cleanup is a snap I even paint on the low ship and enjoy entertaining there and the third structure I want to tell you about is the pergola now pergola is a classical term it’s a structure that’s made up of columns supporting a trellis roof on which plants are trained to grow

Pergolas can come in a wide range of forms classical contemporary even rustic these are just a few examples of how structures when placed in the garden can play an important role in the overall framework of the garden design now let’s take a look at another principle of design that being framed the view Think about a favorite picture it’s just natural to frame it and when you think about the garden the same applies garden design is often about just creating beautiful garden pictures and when you make a beautiful garden picture you certainly want to frame it and there’s where structure can really come in to

Help us now I want to give you a little tip on how to frame the view in your own garden you can start by taking a snapshot of your property and put modern technology to work by blowing it up to a size about like this now what I do is I

Literally take a pen and draw on to this the shapes and forms of plants that I think will help frame the view on this project we wanted to frame the view of this beautiful front porch with a classical pediment so to do this we used Italian Cypress framing each side so it

Honors the symmetry of the entire architectural composition and then to add a little shade because this facade faces West I wanted to see what a tree would look like here these are actually planted on the lawn they’re out from the facade of the house away from the

Cypress as you can see this plan really played out because the Italian Cypress honor the spirit of the Mediterranean style of the property and they provide such a nice vertical element that lifts the entire composition I also like to draw in containers we place these containers here and here this is a great

Way to sort of work out scale shape and form so often it’s difficult to see the final result so this is just a simple little technique that I use that helps me to visualized frame views now carrying on with this idea of frame views I’d like to take you to a

Beautiful garden on Long Island in New York it’s the Old Westbury garden this Holmen garden may surprise you because it looks like something out of 17th century England but actually it was built in the 1920s I was pleasantly surprised to find so many examples of structures framing views throughout the gardens Have you ever thought about how a doorway a gateway or a passage such as this creates a sense of intrigue or mystery in a garden we just by nature want to know what lies beyond well this is just one of the devices a garden designer will use to create interest in

A garden another thing that it does is that it actually serves as a way to frame beautiful views and just look at the beautiful view that this entryway frames and this is just one example of the many views you can find here probably the most extraordinary example is under the crescent-shaped pergola

Near the lily pond as the visitor walks along the edge you get these beautiful framed views created by the arches that support the pergola clearly this was created by a man with great vision someone who was more than just a designer he was an artist because in

Each of these places once he’s a beautiful Vista a painting if you will now what’s interesting about Georges crawley is that he was not trained as an architect or an interior designer or a landscape architect he just had a gift and a passion to create beauty you know

When it comes to creating gardens framing the view and embracing those gorgeous vistas beyond it’s certainly part of it but another aspect is screening out those views we don’t want to see I have to say I always feel like I gained something by visiting a beautiful garden like Old Westbury and seeing the work of a talented designer like George Crawley it’s such an inspiration to see these beautiful designs and I love distilling down often grand designs down to something that the average home

Gardener can apply to their garden home take for instance that beautiful pergola we just saw it’s very ornate and would be expensive to recreate but there’s another example of a pergola on the property that’s done in the rustic style which would be much more affordable and achievable just look how it supports

These climbing roses and just like it’s more formal counterpart it’s laid out on a slight Crescent as well now this notion of framing the view often works hand-in-hand with screening unsightly or unwanted views in order to create the most beautiful garden picture a great way to screen views is with fences walls

Hedges tall shrubs or trees and even structures such as tea houses or covered patios more often than not structures exist in a garden out of necessity I have a garage and tool shed that I had to work my design around then there are other Gardens principally these grand

Gardens that have structures at them just for the sheer beauty now I’m always having to weigh the effect of a structure in a garden as a garden designer and there always fall back on one of Thomas Jefferson’s philosophies and that was to create buildings that were not only beautiful but useful I had

A client once that wanted to create a structure for a hot tub and what they had in mind really didn’t work with the architecture of the house so I did some sketches and came up with a classically inspired building or temple if you will in the garden that reflects the

Architecture of the house itself this idea just seemed like the best solution we just couldn’t have a hot tub stuck out in the middle of this beautiful garden somehow it had to be anchored to the overall landscape whenever I have the opportunity to help someone create a garden home it’s

Important for me to get to know that person to understand their sense of style and their tastes and the way they live in the space I want the exterior the garden the garden rooms we create to reflect the architecture of the home as well as its interiors for instance this home is a

Mountain retreat done in the rustic style the exterior is covered with tulip poplar bark it’s decorated with rustic bits of trellis it’s a place for friends to gather relax and have a little fun when I create a garden home I like to draw from the spirit of the place and

Create that in the garden for instance in this home I want to draw from this color palette that you find in this room whites greens accented with reds I’ll use all of those colors as I paint with plants in the garden I’ll carry the influence of this room even further into

The garden room by creating a sense of enclosure just as we have walls in this room we’ll have walls in this garden and those walls will follow this rustic mountain motif now the analogy even goes further just as we have an entry into this room we’ll have an entry into our

Garden room and just as many rooms have focal points in this case a fireplace our Garden Room will also have a focal point which will help pull it all together the challenge here is to create a garden room that’s full of color through the spring summer and fall now

What we have here is a largely shady property but I think we’ve got just enough Sun up there on that Ridge to achieve our goals now we’re going to create the Garden Room framework and to do this we’ve enlisted the help of master craftsman John Warren John is

Much more than a landscape designer he’s also a musician John I’m really excited about this space becoming a beautiful flower garden well as you can see from the drawings I sent you this entry Arbor would be here where these two stones are ok it looks like you’re using a free-form Mountain Laurel yes I love that look that’s it’s so it’s

Perfect for this setting and the style behind very natural yes marvelous and the other thing that I like about that you can see through it it really blends with the landscape beautifully rather than having a solid fence along here and tackle this gives you vistas into the

National let you off John I envision a similar structure over there on the long line of the garden a bower where you could actually sit let’s let’s go there talk about that John what I want to create here is really a focal point to help break up this long stretch of

Trellis a viewing area exactly yes exactly so the trellis would come up about say five to six feet on each side and then the Bower would create an arch as I’ve shown here on this drawing right help break up that long length that’s right now when I lay

Out this space I’ll use a couple of tools I’ll use surveyors flags and surveyors paint this will help me delineate between the walkways the flower beds as well as indicate where the trellis goes and the arbors I’ll also employ the help of John and the homeowner through the entire process

John I’ve admired your work for a long time I just know what you come up with is going to add so much to this space I’d love to know more about how you put your designs together well thank you very much my woodshop is close to here

Would you like to take a look oh absolutely great boy John this is quite a workshop well thank you very much now is this one of the latest and greatest well yes this actually is a little coffee table that I’m working on and this is chestnut wood

From an old barn locally now the chestnuts extinct didn’t it yes it’s was a blight actually caused by a fungus that the tree had and they started dying in 1904 and were extinct by the 1940s really John this is a wonderful coffee table how did you get into this well

I’ll tell you how it happened we in my landscape business we started making gates and bridges and natural features out of wood and I thought to myself oh gee I can use this the same elements to make furniture and the way we work this wood is we use the old hand tools as

Much as possible and that gives the irregularity that it’s not perfect like modern furniture had so much charm to it now John this construction this this post and and horizontal beam this will be the approach you’ll take when you create the trellis yes this is all really handmade in fact we make this

Union here it’s called tenon join we make it with an axe so it would be very similar to the post in banister we would use for the Arbor and fence John this is a really handsome piece well thank you very much and you’ve got the mountain laurel legs here exactly

Yes we try to bring that natural element into all of our furniture it’s so beautiful now now this the Laurel and the way you’ve used it here is the way you will apply it to the frame of the Troubles exactly so John how do you hold the

Mountain laurel in place the way we have done it is we pre-drill the wood so it won’t split and then we use a cabinet screw and then we put a dowel on the end of the countersink so you don’t actually see the metal I see and you the wood

Screw is much better than the nail because they will rub the nail rust and it doesn’t hold it can give and separate John is truly inspiring to find someone who takes otherwise discarded materials and creates such beauty with them well thank you Alan it’s been a pleasure working with you well I’m looking

Forward to seeing the finished result thank you As you can see we’ve covered a lot of ground it comes to this design principle structure structures can take on many forms and applications in the garden so far we’ve seen how necessary buildings or the buildings of utility as it were in my garden have been worked into the

Overall garden design we’ve seen how Chicago family has used arbors and walls of buildings to enhance their garden space we’ve been to Old Westbury for a look at an elaborate structure that help to frame views and we’ve seen how master craftsman creates rustic garden structures in North Carolina earlier in

The show when we were outside looking at my garden I talked about the idea of structure being beyond just buildings it’s about the framework of the garden the way foliage works together to create the overall garden design this also applies to containers whenever I design a container I start with the foliage as

The structural plant first and then build out from there in this container I designed for summer color I used a spike or a Dracaena as the anchoring center point this serves as a tall and spiky element in the composition then I moved on to more round and full elements to fill out the

Container here I used geraniums and impatience in this composition I’ve used Sonic quite New Guinean patience geranium Americana white splash 2 and strawberry parfait dianthus as a finishing touch to the container I did a few cascading elements these spill over the edge of the container here I’ve used

A common house plant the old airplane plant or spider plant and I’ve also used the beautiful gray green helichrysum this one’s called dwarf silver now remember when you’re creating structure for a container start with tall and spiky plants then fill in with round and full and then give your container that

Finishing touch with something to cascade I can’t tell you how much I enjoy this time of year when I can work on some of my designs in today’s show we’ve seen the important structure plays on the design process I hope you go away with some ideas on how to better

Integrate structure to the fabric of your garden home from the garden home I’m allen Smith more information about today’s topic and other topics covered in this series can be found at PL and smith.com on an upcoming episode of PL on Smith’s garden home hi I’m allen

Smith we’re going to look at plants in a new way in our next show we’re going to begin thinking about plants the way children think of shapes will also visit England and Holland and learn about trendy ornamental grasses that are all the rage plus some tips on using color in your garden