Bold Garden Designss – originální návrhy zahrad – Ing. Hana Zachariášová

Moje filosofie

I think it’s fair to tell you, how do I approach a garden creation and what can you expect from me. It can sure prevent some misunderstanding later and you will be able to make some idea about the designer priorities, because it’s going to be you, who will use the garden and assess it every day. So – I can offer you original, special proposals of garden designs, using style hard (inanimate) materials ( wood, stone, gravels, pebbles, bamboo, jewel stone, decorative tanks...), unusual large selection of plant materials from those most average native kinds until those very unusual but in our climate safely tested. Charming harmony of colors or on the contrary interesting contrasts of colors and shapes both plants and hard materials with accent for naturalness and casualness of the whole look of garden complex and for the whole year decorativeness.

Next, what I can offer to you except of timeless layout is project conventionalization of your garden so it respects your wish on the first place, then character of the locality, climate conditions and so on ( we can do city style garden, Mediterranean style, country style, orient style, then water or swamp garden, natural type of garden with elements which will attract interesting small animals, romantic garden with elements of mystery and anticipation, cottage type garden, architectonic garden, garden oriented more on growing of useful plants for kitchen needs including herbs, garden for dry and relative warm climate, garden, which will accommodate mostly family with children and a lot of friends, it’s possible to solve elegant way a problem of small and shallow front garden, garden in a slope, atrium or garden on the roof, very interesting is strict garden in simple spirit or garden using planting or seeding into gravel or prairie or natural meadow style...)

In every case my main priority is to propose a function garden, then useful in every way for you as the owner. It can be a comfortable place to meet your friends too. It’s more outside room or even more individual outside rooms – maybe with a little bit different themes, enlargement of your property with another attractive place. From this reason is my priority to settle the garden with a comfortable patio, which will be equipped with furniture matching style you picked (different furniture for country style, different for romantic and different for modern style of garden)..

Then according to investor financial abilities equip the garden with pavilion, loggia or to create some more closed corner with a bench. You can’t forget a built in barbecue or built in benches, swinging net, sand area for the smallest children, playing house and a swing for those bigger or children’s hurdle route, which will with it’s own way work as a brightening element of your garden. Self-evidence is usefully and ergonomic done roads and stairs that way, so you are not going to be pissed of with their illogical curves or height differences and so they are able to be used with lower visibility.

Next very important thing is in my opinion perspective economic of garden order from your care demand view and from the family budget load view. From this reason I don’t like to propose some huge short cut grass places because it’s too laborious and they are pretty just with really hard to keep requirements. I like more alternative surface as a gravel or pebbles surfaces, area with barks in natural types of gardens, cool wooden decks, attractive way solved paved areas using nice combinations of different paving materials ( bricks, wood, stone and concrete boards of regular or irregular shapes ), then as a compensation of lawn I like to use some ground covering plants ( tiny-leaved perenial or on the contrary those architectonical with striking huge leaves ) which looks to me more attractive than a lawn reminding billiard table. With a really good choice will the plant ground covering lower the maintenance needs on a minimum. Alternative surfaces are more ecologic too, because in a comparison with a grass area maintenance are they less demanding in water consumption, fertilizer, moss reducer consumption, in storage area for different lawn-movers, scarifiers, aerators – and I’m not talking about the environment burden with noise, gas or oil leakage from machines, poisons, which you have to use for lawn maintenance.

If some grass surface is really that thing you can’t be without, there is a possibility to retrospectively discover that, what created ground coverage of most of the properties in the past without any bigger care demands.

What I mean is flowering meadow growth or growth created in the fashion of prairie, it depends more on the climate of the locality you want to beautify. Maintenance of these growths is reduced on cutting max. 1 – 2 in a year. Fertilization, poisons and the rest of work with short-cut lawn are dropped. To enable movement through these meadows and to refresh meadow covered areas are cut out interesting lines of paths inside of them. These areas will be thanks to the deluge of still flowering simple distinct-color flowers pasture for your eyes from spring to the fall ( the look will be every season little bit different according to the kinds of flowers blooming at that time ) and I’m not talking about all the butterflies who’s going to love it....

And if you will still want the English style of the lawn, it’s going to be enough to do just a little area of optimum shape from the look of comfortable maintenance that way, so you are not bored from the often cutting of the lawn, which will not balance the beauty. It is for sure an attractive imagination to run out of the door in the morning just barefooted into the grass thick as a fur coat, but not so attractive is ( in my case ) the imagination weekend by weekend spent with cutting of 2000m2 horizontally noticeable articulate area with very unstable and bulging border. This activity is for me as funny as vacuum-cleaning the rug or washing the floors, so with coefficient zero point zero. And you have to imagine, that you will spend with it absolutely regularly not just the whole weekend day through the season, but one or two afternoons through the week too...

Yes, there are people, who will right after they buy the top lawn-mower fall in love with this work, but no love lasts forever and that one for never ending grass cutting will last probably not even one season. But if even the last paragraph didn’t discourage you from having a large well-kept lawn – I don’t want to force you into something – maybe just : be the lawn-mower light to you.

This way I’m getting to one of the most important points of philosophy of my proposals and that’s the supporting ( already in the stadium of proposal of the garden ) advantage of natural conditions of the locality, not just from esthetic point of view ( so the proposed garden design falls into its neighborhood, so the garden doesn’t disturb its neighborhood or buildings already standing on the property, and so the neighborhood doesn’t disturb your garden ), but from the country climate point of view too, I mean microclimate and earth conditions of the locality.

Natural utilization of the climate and microclimate means, that there is a need to add into the layout such an assortment, which will not going to have some bigger problem to stay alive long-term ( and beautify!!) spoken post without garden owners any further knowledge in care area and without any bigger time demands on garden maintenance in condition without weed, on every day watering in dry season ( by hand or automatically – you have to pay the water in every case ), on frost protection, on every year removing and liquidation of big amounts of trimmed plants, on regular bush fertilization which loves low PH, on every year perenial change, which on spoken place can’t take damp and cold fall and winter...

Easily could be told, that if the place has the tendency to be warm and dry, I can offer to you firstly those styles, which will support the character of this place, what in this case means to logically plant out some plant, which bears the dryness very good or needs the dryness. This step will assist long-term in area ecology too.

Utilization of natural earth and microclimate condition of locality is connected with another aspect of successful garden design and that’s unconditionally detailed garden designer informativeness about character and plant’s demands in the garden proposal.

By the word character I mean especially sizes above the earth and under the earth parts of plants, blooming period ( really good designs plays with colors varieties at the same time blooming plants in most of the seasons ), length of the bloom, how long will the leaves last before winter, if they are evergreen, half-shedding or full-shedding, color of the leaves before they shed, leaves structure, color of the bark, color of fruits, shade of green on the leaves (they can be combined very effectively too ). Plant demands means the requirement measure of lightning, requirement on particular chemical structure and earth structure, on particular degree of humidity kept in the earth throughout the year, then their resistance against frost, dry atmosphere, and so on..

It can be told, that if the locality doesn’t at all or nearly at all have the conditions needed for particular type of vegetation, it is really better to look out a different assortment. For example if your vehemently sloped garden is north oriented ending with freezing hollow, it will be surely very wrong to want some creations composed of grey-leaved, sun loving herbs and that’s from one simple reason, that on north hillside will sun loving herbs show one weird but not wanted character – they will be every year a little bit smaller. Exactly the same unwise thing will be to want to plant on the bottom of this freezing hollow some chrysanthemums, Holland irises, Caryopteris or Perovskia types of bush, simply that, what needs sun and hates winter humidity – in spite of that a few meters higher of your north hillside is exactly this the most used growth of the neighborhood gardens. But if you pick on this place turned north some still-green plants as Rhododendrons, Kalmias, Pieris, then “Japanese” maples, Celastrus, still-green Viburnum, or a lot of another non-shedding plant kinds hating winter sun and loving whole-year higher air humidity, will your neighbors just be envy about the perfect health condition of your plants and the beautiful effect from the whole planting (just if the earth composition suits to it too!!), because they on their sun exposed garden can achieve this effect with Rhododendrons just with conditions care-wise really exhausting.

How you can see in this case, the choice of the right assortment is maybe needed condition ( but not sufficient ) for success of the whole design, but the right mixture of the best suiting assortment for the microclimate in the certain locality is not easy at all.

From this reason am I testing already years plants, which do I put into my proposals on different types of places ( south orientation-dryness-sun-high contents of lime in the earth or: adequately humid-sunny or: shady-dry-sour earth or: sunny just in some parts of the year-often drenched or even flooded-heavier and humus including earth or: dry-shady-sandy earth and so on) and I am watching their characters and demands that way, so I can use them for project optimality from view of future maintenance. At the same time I am trying to balance client demands on the whole effect of planting and at the same time his time maintenance availability.

As the layout regards, it’s not my goal to create a green tangle ( on top of it just in the borders of the property ) absolutely known to everyone from panel houses, almost not showing, nothing saying and not at all surprising Juniperus, Cypresses, Thuja and Potentilla, which you can observe just when you walk inside around the fence. That’s far from it.

Garden for me is a place, which of course likes the plants too ( otherwise they couldn’t fullfil their beautifying function ), but on the first place the users of the garden feel good here – the owners. That’s the reason I feel it’s important to keep the plants closer to house, not to isolate them just in the borders. Because it’s still prettier to watch from the window of your office for example in March, when we can’t sit outside yet, close to house planted cute yellow tender Corylopsis or some other early blooming bush ( under which are spring bulbous plants ), than to stare through the brown looking lawn into something brown-green and the whole year monotonous.

The demand on comfort garden habitability is the reason, why I see the garden in my proposals not as a biological ( soft ) complex of elements – plants, but I see garden more like environment, which consists more of elements, which will make it habitable – and that’s not going to be plants. Its going to be not biological ( hard ) elements, which will make from your garden some kind of continuing of interior in a little bit different conditions, some kind of outside room. There exists even an opinion that in the area proposed for outside living will one rest more than in garden mostly with plants.

That’s why the share of hard elements to garden extent is in my proposals indirectly proportional: the smaller the garden is, the bigger share of hard elements is going to be in it. As walkways, patios, paved areas, wooden decks for sun-bathing, higher put flower-beds or benches to sit, garden furniture, barbecue, children games elements, lightning and so on. Plants in this garden will be mostly architectonical or shaped in vases and will function as an element for connecting, completing, beautifying and softening of all the hard elements ( elements which enables using the garden by the owners ).

If I have a bigger area of garden at disposal, I can afford for example in formal environment of the city to break it with bush into more smaller “rooms” – maybe with different theme – or in informal environment can I pick nature more closer unit and think about the meadow, grove, romantic corner, about creating a brook, heathery, wetland, natural looking pond ( while in a small garden and formal environment I pick every time simple shape – and geometrical ) and so on.

At the same time am I keeping a principle, that there is going to be more hard elements around the house ( patio, harder (paved) walkways, more garden furniture, lightning ) and on the way to the borders of the property is decreasing paved walkways in a benefit of gravel or bark ones, short lawn is becoming less formal and it can even turns into a blooming meadow, “furniture” in this part can be a bench from logs or just a stump... As the plant assortment regards – often used and tested bush is not enough for me, I need to dust a perenial glory ( what doesn’t have to be at variance with easy maintenance, it just puts heavy demands on the designer knowledge, that’s in my experience the right reason why people use perenials so much less than it was before ), I need to put into compositions less known wood species, which I tried myself how much they wear, I need to work to the detail on planting to the bulbs, and if it’s necessary, then finish the unit with portable exotic plant in a vase or something one year lasting, what will be not hard to renew every year though – for example with self-sowing.

The reason is too, that you have to wait 3-5 years depending on kinds and place conditions for an effect with bush, on trees effect a lot longer, while effect from the perenials is showing already 2-3 years after it is planted out. Because I propose in our country not so usual garden units with untraditional and future elements, I can dare to recommend you a garden delivery including realization firstly so the designer thoughts stays proved the whole time of the garden creating and secondly – for creating this type of garden you need to know “ where to touch”, when you need a summer - house, pergola, wooden deck, styled furniture, cool elements from bamboo, quality seeds for sowing, attractive plants in perfect quality, gargoyle, bird bathing or sun clocks in quality make, paving, which finishes and beautifies the style you picked and have needed service life.

Mainly you need not to exaggerate, not to over combine, so all the used elements – biological ( plants ) and hard ( not living elements ) created style crystallized , pleasant, nice habitable, easy to maintain, not complicated garden unit – so it doesn’t end like when a dog with a cat baked that cake from a big amount of dainties. And exactly that is a thing, which an experienced designer already “has in the eye “ and looks after it till that time, when he pass the new garden over to the new owner.

So now you already know my philosophy. Maybe you like it, maybe not. But it comes from my long-time observing of different ecologic units, from theory and my own percepts about color function, shapes and their combinations, from theory of garden layout that way, how it present international authors, especially from countries where garden designs have its deep tradition, unbroken with political events.