Landscaping Home Grounds Service and Private Areas F, s 7 w, 1 ': 1 ') it Y {1"} néfi" h i c wl 3% 5 5::"&.. _-_ - ".L if JJW 1 39/6; A Supplement to the 4-H Environmental Beautification Project, Unit III
Landscaping Home Grounds Service and Private Areas Introduction ming pool or a reflection pool. (See Figure 1.) In this leaflet you are going to add two outdoor rooms to your home ground. They are the ser- vice and private or outdoor living areas. Included Materlals You Need in the service area are the garage, vegetable gar- 1. Tape measure (or a 6- or 10 foot ruler). den, clothesline, compost pile, garbage cans, stor- 2. Sharp-pointed instrument such as a screwage facilities and perhaps the children s play area. driver or nail to hold tape when you are mea- The outdoor living area is usually located at the suring. side or back of the house. It may include a patio, 3. Tracing paper (preferably cross section paper grill, space for family games and children to play, of 10 squares to the inch). flower borders for the gardener in the family, or whatever else fits the family s recreational needs. You may want to include a pool either a swim- 939? Drawing pencil (2H or 3H). Eraser. Drawing compass. The Areas Are Flexible - _. There is no hard fast set of rules for locating and 1 determining the size of the service and private areas. Your family can decide best where the service area should be, how big it should be, and how much of the remaining property to devote to the private areas. One consideration is the amount of maintenance required. Try to keep it under or not more than a half acre unless your family plans to ' PRlVATE invest considerable time and money in the garden. If you have more than a half acre, consider using only part of it as a maintained garden area. You could allow the rest to become a bird and wildlife sanctuary, woodlot, or nature garden. The oval system of landscaping is flexible and effective. (See Figures 2, 3, 4, and 5.) (An oval is shaped much like a hen egg when viewed lengthwise.) The contour of the land influences the size and location of service and private areas. In planning your garden, try to use the principle shown in Figures 2, 3, 4, and 5. With free and easy strokes, ALK sketch ova ls inside your plan. Do not let the ovals PUBUC touch the property lines or the foundation of the house. Use the fewest possible ovals to fill the space, although you may need more than one. They may touch or cross each other. Figure 1
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Avoid Blind Alleys Plan the doors in your garden, or accesses from one area to another. Indicate these with two parallel lines. At first, these are only reminders. Later on in the planning stage they will be erased and proper means of getting through that particular area will be decided upon and sketched on your plan. Graceful Sweeping Curves If any of the areas on your plan have two (rarely three) ovals, join them into one long continuous graceful curve. The resulting line will give you a good idea of where your lawn area will be. Although you can change the curve line, try to leave the curved edges of your lawn paralleling rather closely the original ovals. A Locate Major Shade Trees A landscape designer locates a shade tree to, create shade in a desired spot, and perhaps at a specific time. Therefore, the shade tree is surely functional. Remember, the sun is not directly overhead in North Carolina during the summer. The shade is cast at an angle. Observe your own shadow at various hours of the day. This angle changes from one season to the next. It is never the same any two days in a row. The hottest hours of the day are from about noon until about 4:30 pm. Keep this in mind when you locate these important shadegiving trees. (See Figures 6 and 7.) Plan for a minimum of large trees. Heavy shade and competition from tree roots make it impossible to grow anything near or under such trees. Two to four well-placed trees are usually enough for the average home grounds. ll Figure 6 Figure 7
534:, Walls For Your Garden Your home has outside walls for privacy and protection; for the same reason, your garden should have an enclosure. The enclosure might be a fence, wall, hedge, or shrub border. On very large home grounds such as farm sites, this enclosure might be a windbreak planting, or the trees that form the edge of a wooded area. The farther out into the country you live, the less important it becomes to completely enclose the garden. On a city lot, you need to conserve space and gain privacy. Fences and walls do the best job under such circumstances. (See Figure 8.) Figure 8 The walls in your home separate activities and provide privacy. Without these partitions your family would live1n one large room wherein would be located the kitchen utilities, dining room table, front room and bedroom furniture, TV sets, and everything else that goes into a house. You need the same kind of separation between the service and private areas, so that when you sit or walk in the private area, you do not see into the service area. The amount of available space will largely determine what type of material you will use for this partition. Where space is limited, a fence is best. Next on the list would come a narrow clipped hedge. If you leave plenty of room, you could use a shrub border. An evergreen hedge may cost more than a deciduous one, since the evergreen hedge is clipped only once a year. (See Figures 9 and 10.)!. ' l we 1i 1 1% 1e 1* fill. Figure 10 Develop Your Design Around An Axis A garden without an axis is almost as bad as ham without eggs or salt without pepper. In landscapedesign language, an axis is an interrupted line of vision starting from some prominent place, preferably from a window or a door, and terminating at an appropriate garden feature. An axis may be a right angle to the house or at an oblique angle. As you develop your plan, draw the garden axis to locate the terminal feature at the proper spot in your garden. Omit this pencil line on your final drawing. (See Figures 11 and 12.) F59 70/?5 49 I T ' V) \ X T Figure 9 Figure 11
Figure 13 Figure 12 Some gardens have more than one axis. The most important axis is referred to as the major axis. Any other axis that parallels this major axis is referred to as a parallel or minor axis. If a subordinate axis cuts across the major axis, this is known as a cross axis. You may have been living in your home for many years without realizing that you have been enjoying a garden axis with a natural terminal feature a beautiful View from a particular window or door. Perhaps an unusual tree in the scenery caught your attention. It may be a View of a lake or mountain in the distance. It could be some particular tree on the skyline that becomes a beautiful color in the fall. Or it may be a farm unit painted red with white trim nearly a mile away from the window from where the axis starts. Such terminal features are rare. Most home grounds landscape plans have a birdbath, bench, sundial, gate, or a small statuary as a terminal feature. (See Figure 13.) Formal Versus Informal Or A Combination Landscape designers suggest three choices in landscape design: a formal design, where the balance is symmetrical; informal, where the balance is achieved without complete symmetry; or a combination of the two. (See Figures 14, 15 and 16.) A f/n Figure 14 (Formal)
Figure 15 (Informal) Naturalistic or informal style usually means fewer plants and a less complicated layout. However, if you want to tackle a formal design, Figure 17 shows some basic patterns. Don t make your plan too complicated. Simplicity is the keynote of success in any landscape design. When you design a formal garden, try to arrange the length and width in about a 7 to 4 ratio. Many times in small private areas, a formal garden can be combined with a paved area or patio. Flower borders around the terrace area will give color. On larger properties a small area adjacent to the house may be designed along formal lines, and the total design developed in the naturalistic style. (See Figure 16.) The smaller the property, the more desirable are formal lines. More use can be made from a garden of this type than from one done in the naturalistic style. m E: [7% g m M Figure 16 (Combination) E] E g \\\\\\ o [FE Bm 77/5 5/9/4050 AREA 5 iff1?!jf/v7' f2 OA/[I 5150.5 - - All NJ/ 4012 1.95.4.5 /A/0/( A 7E JHRUJS 0R FORM/M Hffléfli Figure 17 A Few Final Points 1. Keep the plan simple. 6. It is not necessary to make a heavy planting of 2. Do not overcrowd your plants. Circles should shrubs in front of a solid fence. Just soften the show the sizes of mature plants. corners and place an occasional plant here 3. Flower borders require much time and effort. and there to break its bareness. Don t overload the plan with them. >7 Some plants can be maintained almost any 4. Use as few large shade trees as possible. given size. When keeping them down to a 5. If hedges are to be used, select evergreen comparatively small size, use pruning shears. plants. They may cost more in the beginning, This will prevent the harsh outline that usually occurs when hedge shears are used. but they are much more beautiful than deciduous hedges. Do not have one of every plant in the nursery
growing in your border. Use groups of three, plan is a lot of fun. It makes a good progress five, or seven. Occasionally a single plant will report, and an interesting picture to hang in be satisfactory. your room. Discard any existing plants that do not fit into your new landscape plan. Also resist accepting g1ft plants if they do not flt. References 10. If your property has an overabundance of trees, thin them out gradually until you get Residential Landscaping, AG-248, N. C. Agricultural down to the number you really need. Extension Service ($1.00 per copy). 11. Try not to think of cost when making the Ground Covers for North Carolina, AG 75, N. C. 12. design, or your imagination may be crippled. For ideas there is nothing better than visting Agricultural Extension Service. Carolina Landscape Plants by R. Gordon Halfacre, well-designed gardens. See your leader about The Sparks Press, Raleigh, N. C., 1971. the possibility of visiting both nurseries and Home Planting by Design, USDA Home and Gargardens to help you become more with plants and garden design. familiar den Bulletin No. 164. 13. Finally, coloring the planted portions of the north carolina AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION SERVICE Published by THE NORTH CAROLINA AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION SERVICE North Carolina State University at Raleigh, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University at Greensboro, and the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperating. State University Station, Raleigh, N. C., Chester D. Black, Director. Distributed in furtherance of the Acts of Congress of May 8 and June 30, 1914. The North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service offers its programs to all eligible persons regardless of race, color, or national origin, and is an equal opportunity employer. 11-83-1M (Reprint) 4H M-16-11