Accessorizing the Garden: Adding Personal Touches

The first in a series of articles on how-to creatively design personal touches - patio furniture, fountains, area rugs, statutes, bird feeders, bird baths, and other related items into the landscape.

An ambitious homeowner in La Mesa, CA designed and built this ornate fountain into a natural rock retaining wall.

      It's the moment you have been waiting for. The hard work of designing and installing the landscape is now complete. The patios and walkways have been laid, the plants have been planted. Now it’s time to add the finishing touches.  It’s time to accessorize.
      What does this mean?  Inside the home, adding furniture, throw rugs, pictures, and other touches is known as interior decorating. Accessorizing the outside of the home is nothing more than exterior decorating.  In fact, many of these same types of features used to decorate the inside the home -  tables and chairs, decorative lights, vases, plant containers, rugs – are used outside as well, albeit these design elements will be chosen to handle the weather.   As a landscape designer in the San Diego area, I get my clients personally involved in choosing these personal finishing touches.   I often leave space in the landscape plan for the selection of patio furniture, fountains, area rugs, statutes, bird feeders and bird baths, and other related items, then leave it to the client to select these items. Or we select them together.  In this way, clients feel a part of creating the landscape.  They are personalizing their outdoor space.
     When choosing accessories, a few rules apply:   

• First, stick to the intended landscape theme.  Certain themes – the Hacienda theme or the Asian theme for instance – can be filled with pieces that reflect personality.  And make certain the objects you choose harmonize and don’t clash with the theme.   A fountain with cherubs holding an umbrella might be perfect for the cottage garden but would be a curious choice in the modern landscape.  Reversely, a stack of angular cubes dripping with water can enhance the modern theme but stick out like a rubic’s cube near the cottage. 
• Along this line, make certain the colors of your accessories coordinate.  Look to the house and outbuilding colors, patio flooring, and the other materials already used to coordinate colors.
• Pay attention to size of your selections relative to the dimensions of the space – if it’s too big then your object overwhelms the garden; conversely if it’s too small, it loses the desired impact.  If in doubt, measure the item in question – a fountain for instance –then place a cardboard cutout to those exact dimensions in the location you have in mind, and finally step back and to see if it will be the right size.  Smaller pieces of  garden art and light furniture can be moved around until you find the right place, but larger items – fountains, metal benches, etc. – can be problematic.  So choose wisely.
• Don’t impulse purchase.  Look at the gazillion items on the web and visit several stores first before deciding.  Sometimes it takes months to find just the right piece.  Be patient. 
• In regard to decorative containers: let your contractor know the exact placement of where you plan to set planted containers.  Do this at the beginning of the project so the crew can lay pipe and the plantings can later be added to the automatic irrigation system.  It will be difficult if not impossible to add irrigation after  the installation of the patio flooring has commenced.

That’s it – make it  fun and  your personal space will come alive.
 
      This is the first of a series. Next, we will go more into depth as we break down the various types of garden accessories in upcoming articles.

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