The garden will seem more manageable when divided into rooms.

By Lars Lund

 

The grass and beds are the garden’s floor and the trees the ceiling, but most important is maybe the walls. The walls are what create the rooms in the garden, and like both the floor and ceiling they need to correlate.

 

Trends have trough the time changed. In the 50s and 60s gardens were more open. Back then people who surrounded their garden with privet hedges were called privet fascists. As the working life has become harder and more stressful it is now acceptable to close off your garden with hedges, so you can chill out in peace.

 

You need rooms to create a cosy atmosphere. Designing a garden is like building a house. There needs to be room for different activities. One of the most important rooms is the place where you relax.

 

The traditional garden with a large lawn and beds along the edges is not very exciting, and even though it seems manageable there is a lot of maintenance in mowing the lawn and with a weeding fork. If the garden is divided into rooms, you’ll get a more manageable garden as one room can be done at the time, and it offers many adventures every room is different. First and foremost, you’ll get the opportunity to create small universes in your garden.

The small garden

Even a small garden which maybe only consists of a terrace can be divided into rooms. A hedge of wickerwork or a hedge of creeper is good to protect the terrace from the wind. Pots can be used as room dividers and are for the most fixture on the terrace. In there you can plant herbs, flowers or more exotic plants like olives, lemon trees or other plants from the Mediterranean area. Flower beds close to the terrace are beautiful to look at. Beds of plants with subtle colours create calmness. Don’t forget plants with scents.

 

Garden rooms with roses

A room with roses can be surrounded by a hedge of common box or something evergreens like yew or thuja. A softer surrounding could be lavender, catnip or lesser calamint. The room will turn out more beautiful when there is both climbing roses, moss roses, large-flowered and shrub roses,

 

You can plant perennials between your roses, but they can’t be so nutrition demanding that they steal nutrients from the roses. Lamb’s ear, baby’s breath and different alumroot or heartleaf foamflowers together with lavender are nice perennials for the rose garden.

 

Other examples of rooms

Depending on the size of your garden you can put different things in your garden. You can make a room for perennials, a room for water, a cabbage farm, a room for a rock garden, or a room for the kids.

 

Show us your garden rooms

You can create a cosy atmosphere with a fire ring or bench. You don’t need a lot to create a cosy atmosphere. Most important is shelter and sun. It is not fun to be cold, so make sure there is some kind of shelter from either a hedge or a fence. Sun is important as shade always can be provided by a parasol.