TYPE OF GARDEN
1. LANDSCAPING OF HOME
There are many people who think that landscape gardening relates to only gardening in large public parks or palaces of the rich. Landscaping as it is done for larger estates or public parks can also be implemented in a tasteful and artistic way for a small home ground, though on a smaller scale. The term "small" is a misleading 'one so far as it relates to gardens. The simplest definitive or "small", as suggested by some authors quite appropriately, is an area which can be effectively managed and maintained physically as well as financially by the owner and his family with occasional hired labour for such hard work as digging, mowing, and shearing of hedges. Here, ways will be suggested for landscaping only small residential houses. For larger estates, a combination of landscaping effects suggested for parks and home landscaping may be followed.
There are some basic guidelines for a home landscape. But personal preference plays a considerable role in developing a home garden. The home including its surroundings should be an outward expression of the inner personality and individuality of the owner. Often a common mistake is made by many to copy a successful competitor of a garden competition or a neighbour. This may not suit your own home for various reasons. For example, location aspect of your own garden may be quite different compared to the one which you want to copy. It is advisable to think a lot before even a single digging work starts. It is a matter of great regret that in our country sometimes we spend a fortune in decorating the interior of the house to make it attractive but ignore the outside compound.
Making a Plan
Before any actual garden work is undertaken a master plan has to be prepared according to a scale (1: 15 or 1: 20) in which all the features such as house wall, drive-way, paths, flower beds, shrubbery, etc., are plotted. The shaded areas due to large tree canopy or the building itself has to be marked on the plan. A plan prepared on a printed graph paper is of great help. The plan thus prepared should be studied again and again keeping in view what shape a plant will take in the long run. It is frequently observed that people attracted by the graceful form of a young Araucaria cookii, plant this in the centre of a lawn or near the house possess the gigantic form and height it will attain after some years.
Perhaps the owner of the house will cut this tree when overgrown or it may be retained to the detriment of other plants growing below it. Either way, this is not a good planning. Perhaps, one way of satisfying the urge of a garden lover to grow such beautiful trees in a small compound, is to grow them large concrete tubs and bury the tub growing the tree in the appropriate place, thus giving the impression that the plant has actually been grown on the ground. When this attains a considerable height, say 3-6 m, the tree along with the pot should be lifted and given to someone who can afford to use such a grown-up tree. But it is better not to include such controversial items. If the garden area is sufficiently large, this can be divided into three areas.
(1) Approach or Public Area: This is the area from the street side extending to the entrance of the house. The area may be small or quite large depending upon where the building is situated. The aim is to harmonize or blend the surroundings with the house proper. The approach area should not be overcrowded with large trees. It is better to have doorway or "foundation" plantings with low rowing shrubs and evergreens. Floribunda and miniature roses are also suitable for foundation planting provided sufficient sun, at least during the morning hours, is available. It is important to note that planting in front of the house should neither obscure it nor cut off light and air nor block the windows thus obstructing view of the garden from indoors.
2) Work or Service Area: The work or service area can be convenient, orderly and attractive. Wherever feasible this and the living area should be situated at the back of the house as these need seclusion or privacy. This area includes the kitchen garden, compost bin, nursery, tool shed, and garage. Some people like to include the children's swings and the slide in this portion as the children can be kept under surveillance from the kitchen. This should be separated from view by planting a thick hedge or a row of bushy shrubs, as this is considered as the shabbiest part in any garden.
3) Private Garden Area or Living Area: This is generally termed as the outdoor living area, where people sit out in the winter to enjoy the sun or rest in the summer under an arbour or shade of tree. This area should be easily approachable and visible from the living (drawing-room) or dining-room, screened from unsightly objects and for privacy. In the western countries people prefer a terrace and this is the place where it should come. There should be some shaded sitting spot such as a tree or arbour with garden benches.
Landscaping can help you effectively cover your outdoors thereby helping you block unpleasant views from outsiders or your own neighbors. Building huge walls to achieve this would be undesirable when the same can be achieved beautifully through landscaping.
Garden benches offer a real opportunity to add utility, color and beauty to the landscape. Comfortable and attractive items are now available in a wide variety of low maintenance outdoor furniture. Outdoor furniture must be large enough to be practical and must be in scale with its surroundings. Built-in furniture has the added value of being permanently in place and enhancing the overall design. Occasionally the surface of a retaining wall or raised planter can serve as a seating area. The living terrace is the most usual place for outdoor furniture.
A wide stretch of lawn with shrub border or few annual beds or a rose garden can also be included in this section. A tennis court or a play area has to be included here, if there is enough room.
But before actual planning one has to first decide what one wants for one's house. A choice has to be made from the following. Whether the garden is needed (a) as an outdoor having room with a long stretch of lawn and terrace (b) as a fenced-in playground (c) as a show piece with collection of exotic and rare plants or (d) a yielder of vegetables and fruits or cut flowers for the house is to be determined first. Some may like to add to the list a large tree for shade or trees to attract birds. It is to be considered first what should be the major theme of the garden.
If somebody is fascinated with flowers, the borders are to be planned wide to fulfill his desire. People fond of vegetables and fruit may like to reserve the major portion of the area for this purpose with possibly a little area left around the house for a pleasure garden. But, if the garden is desired as a place for outdoor living, a vast expanse of lawn with minimum of beds and borders has to be planned. Some novices may like to combine the good qualities of all these themes and incorporate in his garden. This is bound to create a mess of everything and the ultimate result will be a garden good for nothing.
Many people advise not to include any pool or formal rock garden or the kind in a home garden. But there is no harm if a formal or informal 1i1y pool can fit in with the overall design, with or without a fountain or a rock garden. A statue or sun dial can also be well fitted in some spacious compounds.
Some Points to Ponder
In designing a house some more thinking is necessary. To keep down maintenance cost and time, an untrimmed hedge should be preferred over trimmed one, open lawns and shrubs need less attention than annual flower beds. If the beds and borders in a lawn are edged with stone or brick no hand-clipping of grass will be required. A pool needs to be cleaned occasionally and one should ponder twice before including this in the plan. The water outlets in the garden should be fixed at appropriate places so that the hoses are not dragged to long distances. The above suggestions are for reducing the labour cost which is especially relevant in industrially advanced countries where labour is costly. Fortunately in India, labour is not so costly' and one can include one or two features needing help of manual labour.
To create privacy, trees, hedges, shrubs, fences, or creepers trained on wire-mesh structure supported by angle iron or G.I. pipe pillars can be grown. Trees are used when height is needed, otherwise hedges and other types of screens should be preferred.
Lighting is needed in the light special1y for terrace area and paths. The same electricity points can be utilized for running an electric lawn mower.
How to Proceed
When everything has been decided, it is time to tentatively select the plants needed. The different features are then drawn on the paper with a pencil so that this can be erased if alterations are to be made. After thorough study and several additions and omissions a plan is finalized. For an experienced man, this would not be much of a problem. But a novice must visit the neighbours and see some of the local parks to know what can be grown. The first thing is to select the materials for the basic framework such as background, screens, trees needed for shade, the doorway and the corner of the house. To this the features needed for effects and beauty as for example plants for foundation planting, flower beds, specimen shrubs or trees are added.
After everything is finalized on paper these are put into practice on the ground with the help of split-bamboo stakes and rubber hose. The trees are represented by bamboo stakes, while the beds and borders can be plotted by bending a rubber hose in the desired pattern, Paths, hedge, or screen area can also be marked with stakes. When everything is plotted the design is studied again and last-minute changes are effected if required. After this, digging and planting work are started according to plan. Before implementing the plan some compounds may need a little dressing-up like cleaning, levelling and tidying-up.
Salvaging an Old Garden
If a property has been purchased which already had some garden, it is to be studied whether the old garden can be re-made. This is a complicated job which has its advantages and disadvantages. It is often difficult to adjust some existing features into the new plan. The aim is to incorporate in the new design every interesting existing feature and remove others not needed. A bird bath, water garden and terraces should be retained and improved upon. The remaking process has to be completed slowly after watching every feature carefully and evaluating their utility in the new design.
Problems and solutions
Often it so happens that a double-storey house has a one-storey garage attached at one side of the building thus disturbing the whole balance. The solution in correcting this imbalance lies in planting tall trees with rounded canopy along the garage end. It is also important to select the proper plants near the house to soften and broaden the view of the house. A medium tree with low-branching habit and with a rounded or little oval-shaped top is planted near the corner with some low-growing shrubs planted around it. Trees such as silver oak, Amherstia nobilis, Cassia nodosa, Dillenia indica, Gulmohar, Magnolia grandiflora and Saraca indica can be used for this purpose. If the tree selected is deciduous in nature the evergreen shrubs below should form the contrast. For a two-storey house, a high branching rounded canopy tree such as Anthocephalus cadamba, Erythropsis colorata, Michelia champaca, and Polyalthia.longifolia should be planted farthest from the corner of the house and in between a fairly large second tree or shrub is planted, besides some other low-growing shrubs.
A doorway near the house needs special attention as this is the place which receives maximum attention from a visitor. Depending upon the approach a doorway can be planted informally, formally, or in a semi-informal pattern. It can be arranged with a garden-type design consisting of an ornamental shade or flowering tree perennial and annual flowers, climbing roses, some bulbs such as Zephyranthes, Amaryllis and daffodils (for temperate regions). Where it is not possible to plant the annual and perennial flowers in ground these can be put in tubs and arranged artistically. An ornamental light post, an urn or an artistically shaped boulder will be an object of interest when placed near the shade tree or in an appropriate corner. A bed of roses can also be a spot of beauty provided it receives the morning sun. Symmetrical plants with pyramidal form such as Thuja, Juniperus chinensis, and Cupressus macrocarpa are preferred by many near the doorway for a formal treatment.
If a plot is rectangular in shape, where the length is far greater than the breadth, the best way to develop such plot will be to divide the whole area into a series of garden compartments enclosed by hedges with continuous walk of gravel paving or grass connecting each segment with the other. But some people may prefer to have long stretches of open lawn, when this arrangement will not do. In such cases the plot should at least be subdivided into two segments as too much of a rectangular land with narrow width is not pleasing to the eye.
Many people inherit irregular-shaped plots specially those who are allotted the corner plots. It is far more difficult to plan a garden for such plots compared to a rectangular or a square plot. Inept handling may ruin such plots but a man with imagination and artistic sense can develop a garden which will be far more interesting than a garden in a regular shaped plot. Such plots should receive informal treatments. An irregular-shaped corner may be tackled by constructing an informal lily pool. Similarly beds and borders should be shaped irregularly according to the contour of the plot. It may be far more convenient to develop a rock garden in a shapeless corner than to have a lawn or flower bed. It may be wise not to have formal paths of any kind; instead, the various areas may be reached by stepping-stones placed in artistically-curved fashion over the grass. These are only a few suggestions. Much depends on the imagination and tact of the man doing the job on the spot as the situation demands.
Plans for very small compounds
What we have so far discussed suits the plots which are relatively large. For very small plots which cannot be divided into different segments such as public area, living area, and work area, one has to depend upon one's own imagination to landscape such plots. But it should be remembered that the majority of the flowering plants and Calcutta doob do not flourish well in a shaded place. For such plots situated under shade it is wise to put shade loving foliage plants and flowering plants preferring semi-shade such as Impatiens sultanii, geranium, day lily and footfall lily. Otherwise, a lawn planted with a few specimen shrubs or roses or one or two small beds of flowering annuals will be more than sufficient for small compounds situated in the open. In all probability it will not be possible to have any large tree in such compounds
What we have discussed so far are some possibilities and nothing is sacrosanct. One can use one's own imagination to alter one plan or other. Actually landscape design has a wide flexibility and the same plot can be landscaped in two or more different ways. Moreover, opinion varies between one landscape designers to another and hence, the controversy whether a design is perfect will never end. But the basic theories must be followed and mistakes such as overcrowding, monotony and placing of plants in wrong situations (e.g., a sun-loving plant placed under the shade of a tree) should be avoided. Once the design is decided, the different features such as paths, walls, pools, lawn are constructed as per the procedures suggested in this book. The basic necessities such as irrigation and drainage should also be taken care of.
Trees suitable for small gardens
While selecting trees for the home garden the following questions must be answered. First of all, why the tree is needed? Is it for a background or corner planting to frame the house; whether this is needed for shade for sitting or for the terrace and if so, whether grass will grow under shade? Once the questions are answered, the right type of tree has to be selected. Enough room has to be left for the tree to grow. As for example, a 25 x 50 m plot has room only for a large shade tree and two to three small flowering trees. Shallow rooted trees such as Millingtonia hortensis should not be planted as they are surface feeders and may be uprooted by storms.
Some trees suitable for the garden have already been mentioned in the course of discussion, but some more may be added. Bauhinias in different species are quite suitable
Bottle brush is suitable for many situations. Tecoma argentea is a wonderful flowering tree for home gardens around Bangalore. The following trees are also suitable for planting in the home grounds: Mimusops elengi, Gliricidia maculata, Cochlospermum gossypium, Cassia fistula, and Cassia spectabilis. Some shrubs may be grown as specimens in the lawn. A few suggested shrubs are Ixora singaporensis, Brya ebenus, Sophora tomentosa, Mussaenda philippica, Azalea, Cotoneaster horizontalis and Rhododendrons in different species. The last three are suitable for temperate climates. For shrubbery border a list of shrubs may be made from the chapter on ornamental and flowering shrubs, depending upon situation.
Landscaping a Country Home
A villager in India may not need a sophisticated garden as has been discussed in the foregoing pages. However, a countryman will need as much privacy as a city dweller. A village home has to be planned with more utility items. A villager would like to grow more vegetables and fruit for his family consumption and consequently more area should be earmarked for this purpose. But a shade tree or two and some area reserved for children's playground is definitely needed. Some utility flowering trees such as Michelia champaca, Plumeria acutifolia and shrubs such as Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, Tabernaemontana coronaria, Barleria, and Jasmines yielding flowers for worshipping and hair decoration should be included for planting.
2. LANDSCAPING OF INSTITUTE
A planned and properly landscaped school building will be different in appearance and beauty than unplanned one. Moreover a good garden in the campus inculcated aesthetic sense to our younger generation.
The general recommendations is to plant large trees in the school compound in the periphery of the school campus, along the rear and wings, a thick belt of large shady trees should be planted to bring down noise and cut down dust and storms. This plantation will also help keep down severe heat and cold. The front should be planted with medium-sized flowering trees for beauty. The trees should not completely obstruct the view of the building from outside. For enhancing the scenic beauty it is also suggested to plant a row of flowering trees, with different blooming seasons, in front of the large trees along the periphery. It is difficult to give any general recommendation regarding the types of such trees, as this will vary according to the architectural design, situation and climate. The object is to provide beauty and comfort depending on convenience.
The roads and paths are to be formally planted with medium to tall flowering plants. Before planting provision should be made for overhead wiring and sewerage so that these do not interface with the avenue planting. Where the electric wires limit the choice of avenue trees, small flowering trees such as Cochlospermum gossypium, Callistemon lanceolatus, Bauhinia variegata, and Tecoma argentea can be planted. The trees should be planted in pure avenues. A lawn looks nice in an educational institution, but is very difficult to maintain. The playground can be planted with lawn, if this can be maintained or should be left bare.
3. LANDSCAPING OF INDUSTRY
In modern times, a factory should not become a place of only machinery, dust, pollution and noise, but should also be provided with nicely laid-out parks and gardens. This is not only needed from the point of beautification, but also to fight pollution and dust. The factories may be broadly categorized into two groups. The first group comprises comparatively neat factories such as a plywood factory or a fruit processing plant which emit less dust and other polluting materials. The second group consists of factories such as cement, steel, fertilizer, etc. which emit a lot of dust, smoke, and harmful chemicals. The primary aim in a factory garden will be to plant trees to arrest the drifting dust and smoke and to cut down noise.
Another important aim is to provide ample shade and coolness so that the workers get a respite under the coolness of trees from the hostile hot interior of the factory. Moreover the trees bend down the temperature in the factory premises to a considerable extent. The places where garden can be laid in the factory area are canteen, rest-shed, hospital, administrative building etc.
It is interesting to note that well landscaped offices tend to have lower cases of absenteeism and job shifting. It has also been found that employees serving in offices featuring colorful landscaped entrances show better productivity. The reason for this can be attributed to the basic fact that humans have a fundamental desire to keep contact with nature. Our perception and moods are highly influenced by the colors we see in and around us
Tall and hardy trees such as Casurarina equisetifloia, Eucalyptus, Polyalthia logifolia and Silver oak should be planted all around or in the direction of the winds to stop the spread rows of plants planted in a staggering manner bring down the noise from the factory to the surroundings outside this barrier.
4. ROOF GARDENING
Garden is an embellished area with plants. The importance of gardening has been well understood by every individual. The gardens not only serve as a place of recreation, it also serves as a place for education by the way of establishing a home garden or botanical gardens.
The art of creating the greenery and maintaining the greenery is known as “Roof Gardening”. This is also known as Terrace gardening. The existing roof top can be effectively utilized for growing fruit plants, vegetables, spices, homestead medicinal plants, flower plants and ornamental plants. The population explosion occurs every day resulted in the migration of peoples from rural areas to urban areas for income generation. Due to migration of peoples most of the agriculture lands are converted into residential areas, resulted with decreased production of fruits and vegetables. This can be circumvented by kitchen gardening and roof gardening.
In urban areas, due to escalating population, more land area is brought under the construction of houses; therefore there is hardly any space for growing vegetables. Especially in multistoried buildings, roof gardening is the only way to grow fruits and vegetables by using the pots and containers. This practice is known as container gardening. Psychiatrist recommends that working in garden refresh the body and mind by reliving harsh stresses. Gardens become the integral part of the family life benefited by the supply of toxic free fresh fruits and vegetables.
Dietitians recommend 85 grams of fruits/day, 300 grams of vegetables/day, whereas the present day consumption of fruit is only 30 grams/day and vegetables is 120 grams/day. The consequences of nutritional and vitamin deficiency are given as follows.
Aims of roof gardening
Year round supply of fresh fruits and vegetables
Reduces expenditure on purchase of fruits and vegetables
Effective utilization of space available at the roof top
Supply of toxic free fruits and vegetables
To grow our own favourite vegetables
Rare and unavailable vegetables can be grown in roof garden
Apart from the above, working in a roof garden will relieve stress and strains.
Maintaining the greenery through roof garden reduces the pollution
Increases the monetary value of land / apartment
Location of garden
Roof top/ verandah / window sills
Preferably open areas with plenty of sunlight and water supply
Roof gardening can be established in a best manner with the availability of sun light and water. Plants produce quality fruits and vegetables by using sunlight and water. Since there is not enough place in the flats these days, this garden can be laid on roof tops, there by effectively utilizing the available space on the roof tops. In multistoried buildings, not all the apartments have a roof. Thus the pots can be placed in the verandah and window sills.
