Beyond the plants that you put in your garden there are lots of opportunities to bring a sense of style through decorating your garden area. The first place to start is with the design of the garden layout itself, then with the structures in the garden and then with the extra add-ons that you can place throughout the area.

Garden Design and layout form the backbone of your designs. There is a practical component of your garden layout that must come before the visual layout. The garden must be organized to group appropriate plants together and to place plants in the proper order for sunlight to reach them. You don’t want your corn blocking out all of the sunlight to the rest of your garden for example. You also need to account for access, water availability and other fixed landscaping elements.

Once you have your functional layout requirements you can move on to the visual aspects of your layout. There are many styles of garden layouts that you might choose such as a traditional English garden where the emphasis is on natural appearing “rooms” and shapes (either rectangular or curving). Adding eye-catchers is another popular design element and your garden layout can emphasize these elements with color, shapes, paths and other elements.

The garden has many aspect of architecture that can be made to enhance your overall design theme. These items range from hard to change items like fences & walls to elements that you can add and change easily like trellises. The key thing to remember here is that these elements can be made with very distinct styles to complement your design goals. An English garden shed will look very different than a Chinese Pavilion and each has its place.

Now we can move on to objects that are easy to add and change around. Small statues, gazing balls, flags, plaques and other items are easy to add and move around. You can also recycle various items into interesting accents like bowling balls, old garden tools and old kitchenware. These items can be easily over done, so think in terms of moderation.

Larger additions to your garden can create visual points of interest or even destination locations if you have a large garden area. Water features, garden benches, gazing balls, sun dials and large statues can all serve the purpose of larger anchor elements in your landscaping.

Simple additions that add style to your garden can be the best. Garden stakes that indicate what you planted are a good choice as are simple signs that can say just about anything you want. Small yard art often works well and recycled metal yard art is gaining in popularity recently.

Designing and decorating your garden can be a very enjoyable process and if you do a good job it will reward you for many years to come. Just remember to start with the fundamentals and to not go overboard on the garden gnomes and other garden statues. If your fundamentals are solid, you can easily make minor modifications to suite the changes in your design aspirations.