For owners of dachas, a personal plot has always been an important aspect, or rather, a vegetable garden, from which they want to harvest as much as possible. Just 10-20 years ago, hardly anyone was interested in exactly what their garden would look like, or whether it was beautiful enough. Today, landscape design is more popular than ever among owners of country cottages and among owners of more modest houses in the countryside. Put aside the prejudice that the design of a vegetable garden and a private house in the village are incompatible, take a look at the photo below.
Landscape design of a vegetable garden with flower beds of vegetables and herbs
Previously, hardly anyone would have thought that a vegetable garden in a village could or should be beautifully decorated. The main idea of the owners was aimed at collecting a high-quality harvest. Today, trends are changing direction.
Beautifully designed vegetable garden of a private house in the village
Many owners of a private house in the village want to perceive the garden not only as a place where they need to work every day, but also as an area that they want to admire and capture its design in a photo. After all, you see, working in a well-kept garden, where each vegetable has its own separate place and everything seems to be “laid out on shelves,” is much more pleasant.
Arrangement of a garden plot
Of course, we can say that for such purposes it is necessary to hire specialists who will transform the garden, requiring a significant fee. However, this is not at all true. Read our article to the end and you will learn how to turn your vegetable garden into a work of art in just 6 steps without paying a landscape designer.
Beds with ornamental cabbage
Fashionable vegetable garden: principles of creation
If you decide to make your garden not only productive, but also beautiful and fashionable, then abandon the standard planting of crops.
Creating a trendy vegetable garden
In this case, it is better to resort to a combination. Don't be afraid to combine what at first glance seems impossible. For example, you can plant carrots and beets in the same bed, alternate varieties of cabbage or salads.
Creating raised beds
Try planting pansies or marigolds among the “kitchen” greenery. They will not only add a unique touch to your garden plot, but will also attract beneficial insects to pollinate your plants. Don’t think that a beautiful garden design is only appropriate for photos in magazines or if you have an expensive cottage; it will perfectly transform a small private house in the village.
Decorative vegetable garden on a country plot
Even a small flowerbed can be interestingly filled with a mixture of different plants that will please the eye. So, try planting some types of tomatoes together: cherry, yellow, red, black tomato varieties. You'll see how they sparkle with colors and add incredible variety to your garden bed.
Rectangular vegetable garden planting model
Original ideas for a beautiful garden (photo)
Many summer residents strive to create a certain coziness in the garden, decorating it with stunning landscape design, a colorful rose garden, an alpine slide, decorative ponds, streams and fountains. Such original solutions will turn an ordinary plot into a fabulous magical garden and attract everyone's attention.
If the prices for such jewelry “bite” your pockets, it will be much cheaper and more enjoyable to make everything yourself. In the future, the creative process of making decorations for the garden can turn into a hobby.
Paths
Fantastically attractive paths in the garden made of decorative paving stones, near which there will be a comfortable seating area. Here you can install all kinds of sofas, benches, armchairs, grills, tables.
Garden paths can be laid out using a plastic form. Pour cement mortar into it, wait until it dries well, and enjoy your creation.
Advice! To diversify the luxurious landscape design, you can use natural stone, colored stone chips, and decorative evergreen shrubs.
Flower beds and flower beds
Do you want to have a beautiful garden? Then pay special attention to flower beds and flower beds. Arrange compositions so that plants replace each other during the flowering period. In early spring you will be pleased with snowdrops, daisies, crocuses, and forget-me-nots.
When tulips, daffodils, petunias, and pansies fade, asters, dahlias, and chrysanthemums will give beauty in the fall. Make sure that your flower beds have as many bright colors as possible, then your garden will become luxurious and extremely mesmerizing.
Body of water or pond
Design a beautiful decorative pond where a stream will babble, which you can line with stones, plant floating lilies and decorate with various decorative figurines, jugs and much more. Plant your favorite flowers near the stream to make the composition completely complete.
An excellent solution is a decorative pond with a fountain, which makes it doubly pleasant to enjoy the beauty of the garden. This option will be more expensive, because it will require additional materials and expenses. You will need plaster stone, brick and a pedestal where the fountain will be installed. Complete it with all kinds of figurines, LED lamps, and water gutters.
Fountain
A fountain with lilies will be another great solution for the garden. A plastic tray decorated with bright fragrant flowers and perennial herbs will help you with this.
Old things
Got an old car in the barn? You shouldn’t throw it away, because with its help you can create an unusually mesmerizing decoration. Place the cart in the garden on the lawn, plant bright garden flowers around it, which will spread the aroma throughout your area.
As you know, most of us decorate our territories with our own hands. Decorating the area will not take you much time and will help you express your creative side. Plastic and wood can be excellent materials for creating various crafts. You will need to have plastic water bottles of different sizes, acrylic paints, varnish, fixative and a glue gun on hand. With some imagination and creativity, you can create unique garden shapes from a couple of ordinary bottles.
Today, in summer cottages you can find bright, beautiful flower beds, unusual flower beds, tiered mixborders, and unique compositions of stones on an alpine hill. Using these elements, you can fill any garden area with colors. Vases and flower beds that are created from scrap items look very unusual. For example, you can use old car tires to create a garden bed. Instead of flowerpots, fill old rubber boots with soil.
Yard decoration
When designing a yard, you should keep in mind that a country-style country interior should first of all be decorated with various characteristic decorative elements, such as:
- Rocker arms;
- Carts and carts;
- Straw Scarecrows;
- Reels;
- Cart wheels and other equipment.
An excellent element of decorating a village yard is a well with a “crane”. If there is no well in the yard, then you can install a decorative structure.
In addition, we should not forget about paths that can be made using sand, gravel or even wood. Another attractive and bright element of the yard, which fits perfectly into such a landscape, is a wicker fence in the country, with which you can divide the space into separate zones.
Distressed gazebo-tea house
Back in 2010, simultaneously with the bathhouse project, Arnau commissioned the architect to design a gazebo, also known as a tea house. There are no complaints about the bathhouse.
Things didn't work out with the house from the very beginning. And they had to “pull it out” from the designer, and there was no luck with the implementation.
ArnauFORUMHOUSE Member
The first contractor stole the advance payment for it, and then fed me breakfast for a year. The second one made it so that the house could fall from the slightest breath of wind. The third strengthened the house for one season, then left everything to chance. In the second season I started making a roof - from terraced hardwood boards, terrace corrugated boards! You have never seen anything worse in the area of tea houses, believe me. And only Vladimir was able to finish the unfortunate tea house and cover it with larch shingles. For which I am very grateful to him.
Visualization.
During the summer of 2011, the garden did not undergo any major changes - the main efforts were devoted to the construction of a site for the tea house and a pond in front of it. The area of the reservoir is about 30 m², depth is up to 1.2-1.4 m, decorative purpose. Having already covered the pond bowl with a membrane, they finally brought in a batch of shrubs and trees. This time, Arnau strictly monitored the quality of the planting material and chose it from “far from the cheapest nursery.” At the end of October, we planted everything we bought and completed the stone wall that should separate the “forest” part of the site.
At this stage, the understanding came that we would have to change the contractor again, since the current one is more likely a “foreman, not a designer,” which causes a lot of problems. Yes, the team did some things well, but for this they had to literally stand their ground. And when there was no such opportunity, the work either stalled, or the result turned out to be far from planned.
Why hire someone to arrange the site?
This question was asked to Alexander by one of the visitors to his topic, to which he received the following answer.
ArnauFORUMHOUSE Member
Why trust contractors with anything at all? Probably because you cannot have a good understanding of all possible types of human activity. Probably, in most cases, a specialist who has done his job many times and has seen many of his own mistakes will complete the task better than you with little knowledge and almost always without experience. You talk about the profession of landscape designer as something available to everyone. This is wrong. Now I feel much more confident in this area than in 2009. But I’m definitely not a specialist, but a moderately experienced amateur.
Therefore, even being disappointed in the second designer and stopping cooperation with him for some time, Alexander invited a third.
How to adapt free water to your needs
In parallel with the construction of a house and a bathhouse from timber, in 2010 Arnau acquired a storage tank, digging it into the ground.
ArnauFORUMHOUSE Member
This barrel is one of the most useful ideas for the site. And today I would have dug two of these, and not just one. The essence of the idea is that this barrel is buried in the ground and drains from the roofs of the house and bathhouse are connected to it. As a result, even after a little rain I have a supply of clean and soft water. A primitive pump is installed in the barrel, which successfully pumps water. I constantly use this water to water my plants.
The system is the simplest - under each drain there is a receiving box in which garbage settles; sewer pipes run from the boxes, connected to a pipe going into the barrel. In case of heavy rainfall and overflow, discharge into a well is provided. No anchoring was done, the container was simply dug in and filled with water; in the spring it does not float up, as it is filled with autumn rains.
Ten years later – garden in spring-summer 2022
It is impossible to cover more than fifty pages of a topic within one article; for details, refer to the source. But ten years after the start of work, the site looks like this.
And this is last season.
Despite all the difficulties, mistakes and rework, Arnau achieved the desired result, but does not plan to stop there. As you know, there is no limit to perfection, and no matter how many years pass, something changes in the garden every season and will continue to change.
On the topic, we have an article about how a landscape designer equipped his site. The corresponding thread on the forum will help you avoid at least common mistakes when planning. In the video - the first experience of landscape design on your own.
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Six years from “was” to “became”
Arnau opened his topic with a detailed description of all the misadventures and successes in June 2015, in the first message he posted a photo of what happened and how it became.
The second photo is from June, and he started working in the garden in the spring.
ArnauFORUMHOUSE Member
The end of April 2015, I put up stone troughs, in which I later built mini rock gardens. Nowadays, saxifrage, gentian, grosgrass, pinks and other alpines grow successfully.
In mid-June, Alexander began decorating the back side of the fence with mats made of willow vines - due to the overgrown growths, it turned out not too neatly, but much better than it was. And if you consider that such decor is much cheaper than custom-made trellises, and is more appropriate in the “forest” area of the garden, everything is great.
Mid-July - the beds have been developed, the pond is still in mud, stones are still flying off the pebble path, but in general, it is already a full-fledged garden and park complex.
The fourth season from the beginning of the development of virgin lands
In May 2013, work had not yet begun, the site looked like this.
At the beginning of July, they got around to the long-suffering tea house and the same contractor began building a firewood shed.
In August, they began installing wooden gratings along the corrugated sheet fence, and this process was completed in 2016 - “because it’s expensive.”
In the garden, something began to emerge only towards the end of October - the heathers and turfs are already showing themselves as a bright spot.
Why a fence and a fence made of corrugated sheets?
Unlike pastoral pictures of American suburbs with areas separated only by hedges or nominal wooden fences up to half a meter high, in our realities the picture is different.
ArnauFORUMHOUSE Member
So - I have an empty plot of land. Should we build something on it? Which building is the most important in Russia? Probably a fence. We all want to isolate ourselves from the dangers of the outside world. So we started with the fence.
The history of the development of the site began back in 2010 - both now and then, if you needed something “cheap and cheerful,” they chose profiled sheets. So Arnau (Alexander) was no exception, finding several advantages for himself in such a solution.
- Complete visual protection from external factors.
- Relatively low cost.
- Durability if installation technology is followed.
- Maximum assembly speed - installed literally in a day.
The main disadvantage of this type of fence is the lack of aesthetics, but there are different decoration options, which is what the craftsman has been doing all these years. Today he would choose a beautiful wooden fence that matches the style of the house, since the final cost, taking into account all the transformations, turned out to be approximately the same. But he doesn’t have any special regrets about this – at that time the choice was justified.
ArnauFORUMHOUSE Member
That's right, the corrugated sheet, plus the decor, ended up costing more. But the advantage of the profiled sheet is that I could afford it right away. And I do all the decorations year after year, gradually. And there is no need to spend a lot of money at once.
What’s interesting is that the corrugated sheet was mounted with the colored side facing the site, and the gray side facing the street. The case when you do it for yourself, and not for others.
